The Call to Arise

The Call to Arise--January 10, 2018

"When they came to the house of the leader of the synagogue, he saw a commotion, people weeping and wailing loudly. When he had entered, he said to them, 'Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but sleeping?' And they laughed at him. Then he put them all outside, and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him, and went in where the child was. He took her by the hand and said to her, 'Talitha cum,' which means, 'Little girl, get up!' And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat." [Mark 5:38-43]

In a way, all Jesus ever did was variations on one miracle, really: resurrection.

Jesus brings to life that which is dead... whether it is a crippled hand that has gone dormant, or the dying flesh of people with leprosy who were forced to exist in a sort of dead-man-walking status, or tax collectors cut off from their communities who were basically treated as socially dead, or a whole little girl, who has literally breathed her last.  Jesus was all about resurrection--whether of a whole person, or of the little pockets of death we carry around within us all the time.

I am reminded of that line of Robert Farrar Capon, who says that "Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works."

That's the truth.  In a sense, every moment of the Gospel's story, every episode, every conversation, and every miracle, is a variation on the theme that plays out right here.  Jesus comes right into the room where death reigns, calls us by name from out of the grip of the grave, and brings us to new life again. 

In this scene, the actual words (and really, it's quite something that Mark the gospel writer has held onto the original Aramaic in this story--like this is a story he had heard actually told by someone who was there, and like they can't shake the memory of the words hanging in the air as they were spoken) are the simple Aramaic sentence, "Talitha cum," or as Mark translates it for us, "Little girl, get up!"  But it just as accurately could be reported as the way Jesus approaches you and me in all the places we have allowed some parts of us to die, and says of us, "My child, get up!"  "Beloved, arise!"  "Stephen--awaken!"  "Hey world, in all your deathliness! Wakey, wakey, eggs and bakey!"  Every healing of a body part that has gone dead, every casting out of the spirits that held people captive to the fear of death, every restoration of the outcast back into human community, every feeding that kept people from going hungry--they are all ways Jesus enters into the valley of the shadow of death where we have been wallowing, and calls us back to life.

We might not have thought of ourselves as in need of a resurrection miracle.   Maybe we all have been living in the illusion that things are just fine, thank you very much... or that with enough positive thinking and another good day on the stock market, we'll be able to handle anything that comes our way.  We do not want to consider that there is something inside each of us that is dead and in need of resurrection. 

That's why instead we invented religion.  

If my problem is just that I have not been living by the right "rules" to make myself acceptable before God, well, then, religion will help me out by teaching me the right additional commandments to follow so that I can climb my way up into acceptability.

If my problem is just that I haven't tried the Five Life Principles for making my family happier, my kids better behaved, and my laundry smelling fresher, well, then all I need is religion to help me figure out those key self-help principles, and I'll be back on top in a jiff.

If my problem is that I am cripplingly insecure and threatened by other people--different people!--you know, "those people" and need some way to assure myself that I am better than they are, or to make sure that I don't lose my privileges to people who don't look or speak or think like me, well, then, I can go use "religion" to put up dividing lines that split us into categories of "acceptable" and "unacceptable," "worthy" and "unworthy," "good" and "bad."  And even though it will all have been made up, I will at least have tricked myself into thinking that I've put some distance between myself and "them."

But here's the thing: none of those are really the problem.  The problem, as Capon puts it, is not that we are in need of a little moral boost, or more successful kids, or more picturesque home life, or more secured privileges.  The problem with each one of us is that we are dead--each one of us in countless different ways--and we are in need of resurrection from our many little deaths. 

We are not in need of a rule-giver. We do not need another self-help teacher. We most certainly do not need a culture warrior.  We are in need of someone who will walk past the weeping and wailing, take our lifeless selves by the hand, and call to us, "Little one, get up."  We need the call to arise.

But here's the thing: once Jesus summons you to life, things will be different. Once Jesus calls you to arise, you do have to get up and walk around.  You cannot stay dead.  

Maybe that is what we are still afraid of--that the newness Jesus will bring is going to interrupt the comfortable routines we have gotten used to.  Maybe some part of us would rather have the safe recipes of religion rather than the table-turning, game-changing reality of resurrection.  Maybe we are scared to admit that we need to be called back to life, because that gives us no room to look down on anybody else or to put ourselves above, and some part of us just really wants to define ourselves as "at least I'm better than them..."  And if we admit that our need is not for more rules to follow or self-help tips to try, or walls to put up between me and somebody else, then I can't make myself feel superior to anybody else any longer by comparing myself to them.  Dead, after all, is dead.

If we let Jesus call us back to life (and really, here's the thing--we don't have the power to stop him!), we should be prepared: he will bring newness.  He will change us.  There will be new things we are sent to do--we cannot just lay around all day on the funeral bier.  Like the little girl to whom Jesus calls, resurrection means arising--so that we can do what living people are meant to do.  So when Jesus calls us back to life, get ready to leave behind all the deadness behind--the deadened compassion that made us indifferent to the suffering of others, the deadened courage that made us unwilling to speak up for others, the deadened honesty that kept us from being able to see the truth about ourselves, the deadened humility that made us needy for others' attention and praise and awe. 

Be prepared:  all of those things are signs of deadness in us, and Jesus is ruthlessly committed to rooting out all of that decay in his quest to call us back to life.  

Hear the voice today, and let that voice do what it will among us.  

Little child, get up.  There is work to be done.  It is time to arise.

Lord Jesus, call us to life, amid all the many little deaths we carry around within us.  And make us to get up and follow you.