Matthew 5-17

We have said that Matthew’s gospel is primarily directed at a readership with a Jewish background. It is clear that their Jewish background and traditions were things which it was not easy for Christian converts to give up. Both Paul and Matthew go out of their way to assure Jewish converts that Christianity is not a rejection of Judaism but its natural development. It is everything that Judaism is and more. 

So, in today’s passage which continues the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus solemnly assures his readers, “Do not imagine that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets. I have come not to abolish but to complete them.” Jesus has not come not to terminate the Law but to bring it to a higher level. (In a rough simile, it is like the upgrading of a computer by e.g. increasing its memory. It is still the same computer doing the same things, only better and faster.) The vision of Jesus helps us to see the Law in a new light. 

So Jesus says that the Law is still to be observed. Of course, we will see very clearly in the following days exactly what Jesus means. He is not saying that every single injunction of the Law (some of which seem very strange to us) has to be literally observed but rather that the spirit behind those injunctions is still in force. His words are meant to console but they are also a challenge, as we shall see. The New Law does not mean simply the addition of new elements. There is what we would call now a ‘paradigm shift’ to a Way which goes beyond laws to the Law of Love. 

In our Church, too, we need to be ready to move forward creatively to new ways of understanding our faith and living it out. The traditions of the past are still valid but we must never get bogged down in them to the extent that we do not respond to the clear signs of the times. Tradition can be understood in two ways: either as a fundamental belief that has existed from the very beginning or simply a way of doing or understanding things which has been around for a long time. 

When will the Church stop changing? we hear some people ask. The answer is, Hopefully never. The day we close ourselves to change is the day we die, as Paul warns us in the Second Letter to the Corinthians. To quote Cardinal Newman, To live is to change; to be perfect is to have changed often. He knew about change. He made radical changes in his own understanding of the Christian faith, changes which he saw as unavoidable although they involved great sacrifices on his part and led him from the Anglican to the Catholic Church.

Talitha Koum

Jairus’s Daughter. 

When Jesus had crossed again [in the boat] to the other side, a large crowd gathered around him, and he stayed close to the sea. One of the synagogue officials, named Jairus, came forward. Seeing him he fell at his feet and pleaded earnestly with him, saying, “My daughter is at the point of death. Please, come lay your hands on her that she may get well and live.” He went off with him, and a large crowd followed him and pressed upon him. While he was still speaking, people from the synagogue official’s house arrived and said, “Your daughter has died; why trouble the teacher any longer?” Disregarding the message that was reported, Jesus said to the synagogue official, “Do not be afraid; just have faith.” He did not allow anyone to accompany him inside except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. When they arrived at the house of the synagogue official, he caught sight of a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. So he went in and said to them, “Why this commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but asleep.”And they ridiculed him. Then he put them all out. He took along the child’s father and mother and those who were with him and entered the room where the child was. He took the child by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise!” The girl, a child of twelve, arose immediately and walked around. [At that] they were utterly astounded. He gave strict orders that no one should know this and said that she should be given something to eat.

I have given much thought and prayer about how to unpack this passage, hoping to find a softer, easier landing for what has been revealed to me. Nothing has come to mind so away we go. For nearly every Christian, there are passages in the Bible where the words draw a believer into a crucible, an act where faith and experience are cast into a furnace hotter than the sun. After the smelter cools, the person comes out with the dross that weakened them discarded and their troubles sanctified. What remains is a person changed by the encounter. This simple little story about a synagogue official and his daughter is one place where life shoved me headlong into a crucible which only after a long period of time has left me to rest with memory and shared experience.

The gospel story is simple. Jesus was walking through a crowd when a Jew who normally would have curled his lip at Jesus and insulted him, became desperate enough seek the help of Jesus for his ill daughter. Jesus agreed to come to offer help. Along the way, Jesus healed another person but before they could get to the home of the official, the word came the girl died. Jesus challenged the official, a man named Jarius to have faith even in the face of terrible news. When they arrived at the house, they found a household consume by grief. When Jesus asked why they were grieving because there girl was not dead but was sleeping, they jeered him in doubt.

Now comes the moment of the crucible. “Talitha Koum,” Jesus called. “Little girl, raise up.” The girl woke up and was healed.

Let me tell the story of the crucible. On a fine sunny day like this in June 1986, I accompanied my wife to the baby doctor’s office to check on the health of a baby who was in the 28th week of pregnancy. Life was good. In January of that year we had been graced to adopt a baby boy after several years of trying to have another baby. Our first attempt ended in the 28th week, an event which shattered us but we then were excited to embrace the remarkable truth of the old wife’s tale that the best cure for infertility was to to adopt. A natural baby would soon follow along when adoption would relax the high anxiety of trying to conceive.

During the course of the examination, the mood in the room changed. The Ultrasound Nurse become more and more agitated moving the microphone around my wife’s stomach before the nurse jumped out and ran out of the room. A few minutes later one of the doctors in the clinic, not our normal doctors, came in with a ashen countenance. He used the microphone himself for a few minutes but then all he had to do was turn and look at us and we knew. The baby had died.


The worst part had to follow, an induced delivery and the arrival of a lifeless baby. Calling on our faith to sustain us through another tragedy, we did what as needed. In the hours prior to the delivery, I was drawn back to this verse over and over again.

Thoughts plagued me. Why Jairus and not us? Why did this happen again? Why was it so hard to have a baby? There are no answers understood in the moment, only the stark recognition that resurrection and eternal life requires death. Death, such a strange, terrible and beautiful word.

The nurse wrapped the baby girl up in a blanket and her to me and left us to be alone with the moment. I could not speak. My wife could not speak. We just sat it took it all in or at least we tried to take in the finality of the moment. I wish now I had written more about the minutes we spent together because time has erased many of the details that seemed so vivid then A sudden fury welled up in me and I stifled the urge to scream out in anger. The emotion faded and an unfamiliar voice began to talk. The words I spoke stunned me then and they still burn though my heart today

I said, “Jairus and his family heard Jesus say, “Talitha Koum” and the dead girl woke up and lived again. I can’t begin to understand this but, I name you, our daughter, Talitha and so knowing you will arise some day also but today.” I anointed the baby with Holy Water I had in a bottle in my pocket. How it came to be I had the little squeeze bottle in my possession remains a mystery. Perhaps there was plan hatched deep down inside me to do what I did but I don’t remember any such thing. I repeated the triune baptism ritual and gave the baby over to my wife.

What I did that day was right thing to do. It declared a faith I doubted, consumed as I was by grief and anger, and it comforted my wife whose faith was triumphant. I know now Talitha will raise up again. We all will. The miracle for Jairus was needed to help Jesus teach the point. There is still no answer why there was no miracle for us and that our daughter fell asleep before her first breath. Such questions are imponderable. What comes to mind is the magnificent son we born to us 15 months later. He is an incredible human being and the challenges he has overcome amaze me. He treats others exactly as the gospel demands. God does not bargain but certainly if Talitha had not died, Brian might never have been born. Another imponderable I have to leave to God.

The crucible has cooled now. My faith is restored and enlarged. The story of Jairus did what was needed by bringing me from where I was to where I am. I don’t know how to describe this place other than to say I have a sure and certain knowledge I am and we are exactly where God intended. I remember John, our first baby who came to prepare the way for the others children given us and Talitha this morning with gratitude for the gift of the resurrection and the promise of life eternal. Amen.