In his Holy Sonnets the great seventeenth-century British
poet John Donne reflects on the truths of the gospel and praise
of God. The most famous of these sonnets is the tenth. It's addressed
to the grim reaper, death personified. It begins,
"Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so."
I invite you to have in your mind's eye death personified.
The Scriptures describe death as the last great, inexorable foe
of the human race and of the purpose of God. But death is not
to be proud. There is One who is greater and mightier than this
dread enemy.
Mark 5:35-43 is a story about a child who died. In it we're going
to hear another of the questions of Jesus that we've been tracking
in this series. Jesus asked penetrating questions that not only
were pertinent at the moment, but they have a way of helping us
examine ourselves today. We'll get to the question in a moment.
Let me begin by making some observations about death. Medical
science is, of course, blurring the boundary between death and
life with various advances. Sadly, medical science is also making
human beings better at killing as well as extending life. Indeed
the progress of medical science sometimes leads to absurdities.
Below is a quote from a legal transcript in the Massachusetts
Bar Association's Lawyer's Journal, submitted
in a letter to National Review (1:)
"Q: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check
for a pulse?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for blood pressure?
A: No.
Q: Did you check for breathing
A: No.
Q: So then it is possible that the patient was alive when you
began the autopsy.
A: No.
Q: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
A: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
Q: But could the patient be alive nevertheless?
A: It is possible that he could have been alive and practicing
law somewhere."
In spite of this silliness, and however the boundary between life
and death is blurred, it remains the case that we each face the
certainty of our own death.
THE FINAL ENEMY
Psychologists have studied the process of grieving a death.
When we get the news that someone we love has died or is going
to die, or our own life is to be forfeit, there is a predictable
grieving process. It begins with denial and shock, which are followed
by anger, bargaining, guilt, depression, loneliness, and finally
acceptance. It is tragic that the process ends with acceptance,
if all we have is the study of psychologists to go on, because
what is accepted is that death always triumphs. Whatever anger,
denial, or bargaining we engage in, they are like waves against
a great rock that matter not at all. All of our emotional turmoil
finally ends up with our having to bow before the final enemy
and say, "You win."
Every culture has ways of helping people go through the process
of bowing their knee before the great foe procedures for
ending a life and disposing of the body in burial or cremation.
You may have seen last week's news of the services held for the
two officers who were killed in the line of duty in the Capitol.
A thousand vehicles proceeded into Arlington Cemetery attending
their burial. Eulogies and honor guards lend some solace to those
who grieve, but they also salute the power of death.
We're going to see in the passage before us a way of mourning
that existed in Palestine in the first century. Professional mourners
would gather around and play flutes, wail, and act out a stylized
sadness. This story, however, has something else to say about
life and death. Let's read Mark 5:35-43:
While Jesus was still speaking, some men came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue ruler. "Your daughter is dead," they said. "Why bother the teacher anymore?"
Ignoring what they said, Jesus told the synagogue ruler, "Don't be afraid; just believe."
He did not let anyone follow him except Peter, James and John the brother of James. When they came to the home of the synagogue ruler, Jesus saw a commotion, with people crying and wailing loudly. He went in and said to them, "Why all this commotion and wailing? The child is not dead but asleep." But they laughed at him.
After he put them all out, he took the child's father and mother and the disciples who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!") Immediately the girl stood up and walked around (she was twelve years old). At this they were completely astonished. He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.
WHAT VOICE WILL WE LISTEN TO?
Jesus' question was directed to the mourners, not the other
people in this story-his disciples and the grieving family. The
role of mourners was to insist that everyone pay homage to the
facts: Death had won again. A beautiful little girl's life was
forfeit, and they all had to bow before reality. The final enemy
had claimed another victim. But Jesus challenged the mourners.
The question he asked the mourners is more obscure than the other
questions we've looked at in this series (Discovery Papers 4569-4573 to date).
"Why all this commotion and wailing?" In that culture
there were no telephones, email, or other ways of getting the
word out. When someone died, professional mourners would gather
and a wail would start. They probably had been standing by, since
this was a prominent man and his daughter had been sick. As soon
as she died, they would have started playing the instruments,
crying aloud, throwing dust in the air, and tearing their clothing.
Thus word would begin to spread that the child had died.
We see a tension beginning in verse 35 when some men from among
these mourners came from the house and said very matter-of-factly
to the synagogue ruler, "Your daughter is dead. Why bother
the teacher anymore?" That is, "Let's face this terrible
reality. Jesus has nothing left to say. Leave behind the rabbi
and his religious instruction. It's all useless in the face of
death. Maybe the spokesmen for God have something to say when
there is still reason to hope, but there is no reason to hope.
The child is dead." Jesus deliberately ignored them and challenged
what they said. He turned to the heartbroken father and urged
him to believe rather than despair.
So the tension is, Who are we going to listen to-the voice that
is announcing the victory of the grim reaper, insisting that we
bow before him; or the voice of Someone else who says, "Don't
be afraid; rather, believe"?
Let me clarify that the issue here is not grief. Grief in the
face of death is always appropriate. Sorrow, confusion, numbness
of heart and mind, questioning, loneliness-none of the emotions
that go with losing someone you love were in view when Jesus challenged
these professional mourners.
In 1 Thessalonians 4:13 Paul writes, "Brothers, we do not
want you to be ignorant about those who fall asleep, or to grieve
like the rest of men, who have no hope." The statement there
is not, "Don't grieve." Paul's point is that you should
not grieve hopelessly. Jesus, you remember, cried at the
tomb of Lazarus. Even knowing that Lazarus would be given life
again for some years to follow, Jesus wept. He wept for the loneliness
that people experience when a beloved one is taken. But the calling
for Christians is not to break down in the face of the final enemy's
awful death's-head smile and his claim, "I win." The
challenge of faith is to acknowledge our hurt, but not give way
to hopelessness.
THE TENDERNESS AND THE SEVERITY OF JESUS
There are two ways I'm going to ask you to look at the ministry
of Jesus in this story. One is the tenderness with which he cares
for the family, and the other is the severity with which he treats
the mourners. Both of them show us something important to believe
about him.
Let's consider the kindness of the Lord. He was tender with this
father who had just heard that his child had died. The father's
heart must have sunk like a stone. He had hoped that Jesus would
get there before the child died. Now it was too late. The man
didn't see any miracle to believe in, only the word of the Lord.
"Trust me; I have something left for you. This is not the
end of the story."
We see the kindness and gentleness of the Lord in the room where
the little girl lay on her bed deceased. He took her by the hand.
I've mentioned before how easily Jesus ignored all the laws of
ritual cleanness (Discovery Paper 4573). Touching a dead body
would have rendered him unclean. But of course this body was not
going to stay dead for long. Then he used a wonderful phrase in
Aramaic, the language of the household, of the townspeople, not
the language of commerce and the wider world. As Peter told Mark
this story, and it was recalled by the disciples, they couldn't
help but repeat the phrase Jesus used because it was so touching:
"Talitha koum!"-"Dear little girl, get up!"
Commentators have made some wonderful observations about this
phrase. This child had probably heard the phrase, "Little
girl, get up!" scores of times in her life. When she was
just learning to walk as a toddler, stumbling and falling to the
ground, her parents would reach down and say, "Dear little
one, get up!" as they helped her up. And as a youngster she
would sometimes want to stay in bed when she should have been
up doing something else, and her parents would lovingly say, "Dear
little one, get up!" People who loved her would have often
said, "Talitha koum!" So when Jesus touched her
and spoke these words to her, they were the tender words that
someone who cared for her would say.
The last observation we can make about Jesus' tender care for
these people is that it was he who was sensitive enough to ask
that she be given something to eat. This child had been sick for
some time and had probably not been able to get nourishment regularly.
She would have needed something to eat. Everyone else was so shocked
by what happened that they didn't even think about it. But the
Lord stayed tenderly focused on her needs.
All of this is to make a point. When we are in extreme situations,
when death itself threatens and all seems lost, when we seem gripped
by the power of the final enemy to destroy and blight our existence,
when we find ourselves desperate and falling and hopeless, there
is wonderful theology that can be brought to bear: the great themes
of heaven, eternal life, the victory gained when Jesus was raised
from the dead, and so on. But it's also important to have the
tender touch, the intimacy of Jesus, knowing that he is with us
even though we're going through "the valley of the shadow
of death" (Psalm 23:4). We can call on Someone who is present,
strong, caring, and understanding, and who even remembers that
we need something to eat.
The other ministry of Jesus in this text is his challenge to the
mourners. I don't think he had any particular grievance with them
as individuals, but he was denying the role they were playing
in the drama, urging acceptance of the loss of everything. They
were advocating a kind of emotional acquiescence that says, "There's
no reason to appeal to God or those who teach in his name. It's
time for us to do the hard work of giving death its due."
In that sense Jesus refused them. He ignored them, he challenged
them, they in turn ridiculed him, and he subsequently threw them
out.
We need to see the Lord here as directly opposing proud death,
personified for us in John Donne's sonnet. Almost always in Scripture
when there is a crisis moment, it takes place in a face-to-face
confrontation between the champion of heaven and the destroyer
with his lies. It happened in the Garden when Eve was faced with
the tempter and she and then Adam fell before his persuasion (Genesis
3). Jesus stood face-to-face with that same tempter in the wilderness
immediately after he was baptized (Matthew 4:1-11; Mark 1:13;
Luke 4:1-13). God commanded Moses to go into Pharaoh's court and
stand by himself with only his brother as his second in the duel,
facing the power of Egypt and the authority of Pharaoh. It happened
when a shepherd boy named David took only five stones and a sling
out to face the giant on a plain between the Israelite and Philistine
armies (1 Samuel 17). The champion of heaven had to stand there
against the reviler. It happened when Elijah stood on Mount Carmel
by himself against four hundred priests of Baal. (1 Kings 18).
Elijah was the champion of heaven, telling the truth into the
darkness.
That is the way Jesus is presented in this story. He was throwing
down a gauntlet, saying, "Proud death, I'm coming for you.
There is going to come a day on a hill outside Jerusalem not many
months from now when we're going to fight to the end. And I want
you to know right now I'm giving life back to a beloved child
for a family of people I care about, and I'm doing it deliberately
to say, 'You don't win.' The end of the story is not death. The
final enemy is not the champion."
"DON'T BE AFRAID; JUST BELIEVE"
Jesus made two statements in this text that we can benefit
from practically. The first is in verse 36. Jesus' word to the
father was, "Don't be afraid; just believe." The writer
of Hebrews makes an interesting point about the fear of death:
"Since the children have flesh and blood, [Christ] too shared
in their humanity so that by his death he might destroy him who
holds the power of death-that is, the devil-and free those who
all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death"
(Hebrews 2:14-15). When we assume that the grim reaper stands
at the end of every life claiming it, destroying all that has
gone before, when there is no reason for hope, then we live in
fear of the end. It casts a terrible shadow backward from our
future to our present. We're afraid that the love we experience,
the friendships we have, our accomplishments will be lost and
forgotten someday, and the bodies that serve us now will decay
and will grow less and less useful to us. So we become willing
to do anything, to listen to any kind of lie or foolishness that
will numb the fear of the death that awaits us. Our enemy uses
our fear to ruin us even further.
When we have One who is greater than death on our side, when we
don't have to fear what's before us, when we know for sure that
all the best things that have ever happened in our life are going
to last forever, that the love relationships we have in Christ
go on and on, that nothing of eternal consequence is ever lost
to us, then instead of living in fear, we can live in confidence.
When we see things begin to break down and we realize we're nearer
the day that we'll be with the Lord, we can be optimistic and
hopeful instead of afraid.
One of the subplots in Walt Disney's version of Peter Pan
is of Captain Hook and the crocodile. At some point in his life,
Captain Hook's hand was bitten off by a crocodile, and the crocodile
liked the taste of it so much that he spent the rest of his life
pursuing Captain Hook, wanting to eat the rest of him. Now, the
crocodile had also swallowed an alarm clock, and he made a ticking
noise everywhere he went. And at various points in the story,
Captain Hook would hear a ticking noise, and it would terrify
him. He would run scared and lose his bearings because the ticking
noise always meant that the crocodile that was going to destroy
his life was nearby.
That is the way the fear of death operates in us. Something reminds
us that the "crocodile" is going to "eat"
us someday, and we act foolishly. Instead of being firm, steady,
and confident in the Lord, we find ourselves willing to do terrible,
destructive, embarrassing things.
Jesus' word to the father is also a wonderful word to us: "Don't
be afraid; just believe." There's a champion fighting for
us who is greater than the enemy who wants to destroy us.
"THE CHILD IS NOT DEAD BUT ASLEEP"
The other statement to note is in verse 39: "The child
is not dead but asleep." Now, she was dead. It wasn't as
if this child was just in a deep coma (which Jesus knew but no
one else did) and he was going to revive her. The word "slumber"
or "sleep" is used this way many times in the Bible.
We read it in 1 Thessalonians 4:13 earlier. Jesus also used it
of Lazarus (John 11:11).
Jesus said the child was asleep as a direct contradiction to the
mourners who came in verse 35 and said, "Your child is dead,
forget the rabbi." The story would have a future. This little
girl was going to be given back her life.
Believing people can and should use the term "sleep"
to talk about brothers and sisters who have died. If they are
asleep, they can wake up. They have not expired. We are merely
deprived of their company temporarily. Jesus' language of death
clearly implied, even demanded, a day to come when the dead will
awaken, and everything will be made new. Jesus was urging his
people who love him to believe that he would triumph, not the
grim reaper.
"Death be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so."
The people we love who are in Christ and who are no longer
with us, will be with us again. Jesus said in John 14:2-3, "...I
am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare
a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that
you also may be where I am." The condition of heaven is that
we'll be together forever. We grieve because everyone must grieve
when their heart is broken, but we don't have to grieve as hopeless
people. We can be filled with confidence that heaven's Champion
won the greatest of all the confrontations. Jesus gave his life
and was raised from the dead. Life wins and death loses. That
changes everything, not only about the people we love who have
died, because we know we'll be with them again, but about how
we live our own life now. We don't live fearfully. We have the
option of living confidently, aggressively, hopefully, optimistically,
enthusiastically, waiting for the day, excited about life to the
very end when we fall asleep, knowing that we will wake again.
John Donne's sonnet ends with these lines:
"Death thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate
men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell;
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke. Why swellst thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally,
And death shall be no more; death, thou shalt die."
Below are some of the very last words of Scripture we have
about the human condition in the future that will last forever.
The apostle John ends his Revelation with a description of the
new heavens and new earth, when, having awakened forever, we participate
in the re-creation of everything, and life that is forever begins.
Revelation 21:1:
"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, 'Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.'
He who was seated on the throne said, 'I am making everything new!' Then he said, 'Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.'
He said to me: 'It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life....'"
NOTES
1. National Review, August 3, 1998, p. 18
Scripture quotations are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers.
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