By The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland
Third Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 8) - June 29, 2003
- Deuteronomy 15:7-11
- Psalm 112
- 2 Corinthians 8:1-9, 13-15
- Mark 5:22-24, 35b-43
Jesus stands there, alone in the middle of a crowd. Just another dusty street in another little fishing town on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. People crowd around, trying to hear what he has to say. Some of these folks have been following him for some time now. Others are just curious locals. Despite the crowd, you never lose sight of Jesus in the press of bodies around him. It is as if you are watching a film and only Jesus is in clear, sharp focus, nearly glowing against the washed out humanity around him. Then someone important looking approaches him. The man is dressed officially, but he's not acting officious. He pleads, almost begs, for Jesus to come and lay hands on his daughter, who is near death. The desperation of a parent with a very sick child has made Jairus humble, and made his faith in Jesus real. So Jesus goes with him.
While the two men walk to Jairus' house, let us look over the other readings for today. Both the author of Deuteronomy, and Paul in his letter to the Corinthians, are concerned about economic justice this morning. The book of Deuteronomy is one long collection of legislation, and the portion we heard today comes from a section addressing the forgiveness of debts. Deuteronomy was written during the period of Israel's monarchy, when their society was moving from an agrarian economy where wealth was held in trust by large kinship or clan groups, into a more individual system of economics featuring land-ownership and capital investment.
The result of this shift in ancient Israel's economic situation is an increase in borrowing, which means an increase in debt and in risk, and depending on how the risk played out, in growing populations of the wealthy and the poor. None of this should sound terribly strange to us, as we live in a very similar economic situation today. The prophets, most notably Amos, Micah, and Isaiah, rail against the poverty created by this new system and we understand what they're saying implicitly, because we see the same things today.
The author of Deuteronomy proposes a solution to the problem of a growing gap between wealthy and poor by recycling an agrarian model. Every seventh year all debts are to be forgiven. As simple as that. Like a field being left fallow, each seventh year will be a time of rest and restarting, all debts will be forgiven, and everyone will start again from scratch.
I had just one econ. course in college, but that is enough to know that the Deuteronomist's idea could not have worked. You can't just forgive loans outright on the seventh year in a capital based economy. For one thing, everyone would want to take a loan in year six and make one in year one. Biblical scholars seem to agree that the Deuteronomist's suggestion was never taken. I find it compelling, however, that while the prophets are famous for demanding justice for the poor by advocating a kind of national conscience, the book of Deuteronomy actually tries to provide justice for the poor by legislating such a conscience. In fact, most of Deuteronomy is an attempt to marry conscience to legislation, as if in acknowledgement that just asking people to behave nicely might not work out.
If you are by now thinking that Deuteronomy sounds a little bit like the Democratic Party, just wait until the reading from second Corinthians, in which Paul sounds an awful lot like a Socialist. Paul is taking up a collection, or trying to, from the Corinthians for the poor in Jerusalem. This collection is mentioned in other letters of Paul, and was apparently a big project. In the process of cajoling the Corinthians, Paul says,
I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need...
Sounds terribly Marxian, dn'Õt you think? From each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Yet this is not PaluÕs treatise on Christian money management, for which I am thankful. I need a Christian Economic theory even less than I need Christian punk-rock, or Christian tennis for that matter.
For Paul, the issue is not who has more money, but who is responding to God's gifts? In Paul's eyes, the Corinthians are in debt to the Christians in Jerusalem because they preceded them in the faith. Jewish Christians are the olive tree onto which the Gentile Christians are spliced. Given such a gift of faith, what is a little money here or there? It may seem like Paul is talking about money, but with Paul it is always about Jesus. And in the face of God's gift of Jesus, believers can only give in return. Not that such a gift is payment, or will ever be enough. Such giving in response to God's gifts to us is only natural, just the way we react in faith.
Meanwhile, Jesus and Jairus have been walking. While we were talking with Paul and the Dueteronomist about money, Jairus' daughter died. Some servants of Jairus' came to him on the road and said that he ought to stop bothering Jesus as his daughter was dead and could not be cured any longer. They laugh at Jesus when he says that maybe the girl is just sleeping. When they get to the house he goes to the young girl. Just her parents, Jesus, and a couple disciples are there; the crowds have been shut outside.
Jesus tells the little girl to "be raised!" This is the same verb that Mark will use to tell us that Jesus was raised from the tomb. Always with the miracle stories I am left with nagging questions. Did it really happen like that, or is this just how Mark remembered it? Assuming God knew what was going to happen, did Jesus? When he told the little girl to rise, did he mean for her to come back to this life, or was he just sending her on to the next life in heaven? And why did he ask them to keep quiet about it? No one who had witnessed the event could have kept silent, and no one who hadn't been a witness would've believed it anyways.
It is difficult to see what this story from Mark's Gospel has to do with the other two lessons on Christian Economics at first. The connection came to me when I remembered something a friend told me once. He said, "Miracle stories in the Bible are almost never about what we think they're about." In my experience, he's been right more often than not. In the case of Jairus, we are distracted by his daughter's sickness, and death, and miraculous resurrection. We speculate on how it might have happened, and whether it foreshadows Jesus' resurrection. Jesus himself throws doubt on the issue by suggesting the girl might have merely been asleep. Thing is, the story's not really about the daughter. The story is about Jairus, and it was over when Jesus started walking with him.
The point of this Gospel story is that Jairus chose to have complete faith in Jesus. Rather than turn to his authority or to the structures of organized religion that he represented, Jairus chose simply to believe that in Jesus, he would be ok. And really, that's what Deuteronomy and Paul were about too. They used money where Mark used a sick little girl, but all of them were talking about trust, and faith, in God, and why we should all have it. This is good news, but it is also hard news for many of us. It is not the "American Way" to trust in another for your well-being, even if that other is God.
I have to confess that it is only occasionally, rarely if I am honest, that I am able to completely trust in God without adding my own measure of worry of problem-solving. Yet that is what the scriptures call us to today. Trust in God. It is not easy to do at all, and it may be close to impossible to do always. But try it. Find a way to trust God. Maybe in something small at first. Maybe we need to practice before we'll get good at it. That's ok. But the message is clear. Deuteronomy says it to the ancient Israelites, Paul says to the first Christians in Corinth, and Mark says it through Jairus and his sick little girl. All of them are saying it to us. Find a way to trust God. AMEN.