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I was feeling a but lazy so I went to Chat GPT to see if it could come up with any good ideas for this weeks sermon - and to be honest it was not very helpful. But it did come up with a great title - “life, death and God’s steadfast love”
This week I am meeting an elderly mum to talk about the upcoming funeral for her 44 year old son who suddenly and unexpectedly died in his sleep?. What DO you say to someone in such a circumstance? What can be more devastating than to have one’s child die before one?
Picture the scene in our bible reading from Mark Chapter 5. Jairus “one of the leaders of the synagogue” - that’s basically like a church warden or PCC member - the people who ran the synagogue. They would have called in different rabbis on different weeks to preach, and these leaders of the synagogue were responsible for the rotas.
Jairus is terrified and desperate. His “little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” He breathes a sigh of relief as Jesus says yes. Now perhaps it will be OK. But then there is an inter-ruption along the way. It slows them down. And when they get through it, messengers come with the dreadful news. “Your daughter is dead.”
The way this was phrased in the original language was even more abrupt. They literally said to this worried daddy, “DEAD, your daughter is.” (probably an ancestor to Yoda) It must have been like a knife in his heart to hear that word, “dead.” It’s the most absolutely harsh and hopeless word in any language. (1)
The absolute horror of death. There’s a saying “where there’s life there’s hope.” But with death, all hope is gone. What do I say to the elderly mum I meet this week? What could Jesus say to Jairus in the midst of his pain?
How can God allow this death?
We then hear our first reading from the book of wisdom -
13 because God did not make death,
and he does not delight in the death of the living.
14 For he created all things so that they might exist;
the generative forces of the world are wholesome,
and there is no destructive poison in them,
and the dominion of Hades is not on earth.
15 For righteousness is immortal.
23 for God created us for incorruption,
and made us in the image of his own eternity,
24 but through the devil’s envy death entered the world,
and those who belong to his company experience it. (2)
That’s sounds a bit of a cheat- is God trying to get himself off the hook here? Let me counter with a story, a story that may be apocryphal but makes a valid point:
A University professor challenged his students with this question. “Did God create everything that exists?” One student bravely replied, “Yes he did!”
“God created everything?” The professor asked. “Yes sir, he certainly did,” the student replied.
The professor answered, “If God created everything; then God created evil. And, since evil exists, and according to the principal that our works define who we are, then we can assume God is evil.”
The student became quiet and did not answer the professor’s hypothetical definition.
The professor, quite pleased with himself, boasted to the students that he had proven once more that the Judaeo-Christian faith was a bunch of myths.
Another student raised his hand and said, “May I ask you a question, professor?”
“Of course”, replied the professor. The student stood up and asked, “Professor does cold exist?”
“What kind of question is this? Of course it exists. Have you never been cold?” The other students snickered at the young man’s question.
The young man replied, “In fact sir, cold does not exist. According to the laws of physics, what we consider cold is in reality the absence of heat. Every body or object is susceptible to study when it has or transmits energy, and heat is what makes a body or matter have or transmit energy. Absolute zero (-460 F) is the total absence of heat; and all matter becomes inert and incapable of reaction at that temperature. Cold does not exist. We have created this word to describe how we feel if we have no heat.”
The student continued, “Professor, does darkness exist?” The professor responded, “Of course it does.”
The student replied, "Once again you are wrong sir, darkness does not exist either. Darkness is in reality the absence of light. Light we can study, but not darkness. In fact we can use Newton's prism to break white light into many colors and study the various wavelengths of each color. You cannot measure darkness. A simple ray of light can break into a world of darkness and illuminate it. How can you know how dark a certain space is? You measure the amount of light present. Isn't this correct? Darkness is a term used by man to describe what happens when there is no light present."
Finally the young man asked the professor, “Sir, does evil exist?” Now uncertain, the professor responded, “Of course, as I have already said. We see it everyday. It is in the daily examples of man’s inhumanity to man. It is in the multitude of crime and violence everywhere in the world. These manifestations are nothing else but evil.”
To this the student replied, “Evil does not exist, sir, or at least it does not exist unto itself. Evil is simply the absence of God. It is just like darkness and cold, a word that man has created to describe the absence of God. God did not create evil. Evil is the result of what happens when man does not have God’s love present in his heart. It’s like the cold that comes when there is no heat, or the darkness that comes when there is no light.”
The professor sat down. Now according to the legend the young student’s name, Albert Einstein. (3) But the point made is a good one. Evil is simply the absence of good.
In the same way Death is simply the absence of life. God created life. “he created all things so that they might exist; the generative forces of the world are wholesome” - if you disconnect people from the source of life that is God then we have the tragedy of death.
The early Christian writer St Irenaeus, writing around 180AD, makes a more nuanced point - that God letting death into the world wasn’t a punishment, but a merciful response to the horror of sin.
So [God] drove [Adam] out of Paradise, and removed him far from the tree of life. This was not because [God] envied [Adam] the tree of life, as some venture to assert, but because [God] pitied him, [and did not want ] that he stay trapped a sinner for ever, nor that the sin which surrounded him should be immortal, and evil interminable and irremediable. So [God] set a limit, a boundary to his [state of] sin, by putting in place death, and thus causing sin to cease, Romans 6:7 putting an end to it by the dissolution of the flesh, which should take place in the earth, so that man, ceasing at length to live to sin, and dying to it, might begin to live to God.
….. Adam had been conquered, all life having been taken away from him: so when the Adversary was conquered in his turn, Adam received new life; and the last enemy, death, is destroyed, 1 Corinthians 15:26 which at the first had taken possession of man. Therefore, when man has been liberated, what is written shall come to pass, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is your sting? 1 Corinthians 15:54-55 (4)
There’s a saying “where there’s life there’s hope.” But with death, all hope is gone. Or at least that’s how it was UNTIL JESUS.
Verse 36 says, Overhearing what they said, Jesus told him, “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” The word translated “overhearing” could also be translated “IGNORING” what they said. Jesus told the suffering daddy to focus on his FAITH, not his FEAR. (5)
They come to the house and come across “ a great commotion people weeping and wailing loudly” - just as today you might pay a professional singer to help lead the singing at a funeral - in those days there were professionals to help lead the weeping. It seems weird to us - but it was what everyone did then
39When he had entered, he said to them, ‘Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.’ 40And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child’s father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was.
Last week we heard Mark Chapter 4 and Mother Patty preached to us about how “even the wind and the waves obey him”. The disciples had seen Jesus do many miracles - yet in the midst of the storm they panicked “He was in the stern, sleeping on the cushion. So they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher! Don't you care that we're going to die?" (Mark 4:38) And they are dumbfounded when even the terrifying storm, the biblical sign of chaos - is rendered peaceful. Even the winds and the waves obey him.
Here a chapter later we come to the story of the woman with haemorages and Jairus’s daughter - and with the little girl’s death it might seem that finally there is a tragedy that even Jesus can’t solve. Oh no: “Who is this - even disease and death obey him”
41He took her by the hand and said to her, ‘Talitha cum’, which means, ‘Little girl, get up!’ 42And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age).
At this they were completely astonished. Now that has to be the understatement of the year! Jesus raised this little girl from the dead with two little Aramaic words, “Talitha koum!”
This is a picture of what will happen for every believer on that DAY when Jesus returns. 1 Thessalonians 4:16 "For the Lord himself will come down from heaven, with a loud command, with the voice of the archangel and with the trumpet call of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first." Perhaps the words of that loud command will be similar to what Jesus spoke to the little girl: “my children, get up!” (6)
In the New Testament Three people raised from the dead by Jesus
Mark 5: 21-43 This 12 year old girl - immediately after dying (Hey we have that now)
Luke 7:11-17 The widow of Nain’s son - while they were taking him out to be buried
John 11:1-44 Lazarus- when he had been in the ground 3 days
As with all Jesus’s miracles these are not JUST acts of compassion. They are also pointers, pointers of what is to come. As Jesus shows that he has power over even death itself, he shows that we don’t need to fear. “Don’t be afraid; just believe.” Even the tragedy of death shall eventually be reversed when on the last day Jesus returns and says to each one of us - Talitha Cum - little child arise.
You won’t be surprised if I tell you I’ve never met anyone brought back to life. You might be surprised if I tell you I know people who have. There was a church called Holy Trinity Houslow.. I knew well two people who worked there. Fr Peter Denton my predecessor at St Barnabas Northolt. Before he came here was an assistant priest at Holy Trinity Hounslow in the late 80s. My friend Fr Dave Maher who trained with me went on to be curate there in the early 2000s. Although neither of them were there in the 1970s, they met the very person who this story is about. later in around 2010 I actually went for an interview there and other people told me the same story.
In the 1970s during one Sunday mass a woman had a heart attack in the middle of the service. A member of the congregation who was a doctor tried to save her. But the resuscitation did not work and eventually… he pronounced her dead. But the vicar felt told by God to pray. And he did. And having been dead for several minutes after the resucitation attempts had stopped, she… came back to life. And lived a good 20 more years until she died. I never met her. Fr Peter met her. Fr Dave worked among people who all knew her and some of whom were there when it happened. And similarly the people I met on my interview. Not unsurprisingly when someone was raised from the dead the church was dramatically turned around. The event was the beginning of a huge revival in that church.
Now perhaps I lack faith, but I don’t expect to see that myself - but I do have faith to say that the final enemy itself has been defeated.
Lamentations was written in a time of great tragedy when Jerusalem had been sacked and the author had seen death all around him. And yet he writes
3:222 The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases,
his mercies never come to an end;
23 they are new every morning;
great is your faithfulness.
24 ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul,
‘therefore I will hope in him.’
When I see the elderly mum grieving her 44 year old son this week, I won’t be able to take here pain away - but I will be able to share with her my confidence that death is not the end and that “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end;”
There’s a poem I sometimes read at funerals by the Church of Scotland priest John Bell -
I never wanted to be born.
The older I grew, the fonder I became of my mother’s womb and its warmth and its safety.
I feared the unknown, the next world, about which I knew nothing, but imagined the worst.
Yet, as I grew older, I sensed in my soul that the womb was not my home forever.
Though I did not know when, I felt sure that one day I would disappear through a door which had yet to be opened, and confront the unknown of which I was afraid.
And then…it happened. In blood, and tears, and pain, it happened.
I was cut off from the familiar; I left my life behind, and discovered not darkness, but light. Not hostility, but love. Not eternal separation, but hands that wanted to hold me.
(Pause for a minute of silence and reflection)
I never wanted to be born. I don’t want to die.
The older I grow, the fonder I become of this world, and its warmth, and its safety.
I fear the unknown, the next world, about which I know nothing, but imagine the worst.
Yet as I grow older, I sense in my soul that this world is not my home forever.
Though I do not know when, I feel that one day I will disappear through a door that has yet to be opened.
Perhaps having come so safely through the first door, I shall not fear so hopelessly the second. (7)
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(1) Sermon by Revd Edward Skidmore, A Church of Christ Minister, on this site
(2) Wisdom of Solomon 1.13–15; 2.23, 24
(3) Quoted eg in Sermon made by Mark Roper (Church of God minister) on this site. The historicity of the story has been questioned eg here https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/false-einstein-humiliates-professor/
(4) Irenaeus Against the Heretics 3:23:6-7
(5) Sermon by Revd Edward Skidmore, A Church of Christ Minister, on this site
(6) Sermon by Revd Edward Skidmore, A Church of Christ Minister, on this site
(7) I NEVER WANTED TO BE BORN by John Bell (from the book “He Was In The World” – Meditations For Public Worship, GIA, Iona 1995, pg 18-19)
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