Processing a miracle

Luke 8:54-55

I remember the weekend well, some 25 years ago. Alan Wade and I had traveled south through the Ozarks to a church camp in Arkansas. It was a statewide young adult singles retreat and Cecil Culbreth had invited me to speak. But, to our surprise, only a handful of people showed up. I remember a dozen or so, though it might have been 20. It didn’t matter. I was there for those who had come.

I don’t remember my topic, but I do remember opening up one meeting to those with physical needs. I instructed those present that as someone expressed a specific need, one of the others, not me, would lay a hand on the person and pray, simply and straightforwardly, and we would wait and see what God would do in each situation – which is all that faith requires. So after each person was prayed for, we talked about what had happened, particularly when it was the kind of need whose healing could be readily ascertained. It was an amazing night, none like I have ever experienced before or since. Some very serious sicknesses or injuries were healed, but the most astonishing thing was that just about everyone present experienced some specific physical healing. Even Cecil and I were quite surprised. It was as if only those who were to have a need met had come.

I took as the model for my approach that weekend what I imagined Jesus having done in similar settings 2,000 years before, notwithstanding all the haze of distance obscuring the picture of Jesus in earthly action. When I look at a passage such as this one we are dealing with today, what I see is Jesus going about rather simply and straightforwardly, often using creative approaches, but generally avoiding the dramatics that we usually picture with healings and miracles.

Jesus has just chased everyone out of the room except the dead girl’s parents and his own three buddies, Peter, James and John. He’s not assessing the level or quality of faith of the parents or his three friends and certainly not testing the faith of the girl who is quite dead. He has come because the father pleaded with him to come and heal a very sick daughter. When on the way the news that the girl has died reaches Jesus and the father, it is Jesus, not the father, who decides to come on anyway. I wonder if the father had any faith by that point that Jesus could do anything, grief or shock having taken over.

Jesus didn’t heal everyone who died, not even those who were most spiritual or most pitiable. But in this case, Jesus decided to intervene in the natural processes of life. Somehow Jesus knew that he was to bring this particular girl back to life and not another who had died down the street. I know that raises all kinds of flags for some readers – and I fully understand the struggle. Even so, the record shows that for whatever reason Jesus chose to do a miracle for this family.

When the room is cleared of all but the parents and Jesus’ three disciples, what does Jesus do from what we see in the gospels? He brings her back to life. Now move beyond the incredibility of that statement and see how the gospels describe Jesus doing it. As I said, simply and straightforward.

First, he takes her by the hand. Second, he says to her, “Child, get up,” like he was her father calling her in the morning. Luke records that her spirit returned, which would mean that she revived, returned to life.

One time I was standing by a friend when her heart missed a beat. One second she was talking rather animatedly, the next she had slumped to the floor at my feet as if dead. She did not die and may still be alive today for all I know. But the experience reminded me what great distance there is between life and death. So when the girl’s spirit returns, it is obvious she is alive and fully recovered.

At once, she stands up. Mark writes that she also walks around. This is no dead body sitting up in a morgue like all those stories we hear. This is a girl (Mark says age 12) who has become vibrantly twelvish all of a sudden. To the parents who are understandably in shock, he instructs them to get her something to eat. This girl is hungry.