‘Why trouble the Teacher any further?’

  • One ques­tion from last week’s Bible study stayed with me. It con­cerns this pas­sage of the episode of the rais­ing of Jairus’ daughter:

    While He was still speak­ing, some came from the ruler of the synagogue’s house who said, “Your daugh­ter is dead. Why trou­ble the Teacher any fur­ther?” (Mark 5:35)

    And the ques­tion was ‘How have you been like the men in v. 35?’

    Inter­est­ing, no? I may have never even noticed those men before, or thought about their actions. From a human stand­point, it’s cer­tainly under­stand­able why a per­son would con­clude that the death of Jairus’ daugh­ter would end the need for any fur­ther request for help.

    But why make the case right then, and in that way? Were they qui­etly rebelling against their syn­a­gogue leader’s reliance on this rev­o­lu­tion­ary new prophet? Was there a mod­icum of irony implicit in the word ‘Teacher’?

    And what about my take on mir­a­cles? Read­ing this nar­ra­tive, of course I know that Christ raised Jairus’ daugh­ter from the dead. But in my own life, would I have had faith, as he did, to allow Christ to act? Or would I have wanted to be rea­son­able in my expec­ta­tions and keep my lit­tle atom of faith safe and secure by “not trou­bling the Teacher”?

    It seems to me that some­times I want to make ready-made moments for the Holy Spirit to act in my life — prayer requests that are bound to hap­pen, or Nice Moments that’ll make an inspir­ing story for some­one (or, God help me, a good blog entry). I’ve come to refer to it as “knit­ting the Holy Spirit a nice sweater.” All you need for Him to do is step into it. I’m always secretly relieved when He doesn’t. But God meets me where I am; if that kind of piti­ful self-conscious effort is all I have, some­times those prayers are answered.

    Other times, I know that I’m shield­ing God from the more auda­cious prayers — things that I just don’t think could ever hap­pen. It brings to mind the wicked ser­vant who hid his one tal­ent in the ground and thought he was doing some kind of ser­vice to the fru­gal and hard-hearted mas­ter. The last thing I want to do is take my faith and put it on the line. And I imag­ine I’m doing God some kind of favor!

    Were these lead­ers of the syn­a­gogue like that? Did they want to hold onto a pre­cious appre­ci­a­tion for this gifted Teacher and not be dis­ap­pointed by His limitations?

    I won­der what prayers I’m hold­ing back. I won­der what would hap­pen if I wasn’t afraid to be just a lit­tle bit more of a bother.

    So often the biggest lim­i­ta­tion on what God can achieve lies with us. Lord, have mercy.

     

     
    Credit: ‘The Rais­ing of Jairus Daugh­ter’ (1878) by Gabriel Max.


    Related posts:

    1. They see your heart
    2. Bright Week do’s & don’ts
    3. Bright Sat­ur­day … now, what did you forget?
    5. Feel the truth

    November 2nd, 2011 | Grace | 1 Comment |

One Response and Counting...

  • pho­tini 11.02.2011

    “I won­der what would hap­pen if I wasn’t afraid to be just a lit­tle bit more of a bother.”

    Wow! Some­thing to think about. I usu­ally don’t ask because I some­how act as though (although I know it isn’t true) there is a finite num­ber of prayers that can be answered. I think my prob­lems are so small com­pared to what oth­ers need — why trou­ble the teacher when there are more crit­i­cal things that need to be done. I have no prob­lems pray­ing for a brother-in-law who is about to have surgery, but why should I ask to be healed from a cold? But I also pretty much believe that he will be fine and come through surgery eas­ily before I even pray.

    But we have a friend who prays auda­cious prayers. He absolutely believed that his wife would be cured of can­cer right to the bit­ter end. Now he can’t explain it, but he con­tin­ues to pray for rad­i­cal heal­ings and when they don’t hap­pen, I won­der if my lack of faith could be the rea­son — I’m not “agree­ing as touch­ing heaven and earth” if I don’t think it will hap­pen. I know it COULD; I just don’t believe it WILL.

    I need to med­i­tate on this for awhile.

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