There is an account in the Gospels where Jesus is pressed with urgency to heal someone on the verge of death only to be interrupted by a desperate woman who knew Jesus could heal when all else could fail. I am talking about the account of the raising of Jairus’ daughter and the healing of the woman who had been dealing with bleeding hemorrhages for 12 years.
Jesus never needed to actually go see Jairus’ daughter because all He had to do was speak the word and it would be done. However, Jairus didn’t think about that. He just knew his daughter was sick, dying, and Jesus could heal her. So Jesus went, but there was urgency and the crowd realized Jesus was in the area. Everyone else was looking for their miracle as well, and Jesus and His disciples had to push through a desperate and pressing crowd, each trying to get their hands on Jesus. We don’t know how big this crowd was, but even a hundred will seem like a lot very quickly when they are pushing to get their moment with Jesus.
In the middle of this, a woman who had been dealing with bleeding believed she just needed to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment, and she would be healed. She knew she would not get any direct time with Jesus with this crowd, especially while He was on an urgent mission. She only needed to touch His garment, and she fought through the crowd and somehow got close enough to touch the hem of Jesus’ garment – just the edge of it, or perhaps the tassels attached. And the moment she gripped it, Jesus stopped. He felt power come out of Him. Someone touched Him with genuine faith. Jesus spoke with her, pointing out she had been healed, and gave her peace.
Then Jesus resumed His urgent mission only to find out the girl didn’t make it. Jairus’ daughter died, and the professional mourners were already present. (They had professional mourners who would come to professionally cry when people would pass away. That’s not true mourning over a loss.) Jesus knew none of the people there would believe Him, and when He said she was merely sleeping, they all laughed. So He cleared them all out, and He took the parents and Peter, James, and John to see the girl before raising her back to life. And all five who were present knew full well the severe consequences of what would happen if news of Jesus raising someone back from the dead got out. So they didn’t speak about it until after Jesus Himself rose from the dead.
Why did Jesus do what He did here? Jesus knew of the urgency of the situation and was moving through the crowd, not heeding them but not rejecting them either. Just getting to an urgent situation. Then He was interrupted. Someone touched Him that drew power out of Him. Again, Jesus knew the situation with Jairus’ daughter was urgent, but the interruption did not bother Him. The woman with the bleeding was not an annoyance to Him. It did not stop Him from His mission; the girl was likely already dead by the time Jairus got to Jesus.
Jesus had compassion on the woman who demonstrated true faith and let her take some of His time. He still had the mission in mind, but He did not operate on a human clock or calendar. Jesus had God’s will in mind as His priority, not the “mission.” And God saw a daughter coming to the throne pleading for mercy. He set aside all things to deal with His daughter. Jesus did what His Father did.
But then at Jairus’ house, Jesus had to clear everyone out and tell them that the girl was asleep, not dead. Was Jesus lying to keep this miracle on the down-low for a while? No. Jesus also had eternity in His mind and said a similar thing about Lazarus as well. To fall asleep was a commonly used euphemism for death, while thinking of the resurrection to come. Paul used that phrase as well when describing some of the 500 witnesses of the resurrection of Christ. But Jesus didn’t want to create a bigger ruckus than He already had by raising the dead. He’d never get a moment’s peace if that happened. This is why Jesus forbade His core three disciples and Jairus from saying anything that the girl was actually dead. This girl would be one of three people Jesus raised from the dead. The other two were the son of the widow from Nain and of course Lazarus.
Can we be interrupted from doing a mission God called us to that also fits in God’s will? I am reminded of Otto Koning, whom I heard from by Eric Ludy in one of his sermons, “Fixing Broken Pots” (the online link is no longer available for this sermon). Koning was a missionary to Ira Jaya/Papua New Guinea, and he had a tall task to learn the language, put it into writing, and then translate the Gospel of John for these tribes. But he has a problem: he had tools, and people would come to him time and time again to fix broken pots, bent shovels, and other things. It really frustrated him, until God finally got through to him that his mission was to serve the people and the translation process would come in due time. When the mission board came, he was scared to death he would be sent home, but it turned out he was ahead of any projection by about ten years. Ludy uses this as a framework for preaching on how we should handle interruptions, describing his life as a pastor while dealing with newly adopted toddlers.
Interruptions are definite inconveniences. Yet the Christian is supposed to be built to not just handle such inconveniences, but they should make us glad in helping people with their inconvenient requests. Yes, that’s a stab in the heart to me too. I’m a hyper-focused type of guy, where once I get on my task and lock in, do not interrupt me. Though as a side note, there was one time no one dared to interrupt Jesus: when He was praying. No one touched that holy ground. That said, Jesus was interrupted by a woman who would not let go of her Savior until she got what she needed, and He loved that she did. May we learn from Jesus in handling interruptions and then going to the task at hand, no matter how it turned during those interruptions.
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