For what we preach is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, and ourselves as your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who said, “Let light shine out of darkness,” t made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ.
But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;9 persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of sus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. Forwe who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so thathis life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then,death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.
It is written: “I believed; therefore I have spoken.” Since we have that same spirit of faith, we also believe and therefore speak, because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. All this is for your benefit, so that the grace that is reaching more and more people may cause thanksgiving to overflow to the glory of God.
Therefore we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day. Forour light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that faroutweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen,but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
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Introduction: No doubt about it. Jairus never had a worse day than this. Nothing but ugly. His little girl was dying and treatments wouldn’t help. The new rabbi wasn’t a doctor but Jairus was desperate. He found where Jesus was preaching but the huge crowds were in the way. He finally got close and collapsed at Jesus’ feet; he pleaded for help. Jesus seemed willing, but there was a delay; Jesus stopped to heal somebody else. But then it was too late; the news was crushing. Jesus walked home with him but things were just as ugly there. The weepers and wailers were shaking the walls. They laughed when Jesus insisted the little girl was sleeping. He and his wife walked into her room and Jairus looked down at her. She wasn’t sleeping! 12 years old and the apple of his eye.She was dead. The worst day of his life. Death is always ugly.
You all know how this ends; we heard it in today’s Gospel. Little girl, I say to you, get up. And she did. She walked around and had a little lunch. Jesus turned the most awful day of Jairus’ life into the most awesome day of his life. Jesus has power to turn the ugly of death into the beauty of life. We believe that with all our hearts. “We look for the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come.”
But I am not Jairus and my son was not his daughter. When David died there was no “Young man, I say to you, get up.” No walking around and no little lunch. Jesus doesn’t enter our homes or our sick rooms as he did in today’s Gospel. He doesn’t visit our care facilities or cancer units. We believe in the resurrection that’s coming, but we live with the realities of now. For us, death is still ugly: a crushed body after a car crash, the fetal position of an Alzheimer’s victim, the weakness that comes with disease. The fears and the tears, the doubts and the questions, they’re ugly, too. We walk with a beautiful Savior, but our walk with Christ isn’t always pretty. St. Paul proclaimed the victories of Christ but he acknowledged that the last enemy to be destroyed is death. It was for him—he was beheaded by Nero—and it will be for us.
Death is what Paul is talking about in the Second Reading for today but in a different way from what we might expect. This isn’t about funeral homes and cemeteries. Paul wrote to Christians in Corinth about the death he endured as a minister of the Gospel. He connects death to his preaching and sharing the good news. The death he describes is still ugly and awful but it is ugly on purpose and it is awful for a reason. In our life as Christians and especially as Christian witnesses,
We Walk with Christ through Death to Life
The only thing that St. Paul loved more than being a minister of the gospel was the gospel itself. He proclaimed this good news wherever he went, that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them, that God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. The good news about Jesus was Paul’s greatest treasure.
And now to the ugly side: We have this treasure in jars of clay. Paul saw himself as a broken piece of a clay pot. His great mission came with a sad story: Chased, whipped, stoned, imprisoned,shipwrecked, constantly in danger, exposed to death again and again. He summarizes here: Hard pressed on every side, perplexed, persecuted, struck down. Jesus hadn’t given up on Paul; Paul wasn’t crushed or despairing or abandoned or destroyed. But he wasn’t pretty, either. And he wasn’t pretty for a reason. Paul looked and lived like a clay pot to show that the gospel’s all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. The power that brought light to the world wasn’t in his handsome good looks or his expensive clothes or his rugged good health or well-crafted sermons. The power that changed people’s lives was the face of Christ in the gospel.
Christians can’t expect anything more. Whether we’re Christian pastors or Christian people, we always carry around in our body the death of Jesus. Paul felt so strongly about this that he said it again:We who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake. Our lives begin to look like Jesus’ life. The same enemies that opposed Jesus oppose us. We condemn the lifestyles that God forbids and we face the scorn that Jesus faced. We spend time to hear and study the good news and we spend money to support the spread of the good news and we hear the mockery that Jesus heard. We invite our neighbors to church and we endure the rejection Jesus endured. We believe that death is a sleep that ends in resurrection and we hear the laughter Jesus heard in Jairus’ living room. To non-Christians we are stupid; to contemporary Christians we are silly; to ultra-Christians we are soft. People in our society, people in our neighborhoods, and even some people in our homes consider us to be nothing more than clumps of dead clay, cracked by an out-of-date faith, crumpled by an out-of-sight God, and crushed by an out-of-answers Savior. For all to see—and for us to see—we walk with Christ as good as dead.
Whether we think about Jairus’ kind of death or Paul’s kind of death, death is ugly. We can’t escape Jairus’ kind of death—we all die—but we can avoid Paul’s kind of death. The church pastor becomes a jolly jokester or a lover of the good life or an expert who is always right. The church people complain about the pastor more often than they listen to him, they like cooking more than praying, they’d rather visit with friends than witness to newcomers, they’d rather live well than give generously. Pastor and people can walk away from the ugliness of this kind of death; we’ve all taken this walk. But when we do we begin to step away from our walk with Christ.
When we step away from death, we also step away from life. Paul understood this. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. Our sacrifices for Christ may be painful but they point to the painful sacrifice he made for us. Our poverty may be deadly but it shows that Christ’s riches are sustaining us. Our Christian life may seem pathetic but it proves that Christ lives in us. Our battles with sin may be hard but they prove that his victory over sin is part of us. Unquestioning faith may seem silly, but it shows the certainty of his promises. Jairus walked with Jesus through death but his walk with Jesus brought life to his little girl. We walk with Christ in what looks like death and feels like death; we deny ourselves and take up our cross. But in that walk we find life with Christ:Our sins forgiven, our doubts removed, our hopes restored, our heaven assured,and our witness empowered. Death may be at work in us but life is at work in the world.
St. Paul shared what King David resolved in Psalm 116: I believe; therefore I have spoken. Both of them accepted the deadliness of pain and persecution for the sake of life and salvation. As pastor and people this is where we stand, this is what we believe, this is how we live. This pastor speaks with Pastor Paul and Pastor Timothy because we know that the one who raised the Lord Jesus from the dead will also raise us with Jesus and present us with you to himself. We will all die and all be buried and all end up as ashes. We walk with Christ through death but we also walk with Christ to life. When the Lord himself comes down from heaven on that great last day we will all hear the voice of the archangel and we will all hear the trumpet call of God and we will all rise from our graves for we believe that Jesus died and rose again, and so we believe that God will bring with Jesus those who have fallen asleep in him. We walk with Christ from death to life.
These last few months have been difficult for all of us, kind of deadly in some ways. Cancer to treat, retirement to plan, ministries to end, churches to close,cemeteries to preserve, and of course, tension to be endured. But our death walk with Christ is also a walk to life. Therefore, we do not lose heart. Though outwardly we are wasting away, yet inwardly we are being renewed day by day.For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. May God grant this for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
