A sermon for Biblefresh week 1 (I'm scared of dying)

In the middle of our gospel reading, we heard Jesus saying to Jairus, ‘Do not fear.  Only believe and she will be saved’ ”

There are several times when the gospels record that Jesus said “Don’t be afraid”.  He said it to the disciples on the evening of the first Easter Day; he said it to the disciples when there was a sudden storm on the Sea of Galilee.  And in the reading today we heard how Jesus turned to Jairus and his friend, just as they had heard that Jairus’ daughter had just died.

If you go back to the Old Testament, you find that there are many times when God says the same thing to people; He says it to Abraham, to Moses, to Joshua; I could go on.  And in the New Testament, He encourages the first Christians as they spread the good news of Jesus around the Roman Empire.

Instead of fear, God offers us an alternative.  The alternative is peace.  You see it in the reading when Jesus tells the woman to go in peace. The Bible describes God as the God of peace.  Jesus promised his followers the kind of peace that the world cannot understand.  The first Christians took a message of peace to the world around them. 

So we have two messages, repeated in the Bible.  One says “Don’t be afraid”, and the other promises God’s peace.  But, if we are honest, we can easily forget them both.  We can be afraid.  We can worry and fret, in fear of things that are outside our control.  We can lie awake at night, fearful about what is going to happen in the future.  And there are many things that cause us all to worry and be afraid.  At the same time, our worries drive away the peace that Jesus promised.  So not only do we worry, but we lose the peace that God wants us to know, the peace that comes from being in His care.  That’s the result of letting being afraid become more important than being at peace.

The picture that the Bible wants us to take away is the opposite.  God wants being at peace to be more important than being afraid; His will is that peace becomes so much more important that we are not afraid.

Our gospel was about two women, one an adult and one a child.  And about the child’s father.  The two adults were both afraid, and both were afraid of the same sort of thing – death and disease.  Luke starts to tell us the story of Jairus, the man whose daughter had died, and about the way that he was afraid of death.  You can sense that his family were afraid as well.  In the middle of the story, we are told about the woman who suffered a long term illness, which made her fearful, because we read “though she had spent all that she had on physicians, no one could cure her.”  She was going to be suffering for the rest of her life. 

We can imagine the kind of fears that these two adults had, because they are like the fears that keep us awake at night.  Even if you are only going to the dentist for a filling, you start to worry and fret. 

You are not going to be in control.

You are going to suffer and be in pain.

You may not be able to cope.

You don’t know what will happen next.

If it is serious, then you may not be able to maintain your independence.

Jairus and his family were going through all this because the twelve year old daughter was dying.  The woman had lived with these fears for as long as the girl had been alive. 

In this story, worry made the two adults desperate, and they were desperate in different ways.  Jairus was prepared to fall at Jesus’ feet.  That was undignified.  Jairus was a member of the educated elite, and he begged Jesus, in amazing humility, to come and help his daughter.  He broke taboos about behaviour in society.  By Jewish law, the woman was one of the walking dead.  She was supposed to stay away from all human contacts, because her illness made her impure.  But she was desperate and broke the law, not just the taboos.  She came into the crowd, polluting everyone around. 

And in their worry, their fear, their desperation, they were united in believing that there was no hope for them except Jesus.

And they both found peace.  At first sight, you might say that they found peace in different ways.  The woman was healed.  The daughter of Jairus was restored to life.  But it would be wrong to conclude that Jesus dealt with them in different ways.  They came to Jesus and they found life.  Life simply flowed out of Jesus.  The woman touched the fringe of his clothes, and Jesus knew that power had flowed out from him.  Jesus took Jairus’ daughter by the hand and called out “Child, get up”.  Life flowed from God to the girl.  She lived.

For all those who were there, Jesus was demonstrating the truth of that verse in the 23^rd Psalm:

Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Or, in a modern translation

Even when the way goes through Death Valley,
   I'm not afraid when you walk at my side.
   Your trusty shepherd's crook makes me feel secure.

Life flows from Jesus and He has the power to take away our fears – and not only does he have the power, he wants to take away our fears, and replace them with his peace.

However, being a follower of Jesus does not mean that we won’t face situations where we be afraid.  In the psalm, the writer knew that he would have to go through the valley of the shadow of death, Death Valley.  That is a valley we will all have to go through, one day.  But we need not fear that valley, because Jesus has gone through it for us, and He will go through it with us.

And being a follower of Jesus doesn’t mean that we won’t experience troubles in this life, the kind of troubles that Jairus, his family and the woman with the haemorrhage had known.  The church, the followers of Jesus, do not have a trouble free life.  As I was writing this sermon, and email arrived to ask for prayer for a Christian who has a terminal illness.  God does not wrap his children in cotton wool simply because they have decided to accept him as their Lord and Saviour.  The church is a community, but not a trouble-free community.  We cannot promise newcomers and outsiders that their anxieties will be removed if they join us.  We want the church here to grow, so we must show to other people that God’s life is in this community.  That life should mean that we are to be a community which is able to cope with fears and anxieties.  We are to be a community that oozes peace, God’s peace.  God has promised us peace, and that should fill this community.  The miracle that we should show is that in us and through us, God is working in power to make us a people of peace, people who are not scared, because they believe. 

So let us take lessons from Jairus and the woman who was healed; let us be people who are at peace, because we believe.  In a moment of quiet, let us ask God to take away any fears and worries that we brought with us today, or which have kept us awake at night.  Let us ask Jesus to say to our hearts, “Do not fear.  Only believe” and then to give us the peace which surpasses human understanding.

Lord Jesus, free us from the worries we have brought today.  Fill us with your peace.  Amen

Preached at St Matthew's church, Exeter, Devon UK (c) the author