Little resurrection versus big resurrection

Mark 5:21-43
 

Today’s reading is about little resurrection anticipating a big resurrection to come.

Today’s story from the Gospel of Mark is about Jesus on his way to heal a little girl, daughter of one of the synagogue leader. So, unlike most other times in the Gospel, Jesus is setting out here to help one of the people in power. Along the way he is confronted with a crowd that slows him down. Everybody, it seems, wants his power, even if they are in less dire need than this girl on death’s door. You can imagine the girl’s father’s desperation that these people get out of Jesus’ way.

Jesus ends up healing a woman who touches his cloak, unintentionally it seems. He stops to have a brief chat there about faith. Again, you can imagine the father’s consternation. Well, I can. If my daughter were dying I would be pushing all these lowly people out of the way. I mean, Jesus can heal them later! If the girl dies, she’s dead.

So, it is that the father finds out from an adviser that his daughter has died while Jesus is hung up with the crowds on the road. “Why bother the teacher any further?” asks the adviser. See, this is one of those great misconceptions that people have about Jesus up and down the stories we find in the Gospels. They imagine him a teacher—a rabbi. Then, when he heals, they imagine him a physician. What they don’t have is the imagination to believe that, perhaps, maybe, he is something greater. Perhaps, maybe, he is the Messiah. Perhaps, maybe, he is even the son of God.

None of that enters the grieving father’s mind, of course, because his daughter is now dead. Perhaps it was the crowds holding Jesus up or perhaps it wouldn’t have mattered. Either way, the scene is now set for Jesus to blow everyone’s expectations for him out of the water—again.

When Jesus arrives at the house he enters into the commotion and suggests something completely insane: That the girl is not dead but sleeping. The people laugh. Ever since Sarah received the promise of a child in her old age this has been the classic response to God whenever some strange promise is given. Laughter. The girl is dead, Jesus. We know dead when we see it.

The rest, of course, is history. Jesus goes in and tells the girl to get up. She obeys, because, well, when God tells you to get up you do it, death or no death. She gets up, walks around, and Jesus tells her parents on the way out that they had better get her some food. Death makes a person famished, after all.

It’s hard for us to remember that this is a little resurrection. It sure wouldn’t feel that way to the girl’s family. To them this feels like their prayers have been answered; that nothing could compare to the amazement of what just happened. That’s the response of the crowds: Amazement, ecstasy, joy. But again Jesus ends with a warning, this time strictly, that they should tell nobody. That messianic secret right there again.

Jesus does that, this time, because it is after all just a little resurrection. It doesn’t feel that way to the people directly affected but that’s merely their perspective, and, anyway, this little girl now has a chance to live, but she will someday die. I’m reminded of a scene from the Lord of the Rings where the elven lord, Elrond, tells his daughter, Arwen, that she should not marry the human king, Aragorn, because he will someday die—perhaps of old age, perhaps in war—but die he will, and she, being immortal, will live on without him. Mortality is mortality, whether dying as a child or of old age. Jesus orders that nobody say a thing about little resurrections because he came with a still greater purpose. If Jesus doesn’t want you to go around sharing about raising a child from the dead then how much greater must the end of the story be?

If somebody today were walking around raising people from the dead I suspect he or she would be worshiped as a god. In our modern world we have an expectation that we will be healed, even of terrible diseases, but resurrection? That’s outside of our experience. But Jesus wants to be clear: These are still just signs. Little resurrection does happen; not often; not usually; but it’s woven into the fabric of creation. Death to new life.

But Jesus came for something more. Not resurrection that strikes rarely, or resurrection that affects just a few, but resurrection that is for all of creation. It’s the same sermon every week when it comes to the Gospel of Mark: this is nothing new. Jesus only cares about dying on the cross; everything else is a kind of happy distraction. Raising the girl from the dead is really cool, but it is not our promise. We get resurrection but not the little kind. We get resurrection that raises us not back to this life, but to a creation that is changed; no longer covered by sin, imperfect; a creation where we will not die again someday.

That’s big resurrection, and it’s so much better than little kind. The girl lived—that matters—but it’s still nothing compared to the cross and the empty tomb. I swear one of these weeks I’ll preach a different sermon on Mark’s Gospel but it’s not this week. Big resurrection trumps little resurrection. The cross is more than healings, more even than bringing a girl back from the dead.