A Tearful Moment: Jesus and the Sleeping Child

Fifty years ago, Steinbach Mennonite Church began our relationship with the Manigotagan Community. We hope to spend some time remembering and celebrating those 50 years at some point in the future, when we can eat and sit together more freely than we are able to now. For this present time, I want to reflect on that relationship in light of the Scriptures we read this morning and use them to think about how we move into our ongoing relationship with Manigotagan.

Psalm 30

The Psalm we read has a long title: “Thanksgiving for Recovery from Grave Illness. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David.” I’m not sure what all of that means, but we can picture David singing to God in the Temple, following his recovery from a bad illness. We read this psalm as a typical scene, rather than focussing on a description of one particular trouble that David experienced. We can use it for those times in our lives when we feel that a particular danger or problem oppresses us.

The Psalm goes back and forth between two contrasting emotions. Verses 1 to 3 picture the psalmist as saved from his enemies – whether the enemy is an illness or a human opponent, God has delivered the psalmist. Verses 4 and 5 build on the theme of having been saved: weeping lasts for a moment, but God’s favour lasts forever. So far, the psalm is a hymn of praise and thanksgiving. Then the mood changes.

Verses 6 and 7 picture the moment when trouble came: The psalmist had become prosperous and anticipated more good things in life, when tragedy struck. “You hid your face, Lord; I was dismayed.” This is the night of weeping that the psalmist had referred to as brief, but when we are in the grief experience it feels endless. In the middle of the grief experience, loss and pain are overwhelming (verses 8 to 10). The psalmist feels as though the pain and trouble of life actually falsify the whole idea of God. “What good does it do if I die? Who will praise you if I die?”

One can hear the total self-absorption that deep grief brings to us. Nothing else matters but that I am in pain. I need it to end! In verses 11 and 12, the pain does end. Joy returns. Grief becomes a celebration of God’s goodness and grace.

Mark 5

In Mark 5, we have a concrete lived out example of the Psalmist’s experience. Jairus was a synagogue leader. If we use our congregation as an illustration, he would have been something like a member of the church board or one of the trustees – someone with a good reputation in Steinbach and well respected by the rest of the congregation. He had a daughter, apparently quite young: “My little daughter”, he calls her. She became ill and soon lay at the point of death. In desperation, Jairus seeks out Jesus to heal her. Between his plea and Jesus’ response, we have the story of the woman with an issue of blood – also desperate and seeking out Jesus for help. She receives help, and so does Jairus.

During this interruption, Jairus’ daughter dies; but Jesus says essentially, “Keep up your hope; she is only asleep.” Then he goes to her, takes her by the hand, and tells her to get up. And she did! Her life is restored, and she is alive and well.

The whole account serves to emphasize the wonders that Jesus performed as part of his ministry. We could focus more on that miracle-working aspect within Jesus’ own life, as well as within the early church. Peter, James, and John performed miracles in the opening chapters of Acts, while Paul did the same in the latter chapters. There is material enough in the New Testament to pursue this theme, but I want to turn instead to a deeper principle underlying both this chapter and the whole of life.

The Basic Principle: Every Gain Comes from Loss

This is the principle that any gain in life, any new life, grows out of a loss, out of some kind of death. Jesus says the same thing: “Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.” This applies most fully, of course, to our spiritual life in Christ. We “die to self” and “live to Christ.” We are baptized into the death of Christ so that we can rise with him, and so on. But it applies also more generally to the whole of life.

Parenthesis: Be sure not to turn this around and say that every loss leads to gain; every death leads to new life. A positive truth – every gain comes from loss – becomes triumphalistic and makes us unable to grieve our losses properly when turned around – every loss leads to a gain.

I remember when our sons first went off to school. We took Vaughn out to the bus near our house, and he rode away to begin a new phase of life; a new set of authorities had come into his life. One phase came to an end, and a new phase began. A similar process was acted out as our sons finished high school and began university. The “empty nest”, as we call it was also a time of ending, as well as a new beginning. Then came the day that they told us of the new person in their lives. They were already on their own, but a phase of life was coming to an end. The beginning of married life was also the end of their lives alone.

This pattern is basic to all of life. When I moved to Providence, I lost the relationships I had in our congregation in Indiana. When I ended my work life as a full-time professor at Providence, I found a new role at Steinbach Mennonite. Endings can be hard, but endings are also new beginnings. This principle applies also to our relationship with the community at Manigotagan.

Manigotagan

Fifty years ago, Steinbach Mennonite Church began a relationship with the Metis community of Manigotagan, two hours northeast of us in Manitoba. We have heard this morning something of those beginnings. I know little about them and have been learning along with you. I do know that it grew into a valuable part of our church’s life, in which both of our sons spent a week in August for several years at Manigotagan working with our youth there.

This relationship has been valuable to us, as I have said. It has also been good for the community in Manigotagan, but I do not think we can claim great credit for that. All mission ventures (and our annual DVBS was a mission or outreach venture) take place within a social and cultural context. In Canada, this context included an assumption that Anglo Canada is better than First Nations and that we have something to give them.

People like Neill and Edith von Gunten, who were so important to the Manigotagan community, overcame this assumption by living with the people and integrating into their lives. We heard from Edith Hiebert during the children’s story, and Dave and Edith have also identified with the people in the community over a long period of time. But some of us, I suspect, have assumed that the DVBS was a gift we could give and that Manigotagan needed.

Please understand me here. I am not being critical; I am trying to be honest. I am the son and grandson of missionaries in Zimbabwe. I have myself been part of the colonial project as a missionary myself. I do not point fingers at anyone else. Rather, I am reflecting on the way that we are always part of our own context.

God’s grace is such that we do great good even when we participate in our own cultural weakness. The youth groups going back and forth to Manigotagan have done real good – both for the community there and for our own church community. We celebrate God’s grace and goodness working in them and in us. You can tell that our DVBS has been good and worth celebrating, because when it ended, the church there asked us if we couldn’t continue doing it. Then they arranged for someone else to come and put it on. This would not have happened unless what we had was good. But however good it was, it is time for something new, a relationship that fits better with who we are now and with the value of something truly mutual.

In this context, the community has invited us to come to their annual family camp. From Friday evening to Sunday lunch on the weekend after Labour Day, the community meets at their campground. People bring tents and RVs and whatever they need to spend time together. There is little formal planning; this is a time for relationship-building. Saturday evening is time for a campfire, with singing around the campfire. They may also have a program that grows organically out of their history and interests. On Sunday morning, the community holds a church service in a tent set up at the campground, and then they finish with a potluck meal for lunch.

You can see that the primary point of a family camp, then, is to nurture relationships. By inviting us to come to the family camp, they are providing an opportunity to enter into a relationship between equals – two groups of adults meeting as equals around the campfire. (I say “they”, but the invitation has come through Norman.) In such a setting, we do not think of what we can do for them or of what they should do for us. Rather, the relationship grows organically, and over time we discover how we can help and support each other.

I don’t know what this will lead to. That’s part of the point. We have the opportunity to move beyond a program that has been fruitful and beneficial to both parties into a relationship in which we can grow even closer together.

A Parallel Case

I want to illustrate this basic life process – the way up is down – from the life of a missionary couple I know in Zimbabwe. I went to Zimbabwe as a missionary in 1972, returning to the USA in December 1974. The Liberation War, which led to the end of the old country, Rhodesia, and the birth of the new country, Zimbabwe, was just beginning as I left the country. My friends had gone out to Zimbabwe 20 years before, but the war interrupted their service. Their mission withdrew, and they were not able to return to Zimbabwe. Finally, after several years, the church in Zimbabwe invited them to return.

The old missionary relationship was gone, and they had to learn how to relate to the national church in a new situation. In the years that followed, they did whatever the church asked. The privileges that had been part of the old relationship were gone, but in their place a new and deeper relationship grew – one in which they are fully integrated into the Zimbabwean church in a richer fuller way than would have been possible before.

I talked with them while they were exiled from the country. The husband especially was grieving the loss of their place in Rhodesia of old and the relationships they had there. Today, something new has grown in the place of all that they had lost, something they could not have had without the death of the old relationship. That is the way life is: The way into our future is through the death of what we had in the past.

Conclusion

Jairus sought out Jesus as his daughter lay near death. Jesus healed her and gave her back her life. We can follow the example Jairus has set us. As something has come to an end in our congregational life, we can celebrate what has been. That is part of what we have been doing this morning – remembering the way that our connection with Manigotagan began. Then, like Jairus, we bring our connection to Jesus and ask him to restore it to life, a new beginning. The way that Jesus responded was with an undramatic and common place act. He took the girl by her hand and said, “Little girl, get up.” She did so. Then he told the people to get her something to eat.

We bring our relationship with Manigotagan to Jesus and wait for him to lead us into the next stage. The invitation to join their community in the family camp may well be that stage. Our response is as commonplace as getting up and getting something to eat. Those of us who are able can go and sit with our sisters and brothers in their community and learn to know them better. Where will it go from here? We don’t know. It may go nowhere. It may turn into something big. We don’t know, and we don’t need to know. All that we need to do is take the ordinary commonplace step that Jesus puts in front of us and discover the new life that Jesus gives. Then we can say with the Psalmist, “You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O LORD my God, I will give thanks to you forever.”

 16 August 2020

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Texts:

Psalm 30

Thanksgiving for Recovery from Grave Illness

A Psalm. A Song at the dedication of the temple. Of David.

¹ I will extol you, O Lord, for you have drawn me up, and did not let my foes rejoice over me. ² O Lord my God, I cried to you for help, and you have healed me. ³ O Lord, you brought up my soul from Sheol, restored me to life from among those gone down to the Pit.

⁴ Sing praises to the Lord, O you his faithful ones, and give thanks to his holy name. ⁵ For his anger is but for a moment; his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes with the morning.

⁶ As for me, I said in my prosperity, “I shall never be moved.” ⁷ By your favor, O Lord, you had established me as a strong mountain; you hid your face; I was dismayed.

⁸ To you, O Lord, I cried, and to the Lord I made supplication: ⁹ “What profit is there in my death, if I go down to the Pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it tell of your faithfulness? ¹⁰ Hear, O Lord, and be gracious to me! O Lord, be my helper!”

¹¹ You have turned my mourning into dancing; you have taken off my sackcloth and clothed me with joy, ¹² so that my soul may praise you and not be silent. O Lord my God, I will give thanks to you forever.

Mark 5: 21-24, 35-43

A Girl Restored to Life

²¹ When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. ²² Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came and, when he saw him, fell at his feet ²³ and begged him repeatedly, “My little daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live.” ²⁴ So he went with him. And a large crowd followed him and pressed in on him. …

³⁵ While he was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, “Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?” ³⁶ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, “Do not fear, only believe.” ³⁷ He allowed no one to follow him except Peter, James, and John, the brother of James. ³⁸ When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. ³⁹ When he had entered, he said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping.” ⁴⁰ And 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. ⁴¹ He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” ⁴² And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. ⁴³ He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

Focus statement: Life is full of endings and beginnings. Every ending leads to something new. Our task is to remember the old and embrace the new.

Thought provoking question: How do you deal with loss? Do you avoid grief or embrace it? What can we do when we confront the crossroad of pain and loss?

A Terrific Moment: Jesus and Zacchaeus

“Terrific” is not a word that I use often, but you can see how it fits here. Zacchaeus had the most remarkable moment of his life in the passage we heard this morning. If he had spoken English, he might have said, “Wow! That was terrific!” As it is, whatever he said was in Hebrew or Aramaic (something like “Metzuyan!” according to Google translate), and we would not have known what he said if we had heard him. What was so wonderful, so amazing about this encounter with Jesus? Let’s look together at this familiar story and see where it takes us.

The Story

We don’t know very much about Zacchaeus. From the song many of us learned as children, we know that he was short – “Zacchaeus was a wee, little man and a wee, little man was he.” This sets us up to think of him as not very important. I am a little sensitive about my height – not very, but a little. I remember when someone I met called me by another friend’s name, my first internal reaction was, “Don’t call me that! He’s really short!” I can sympathize a bit with Zacchaeus in his lack of height.

The fact is, however, that he was probably a fairly important person. As the head of the tax bureau in Jericho, a fairly wealthy city, he had political power and influence, as well as a lot of money himself. When people saw him, they probably thought more about his wealth than about his height. He reminds me of the subject of one of Simon and Garfunkel’s early songs:

They say that Richard Cory owns one half of this whole town,

With political connections to spread his wealth around.

Born into society, a banker’s only child,

He had everything a man could want: power, grace, and style.

It’s a depressing poem, revealing the emptiness that lies beneath a surface of glitter and wealth. This reality is a perennial human reality. Paul Simon wrote the song in 1965, and he based it on a poem by Edwin Arlington Robinson, written in 1897. This same reality was present when Jesus walked the earth, and it is part of our own lives in the 21^st Century. Real life is deeper and more vital than the surface of what Richard Foster calls “money, sex, and power” – the title of one of his books on Christian discipleship.

These three aspects of life are the most common ways that human beings try to give meaning to life. Money, sex, and power are good things. They are God’s gifts to us in this life, but when we make any of them the goal of life, they lead to nothing; they leave us empty. We need something else at the centre of our lives. Zacchaeus had money and power, but they were not enough. He knew they were not enough.

Luke doesn’t tell us more, but we know this much. Zacchaeus had money. Zacchaeus had influence and power. But Zacchaeus’s life was empty, and he knew he needed help. When he heard that Jesus was coming through Jericho, he joined the crowd who was hoping to see this travelling teacher and miracle worker. He reminds me a bit of the woman who had “an issue of blood” (whom Bev preached on a few weeks ago): If I can just see him, I may learn something.

But he was short, too short. He saw a sycamore tree by the road, handy and easy to climb. I don’t know if climbing a tree was seen as dignified in those days, but I suspect that it wasn’t. Dignity was not on his mind at that moment, and he climbed the tree. This would give him more than a glimpse; he expected to see Jesus well.

Well, he did! He got more than he could have hoped. Jesus stopped under the tree, looked up and invited himself to Zacchaeus’ house. The old Sunday School song says, “I’m coming to your house today.” I learned it as “I’m coming to your house for tea”, which tells you that I grew up in an English colony where we did everything over a cup of tea. Given his culture, I suspect that Zacchaeus provided wine and olives and figs and bread.

The story tells us that Jesus went to Zacchaeus’ house, while the crowd grumbled that a teacher of Jesus’ reputation should not be the guest of so obvious a sinner. They saw Zacchaeus as a traitor. He was a Jew by birth, but he served the Roman Empire. His name means “Innocent”, but he was guilty of cheating many people in the whole community. Rome told him how much he needed to bring in through taxes; as the “chief tax collector”, he mobilized the machinery of the Empire to bring in more than that and took his cut off the top. How could Jesus compromise himself by inviting himself to the home of such a corrupt man?

Zacchaeus responded quite differently than the crowd had. We don’t hear what Jesus said to him, but the previous chapter in Luke 18 gives us an idea of what he might have said. The rich young ruler could not part with his wealth to follow Jesus, and instead he parted with Jesus rather than leave his wealth. Zacchaeus states his readiness to follow Jesus with two powerful declarations: “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” He does not say, “I give everything away.” He does say, “I will cheat no one again, and I will pay back anyone I have cheated.” The “four times as much” makes it clear that Zacchaeus had considerable resources and that he was not trying to save something for himself. He was ready to follow Jesus, no matter what it cost.

Jesus’ final comment is interesting: “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” Here he says that God’s salvation is present when Zacchaeus shows that he means business. Zacchaeus steps out in faith, and Jesus confirms his step. The step includes “his house”, which suggests a fuller understanding than the individual salvation we normally think of. Real freedom in Christ is both individual and communal.

Working Out What This Means

To understand the essence of what happened, I turn to an idea that I have described before. You can think about your life as a story, and we must choose who we want to write our story. There are not many real choices in this life. I did not choose my height; it was given to me without my consent. I have some control over my weight, but even that depends partly on genetics, not just on how much I eat. The colour of my hair, my personality, my love of music – all of these were given to me. I work with them, and I can change them to some extent, but I did not choose them. There is, however, one real choice that each of us must make: Who will write our story?

In the end, this choice comes down to two basic possibilities. Either I insist on writing my own story, or I allow God to write the story of my life for me. Most people insist on writing their own story. You know the 1969 Paul Anka song (Anka was a Canadian songwriter), which Frank Sinatra made famous:

And now the end is near

And so I face the final curtain

My friend, I’ll say it clear

I’ll state my case of which I’m certain

I’ve lived a life that’s full

I’ve travelled each and every highway

And more, much more than this

I did it my way

There speaks the voice of Canada: I want to do it my way. I want to write my own story. The Mamas and the Papas described the same idea in a hit from 1965: “You gotta go where you want to go/ Do what you want to do/ With whoever you want to do it with.” These songs are from the 1960s, and children of the Sixties believe this completely: I want to be in charge of my own life.

Zacchaeus had made his choices and written his own story, but he found that the result was an inner emptiness. In another song from the 1960s, Peggy Lee describes that emptiness with the eloquence of despair:

I remember when I was a very little girl, our house caught on fire

I’ll never forget the look on my father's face as he gathered me up

in his arms and raced through the burning building out to the pavement

I stood there shivering in my pajamas and watched the whole world go up in flames

And when it was all over I said to myself, is that all there is to a fire

Is that all there is, is that all there is

If that’s all there is my friends, then let’s keep dancing

Let’s break out the booze and have a ball

If that’s all there is

She describes a full life, each time returning to the empty refrain. The whole sets to music the old saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” I believe that this describes what Zacchaeus had learned about life, and this is why he climbed a tree to see Jesus. And Jesus found him! When Jesus found him, Zacchaeus gave up the right to write his own story and became part of God’s story. He gave up the right to organize his own life and received God’s life.

What Did Jesus Say?

Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.” Luke doesn’t tell us exactly what happened to trigger this announcement. What happened that led Jesus to announce salvation? What did Jesus say to Zacchaeus that led him to his decision. What did Zacchaeus do that showed that he was saved? If we look at this question through the lens of story, we can ask who Zacchaeus wanted to write the story of his life. He had gone his own way for many years, and he didn’t like the story he was in. He was alone and lost, and he knew it.

Although we don’t know what Jesus said, we do know that he usually said just one thing when people asked how they could be saved: Follow me! That’s what he said to the Rich Young Ruler in the previous chapter: “Sell what you have and give to the poor and follow me.” When it came to the point, the young man could not give up his wealth and make Jesus the author of his story. Zacchaeus could and did.

This offer of salvation combined with Zacchaeus’ embrace of salvation is seen in his willingness to give up everything to make things right and follow Jesus. I think the key to the whole event was that he stopped trying to write the story of his own life and stepped into God’s story.

Shakespeare has expressed what Zacchaeus may have felt in lines that his character MacBeth speaks (Act 5, Scene 5):

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more: it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

That speech of course comes from someone who knows his life is about to end. He knows that he will die, and that his life has meant nothing. But all of that changes when we meet Jesus. Our lives belong to God, who writes the play and gives our lives meaning.

Writing about the Second Coming, C.S. Lewis has described what it means to know that God has written the story in which we live. Listen to how he puts it:

The doctrine of the Second Coming teaches us that we do not and cannot know when the world drama will end. The curtain may be rung down at any moment: say, before you have finished reading this paragraph. This seems to some people intolerably frustrating. So many things would be interrupted. … Not now, of all moments!

But we think thus because we keep on assuming that we know the play. We do not know the play. We do not even know whether we are in Act I or Act V. The Author knows. The audience, if there is an audience (if angels and archangels and all the company of Heaven fill the pit and the stalls), may have an inkling. But we, never seeing the play from outside, never meeting the characters except the tiny minority who are “on” in the same scenes as ourselves, wholly ignorant of the future and very imperfectly informed about the past, cannot tell at what moment the end ought to come. That it will come when it ought, we may be sure; but we waste our time in guessing when that will be. That it has a meaning we may be sure, but we cannot see it. When it is over, we may be told. We are led to expect that the Author will have something to say to each of us on the part that each of us has played. The playing it well is what matters infinitely.

Lewis’ point is that our lives find meaning as part of God’s story. If we refuse to play our part, our lives are meaningless – “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Zacchaeus chose to be part of God’s story, to follow Jesus, to do what God called him to do. He no longer cared if he had the money to pay Rome. He could do his job, and he could do it well; but what mattered most was to know Jesus and to follow Jesus and do what Jesus called him to do. Now his life had meaning. Now God had found him and saved him. What about you? What about me?

28 June 2020

Steinbach Mennonite Church

Texts:

Psalm 119: 137-144

¹³⁷ You are righteous, O Lord, and your judgments are right.

¹³⁸ You have appointed your decrees in righteousness and in all faithfulness.

¹³⁹ My zeal consumes me because my foes forget your words.

¹⁴⁰ Your promise is well tried, and your servant loves it.

¹⁴¹ I am small and despised, yet I do not forget your precepts.

¹⁴² Your righteousness is an everlasting righteousness, and your law is the truth.

¹⁴³ Trouble and anguish have come upon me, but your commandments are my delight.

¹⁴⁴ Your decrees are righteous forever; give me understanding that I may live.

Luke 19: 1-10

Jesus and Zacchaeus

19 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. ² A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. ³ He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. ⁴ So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. ⁵ When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.” ⁶ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. ⁷ All who saw it began to grumble and said, “He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.” ⁸ Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, “Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.” ⁹ Then Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. ¹⁰ For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.”