The Interruption on the Way to the House

Jairus is important, and it does not help him.

Luke 8:41 says he was a ruler of the synagogue, which in that town meant he ran the place: the building, the readings, the order of service, the people. He is the kind of man who is used to being able to arrange things.

And he falls down at Jesus' feet in the street and begs Him to come, because his only daughter, twelve years old, is dying.

Jesus goes with him.

That is verse forty two, and if the chapter had gone straight to verse forty nine the story would be ordinary. It does not. In between there are seven verses in which somebody else is dealt with, at length, while Jairus stands in the road.

But as he went the people thronged him. And a woman having an issue of blood twelve years, which had spent all her living upon physicians, neither could be healed of anyLuke 8:42-43, King James Version

Twelve years. And Jairus's daughter is twelve years old.

That is not a coincidence in the way Luke tells it. He gives the girl's age in verse forty two and the woman's duration in verse forty three, back to back. For the whole of that girl's life, this woman has been ill.

But at the moment it is happening, all Jairus knows is that the man who was walking to his house has stopped in the street.

What it costs to be standing there

Read what happens next with Jairus in your peripheral vision, because Luke keeps him there.

Jesus stops. He asks who touched Him. Peter says the sensible thing about the crowd. Jesus insists. The woman comes trembling and tells the whole story in front of everybody, and then He speaks to her, and calls her Daughter, and blesses her, and tells her to go in peace.

All of that takes time. It is not a passing exchange, it is a public conversation with a frightened person who needs it to go slowly.

And a man is standing about four feet away with a dying child at home.

You are not further down the list. Luke 8 holds both people in one paragraph rather than choosing between them, and it is the Holy Spirit who keeps that from reading as a waiting list when a person is standing in the road.

Then the sentence that every parent in the world dreads.

While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master.Luke 8:49, King James Version

While he yet spake. While Jesus was still talking to the woman. The news arrives during the conversation, which means the timing is the worst it could be.

And the message ends with a piece of advice: trouble not the Master. Somebody in that household has already decided that this is over and that there is no point bothering Him now.

You have been handed a verdict by somebody who was not asked for one. Luke 8:49 records the messenger's opinion as part of the message, and the same Spirit who kept it in the sentence is the reason nobody has to accept every conclusion that arrives with the news.

Now watch what Jesus does with that, because it is immediate and it is short.

But when Jesus heard it, he answered him, saying, Fear not: believe only, and she shall be made whole.Luke 8:50, King James Version

Five words before the promise. Fear not: believe only.

He does not explain the delay. He does not apologize for the woman, and He does not tell Jairus what the twelve years were about. He speaks to the fear that has just arrived and He speaks to it directly.

You have been spoken to about the fear rather than given an account of the schedule. Luke 8:50 answers the message and never the timing, and it is His Spirit who makes that a kindness rather than an evasion.

I want to be honest about something here, because a comfortable reading of this passage would skip it.

The delay was real. The girl did die during it. Luke does not soften that. There is a version of this story where Jesus arrives in time and nobody has to stand in a street, and that is not the version Luke wrote.

What the passage claims is not that the waiting did not cost anything. It is that the waiting was not a demotion.

And then the house, and the two words at the end of it.

And he put them all out, and took her by the hand, and called, saying, Maid, arise.Luke 8:54, King James Version

Mark keeps the actual words in the language He said them in: Talitha cumi. Little girl, get up. It is domestic. It is the sentence a parent says in a bedroom on a school morning.

And the last instruction in the chapter is the most ordinary thing in the Gospels: He commanded to give her meat. Get her something to eat.

You are being handled at the scale of a bedroom and a breakfast, by somebody who had just been at the center of a crowd. Luke 8:55 ends on an instruction about food, and the same Spirit who kept that detail is the reason nothing about this is impersonal.