18While [Jesus] was saying these things to them, behold, a ruler came in and knelt before him, saying, “My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.” 19And Jesus rose and followed him, with his disciples.
Jairus was the name of that ruler. Mark and Luke give us more details about him – they tell us his name and they tell us that he was a ruler of the synagogue.
When God’s people gathered into a building, Jairus was a teacher. He was their preacher man.
He would have taught about God’s love for His people and admonished to never give up hope, to trust in God.
He would have read God’s Word to them.
Like something from our OT passage today:
11And the ransomed of the Lord shall return
and come to Zion with singing;
everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;
they shall obtain gladness and joy,
and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.
12“I, I am he who comforts you;
He then would have preached that God comforts them.
That they are the ransomed of the Lord.
They are purchased and redeemed. God bought them. They belong to God.
And just like God’s strong arm saved His people from Egypt in the Exodus, just like God crushed the enemies of His people then, so will He do it again.
He did it before, He promises He’ll do it again.
He did, He is, He will – “your sorrow and sighing shall flee away,” Jairus would preach.
“Everlasting joy will be upon your heads,” he’d preach.
“God, God Himself is He comforts you now until that day,” he’d proclaim.
And Jairus maybe would have ended that sermon in the synagogue, and they would have prayed and then God’s people would have went to their homes from the synagogues, and he would have went to his home – where his daughter was very ill.
On her deathbed ill.
So, did Jairus practice what he preaches?
His daughter is very ill, apethneisken, St. Luke says in the Greek, she was dying, about to die, Jairus tells Jesus in St. Luke – so does Jairus still trust in God?
Is Jairus telling his very ill daughter that God will crush their enemies in His own time. Don’t despair, sweetie.
God can heal you. God is your comforter.
Even if you do die, God will crush our enemies.
Even if you do die, honey, God will Himself is your comforter and you will have everlasting joy.
Does he believe that God loves his daughter even more than he does? And that the God who saved His people from Egypt can save his daughter and will save His daughter. God’s will be done.
Can Jairus look at his wife and tell her to trust and hope in God? God Himself will be their comforter, no matter what happens.
I don’t know when the rubber meets the rode for you.
Maybe it already is.
I know we’re gathering here in God’s house today and there’s a preacher man and all God’s people are hearing and singing and praying together about how we should trust God and hope in Him and that He, He Himself our comfort.
And then what do you go home to? Or what did you leave from?
How does the rubber meet the rode?
Is it illness?
It could be unrelenting pain, overwhelming sadness, or debilitating depression.
It could be struggles in the marriage or your household or the loss of someone you love.
It could be struggles in your work or finances, the loss of your health or the impending loss of your own life.
I invite you to read with us a book with us during Advent called Christ and Calamity. In it, the author reminds us that C.S. Lewis once wrote that God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. Pain is God’s megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
So how does the rubber meet the rode for you in your pains?
God is screaming to you that it is the right to trust in Him, it is good to hope in Him, that He, He Himself will be your comforter.
Jairus practices what he preaches and invites us to do the same.
When the rubber met the rode for Jairus,
that preacher man comes up and knelt before Jesus and says, My daughter has just died, but come and lay your hand on her, and she will live.
Last week we considered how God’s saints strengthen us our faith. We see that they believed, they trusted in God’s mercy, because God is merciful to them, to us.
What faith Jairus had!
What a Jesus Jairus had!
What a Jesus do you have!
God’s promises from of old are no empty promises, and the rubber meets the rode in the person of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
In order to heal and visit and relieve.
In order to raise the dead and promise that for those who die in Him, death is a but a sleep.
In order for you to be called the ransomed of the Lord, He had to buy you with His blood.
That other woman in the story who suffered from a discharge of blood for 12 year, who just wanted to touch the fringe of His garment and she would be made well, was healed only because she had God in the flesh who was going to be willing to bleed for her.
Jairus’s daughter was raised from the death of sleep because Jesus was going to die for her.
We gather around no empty promises.
God is faithful.
The garment that the woman wanted to touch would be stripped one day when He was crucified for us.
God is faithful.
The feet that walked with Jairus and the hands that were laid on His daughter were pierced on the cross for us.
We belong to God – we are His ransomed ones.
God is faithful to you.
Our Colossians Reading for today say that God has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of His beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.
You are delivered.
You are in His light.
You are in His kingdom.
You are redeemed.
You are forgiven.
This is who you are as you are sent back into your life and vocation where the rubber is always meeting the road.
Where faith and hope and love are always being challenged by the devil, the world, and your sinful flesh.
But if you treasure to His promises, Jesus will not disappoint you.
Treasure up His Word that you might not sin against Him.
His Word is nothing to laugh at.
Before Jesus rose Jairus’s daughter, He said she wasn’t dead, she was only sleeping and they laughed at Him.
And maybe we’re sometimes tempted to do the same. To think His Word or Church or the Supper are empty or unnecessary or that there are more important things.
But they are the central things.
Central when things are going well, and central when our little girls are dying.
Jairus the preacher man believed what he preached, and in times of joy and trial God is here again help us do the same.
He, He Himself is our Comforter.