Little Child Arise!

5 Pentecost cycle b proper 8   July 1, 2012

Wisdom of Solomon 1:13-15; 2:23-24 Psalm 30

2 Corinthians 8:7-15 Mark 5:21-43

 Lectionary Link

  How many of you women here today could be called a “daddy’s girl?”  How many of you fathers here have a “daddy’s girl?”  In the chemistry of human family relationships and in the development of a girl’s personality it sometimes happens that there is a shared special closeness between father and daughter.   Today’s Gospel story might indeed be a “daddy’s girl” story.  And it is wonderful that in truly patriarchal cultures where boy-children were often more valued than girl-children, it is great to find a “daddy’s girl” story.  It is wonderful to know that personal relationship can even trump social and cultural bias.

  In the annals of psychoanalytic history, there was a disagreement between Sigmund Freud and his most famous student Carl Gustav Jung.  In simplistic terms, Freud coined the name, Oedipus Complex for his “mommy’s boy” theory and Jung thought that he discovered the analogy for girls.  Jung called the “daddy’s girl” phenomenon the “Electra Complex,” but Freud disagreed.

  Jairus was a leader in the synagogue.  He probably knew the prescribed treatment for health ailments as set forth by the rabbinical schools of his time.  But when his daughter showed the signs of being near death, Jairus was desperate; he was willing to seek alternative health measures.  Jesus had the reputation as a wonder worker and he was an alternative health option.  In the witness of this story, I think the writer of the Gospel of Mark was highlighting the fact that a leader of the synagogue was seeking this alternative medicine healer, Jesus of Nazareth.

  While the story on the surface seems to be about healing, the teaching purpose of the story falls in line with some teaching goals of the early Christian community in addressing truly human issues?  The major issue of life for everyone is this?  As soon as we are born we have to face the issue of being “near death” or having someone in our lives be in the near-death state.  And if this is not the sword of Damacles hanging over our heads, I don’t know what is.  How do we live our lives with the near death state always being a possible scenario?

  How do we live?  The Gospel answer to this question, is that we live by faith.  Faith means that we live as though there is still a significant life that we can know even while we have sickness.  Faith means that we live as though there is afterlife beyond death.  Faith means that we accept the life of God as more embracing than the moment that is called death in the human narrative.

  Living with the reality of death is an ancient human issue; that we reflect upon death in the way in which we do is what distinguishes us as human beings.  We have the tendency to “ancestor worship or veneration” since it just plain happens that we become significantly attached to people in our lives through the phenomenon of love.  The reality of death was so repugnant to the writer of the Wisdom of Solomon, the writer could not believe that God created death.  Death could only be a secondary freedom within the created order; death could not have the primacy of being associated with the intent and reality of an everliving God.

  Sometimes we may treat the healing stories of the Gospels in a rather naïve way.  The fact that someone was healed or even raised from the dead did not prevent the person from eventually getting sick again or eventually dying.  So was the main point of the Gospel about healing and about coming back to life only to be vulnerable to sickness and death again?  I don’t think so.  The point of the Gospel was how we do we live as well as we can given the reality of both sickness and death as two prominent probabilities in human experience.

  The longer that I have read the Gospels, the more I have come to appreciate what I would call the birth and child motifs in the words of Jesus.

  Jesus said that to be able to discern what he called the kingdom or realm of God, a person had to be “born again.”  One cannot get any younger than a birth event.   Jesus said the realm of God was hidden from wise but revealed to infants and babes.  How enigmatic is that metaphor?   Jesus said that we have to become like a child to perceive the realm of God.  Why do you think that Jesus used the child motif to speak about understanding the kingdom or realm of God?

  Jesus was aware of the adult world of war and sickness and rules and regulations and military occupation.  Jesus was aware of the kingdom of an adult world that seemed to betray the involvement of any loving God.  So how can we believe in the realm of God even while we live in the harsh realities of the adult world?

  We retain within ourselves the child aspect of our personalities in our memories in the times when we were not fully organized and categorized by all of the adult programming.  In the program of faith of Jesus, he wanted people to be freed from being dominated by the harsh aspects of our adult programming in life.  He wanted people to know again the naïveté of the child-like wonder and energy that was natively optimistic and hopeful before people become programmed by the adult reality anchored on the reality of death.

   As we endeavor for excellence in the art of living, we need to know how to balance true adult realism with the born again optimism of the child.  And in many cases, the harshness of life experience has left the child within us on the death bed.  And there is a Jairus part of us that does not want to give in to the mere harshness of life; there is the part of us that looks for restoration and reclamation of aspects of native optimism that has been left for dead by the harshness of life.

  The words of Jesus invite us to faith.  Through faith we can come to designate sickness and death to but time limited sequences within the fullness of life.  With faith we can look to the other marvelous experiences in the fullness of life and begin to live and tell our own life narrative as a story of hope rather being limited to events of harsh adult reality.

  The faith that Jesus invites us to is not unrealistic about sickness and death; rather it is embracing of the eyes of hope always to see much, much more than sickness and death.  The faith of Jesus invites us not to live our lives being defined by sickness and death and pessimism. We are invited to define our lives by abundant life that embraces all of our current life and indeed our afterlives and the afterlives of the people whom we love.

  Talitha cum, little girl arise!  The Gospel writer had a habit of retaining the transliteration of the original Aramaic language which was the native Galilean tongue of Jesus.  I often wonder why.   It could be that sometimes a foreign language borrowing is retained as a catch phrase for a habit or identity of a community practice.  The event of faith practiced by the early Marcan community was a response to the command, Talitha cum. Little child, Arise. 

  Let us respond to Talitha cum today with our faith.  Let the child of wonder arise within us who is able to perceive the realm of God, even while we live in very harsh adult worlds today.  I believe this is an insight on how we can find the faith of Jesus to be anthropologically and psychologically sound for us today.  Amen.