Alive Again

(alternate title: Be Encouraged!)

14th Sunday in Ordinary Time

on Matthew 9:18-26; on the way to revive a "ruler's daughter" a woman touches Jesus' cloak and is healed.

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• Reading this story-in-a-story, 

do you notice anything missing?

This is one of the 30-odd stories that occur in Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Both Mark and Luke include several other details that Matthew does not include: the name of the leader (Jairus, a synagogue leader), the age of girl (12, which is also the length of the woman's non-descript bleeding), some of the details regarding the woman's healing, and the details of the girl's revival (talitha koum).

Matthew tells the nested stories using 8 verses.
Mark uses 22 verses, and Luke uses 16 verses.

Result of Matthew leaving details out:
our focus is on Jesus' healing (saving) and raising from the dead.

• Matthew was written in last third of first century (many scholars would say around the year 90), to a community of Jews not in Jerusalem and perhaps in the chaos of a post-temple period. 

It was written forty, sixty, maybe seventy years after the events. 

It was written to say Remember, and Be encouraged. (as verse 22, tharsei, take heart, be of good courage, in the middle of this story, also the beginning of chapter, with man & friends) 

(also, three uses of “saved” in the middle two verses).

• Several points Matthew makes:
Jesus takes immediate action at the leader's request,
Jesus is able, even when interrupted, to provide healing / salvation
Jesus is able, even when human initiative, to provide healing / salvation
Neither death nor extended illness is too great for Jesus.

So Be Encouraged! Be alive again!

• Is there a chronic condition in your life? 

Be encouraged! Be alive again!
Would you reach out to touch the Lord, as the woman did?

Is there something dead in your life? 

Be encouraged! Be alive again!
Would you bring your situation to Jesus, as the leader did?

• Yeah but PK there is suffering, there is death.

There are unanswered prayers.

I know. And though I don't believe God specifically designs situations that cause suffering and grief, I do believe God can work great good in any situation, and that our responses to suffering, death, and unanswered prayers can either be pleasing or disappointing to God.

God did not remove the cross from Jesus. 

I believe God was pleased with Jesus' response.

And Jesus bids us follow him, 

though it may lead to a cross.

Remember Emmanuel, God Is With Us. 

We are never alone.

I believe God is interested in how we respond to situations,
both blessings and impossibilities (including extended illness and death).

• And I believe that Jesus chooses to go with us, to encourage and strengthen us and to save us and bring us into new life, both now and in the time to come. And that God resides in and empowers his living body on earth to give encouragement and life.

• lead into Hymn 630, Become to Us the Living Bread, and into Communion