Matthew 9:18-26

Chapter 38

Prayer

Almighty God, thou art wonderful in healing: there is none so wounded that he cannot be cured by thy touch or by thy word. Thou canst even heal the broken heart, and bind up with many balms the wounded spirit, which no hand of man can touch. Behold thou art very kind, thy patience is more than the long-suffering of our mother, and thy care is beyond all the wisdom of our father's understanding. Yet thou hast given us our father and our mother, as helps to know somewhat of thee: they lead us up a little way towards thine own heart: like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. If men being evil know how to give good gifts unto their children, much more wilt thou give good gifts unto them that ask thee. A woman may forget her sucking child, that she have no compassion on the son of her womb, yet thou wilt not forget thy redeemed ones, and thy saints shall miss thee but for a small moment.

Thou hast written our names on the palms of thine hands, and thou hast written thy name upon our foreheads. We belong to one another, we are counted in the covenant, we are weighed in the scales that weigh the fine gold, and no speck of dust shall be lost. The foundation of the Lord standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. Help us all to be thine. In our rough way we are all thine, but so prodigal and wanton and wild, so rebellious and destructive and self-willed, slain by our obstinacy and utterly lost by the stubbornness of our unanswering hearts, though thou didst appeal to them by all the ministries of earth and heaven. Last of all thou didst send thy Son, saying, "They will reverence my Son," and we caught him and took him and slew him: we nailed him to the tree and pierced his side with a spear. Yet in his blood is salvation, in his death is sacrifice, in his offering is there all the power and grace of an infinite atonement, not to be known or set forth in words of man, but to be felt by the heart in its night of woe and in the keenness of its mortal pain. Bring us all to the cross, may it be our home, our refuge, our rest. Other refuge have we none.

Let thy word be very sweet to us, sweeter than honey, yea sweeter than the honeycomb a new sweetness all its own, without answer or parallel among all the sweetnesses of the garden. We bless thee that we have begun wisdom: the fear of the Lord is that holy beginning. We have not learned much: have pity upon us and spare us that we may add little to little as the days fly away. Gold cannot buy it, it is not in silver to compass the price thereof; it is the wonder of the deep, and destruction and death have only heard the fame thereof. All corals and rubies are not to be named with it. Help us to grow in wisdom, may we be wise in intelligence and wise in love, may our whole life be as a flame of wisdom.

Pity us in our daily distresses, and help us in our daily burdens: speak comfortably to those who this day feel the coldness and loneliness of a great bereavement. Bind up the heart in which there is no more blood, speak to the life in which the hope has died, and in the house that is desolated with sevenfold night do thou set thine own candle.

The Lord keep us quiet and give us the joy of peace, the solemnity of the infinite assurance of our acceptance with the beloved. When we come to touch the holy bread and sacred wine that have in them the memory of the great life and death may our lips be touched as with a live coal from off the altar, that we may receive the same reverently and with thankfulness unfeigned. Amen.

Mat 9:18-26

Affliction In the House

"While he spake these things." We need not critically inquire whether any interval separated between what is written in the seventeenth verse and in the eighteenth. No doubt such an interval did occur, yet it would have been quite in accordance with the habit of the great Teacher and Sufferer if he had in terrupted any speech in order to do good to a broken heart. It did not shock the writer when he wrote, "While he spake these things unto them." It did not occur to him that he was indicating a point of interruption, nor did it occur to him that he was violating any probability of the case. Christ himself was the one improbability, the one impossibility of human history, and therefore we must not bring little rules and standards by which to measure anything that he did or said.

He was answering a question put to him by the disciples of John about fasting, and Matthew writes, "While he spake these things unto them," ere yet the answer was fully given, or whilst the last word was being uttered, or whilst he was in the act of pausing for some rejoinder either by way of comment or inquiry just then a great, solemn, heart-laden prayer burst upon his startled ear. "My daughter is now dead, but come and lay thy hand upon her and she shall live." Elijah taught us that other gods might be so busy that they could not hear the cry of their devotees; Elijah spoke so in irony and mockery, bitter and severe, telling us to cry louder, that our God was talking or pursuing; he told us that we got no answer because our voice was too low, that the god was on a journey or sleeping nobody knew what he was doing: he must be called for by a louder and shriller cry. Jesus Christ was never so busy that he could not answer any question put to him, and in proportion as that question was acute, arising from the heart's sore distress and burning agony, would he interrupt even a miracle of a minor kind, to accomplish a miracle of a superior kind. These are the things that prove his quality, these are the elements which, being brought together into one complete mass, establish his claim to be something more than I am. I go with him so far, and in a moment he shoots beyond me and stands alone on the solemn elevation. Up to a given line he is a good man simply, extremely kind and sensitive, answering every emotion of the life that is around him steadily and truly; then in a moment he leaves all examples and precedents and parallels behind, and stands before us as God, so much like God that were a man to say to him, "My Lord and my God," not a heart in all the listening assembly would feel the shock of an irreligious or painful surprise. The cry would accord with the circumstances, and would establish a sweet though pensive rhythm. The two words, the word of Christ and the acknowledging word of man, would form a balance to one another, and establish between them a consistency that would grow into an argument.

Yet he appears to be Servant as well as Master, for we read, "And Jesus arose and followed him," as if he had no alternative. He never has an alternative when the heart really wants him. It is the heart that shuts him up to one reply. He can tell your intelligence to wait, he can rebuke your eager ingenuity or your impetuous fancy; but when the broken heart needs him, if he were to delay, then it would be but to come with some richer blessing on the third day. Sometimes he does put off until the third day; it is his favourite day, he typified it by instances in his life, he crowned it by his resurrectional return. "Come, let us return unto the Lord: he hath bruised us, and he will bind us up again: he hath torn us, and on the third day he will revive us." But he always answers the cry of the burdened and broken heart. He arises like a servant, and clothed with humility as with a garment, he walks after the man that wants him as a slave might go.

Yet you say you have never seen him and never known him. I can tell you why. You have had no trouble in your life. You have always sought him by the lamp of your intelligence; you have always invited him into the cunningly arranged chambers of your fancy and imagination; you have always endeavoured to tempt him by your intellectual curiosity. To all these Herods and Pilates he answers nothing. To this man will I look, the man whose eyes are upon the dust, whose accusing hand is upon his heart, and who sobs rather than says his eager prayer. You will send for him some day, and he will come.

This is an instance of a man praying for another and yet praying for himself at the same time. "My daughter is even now dead." That is all we hear, but there was an unspoken prayer, for there was a subtle undertone, there was an aside in the action that touched the heart of Christ. If the child is dead, why call her back? Who would call back a friend from summer to winter, from the land where the moon is as the sun, and the sun is bright seven times beyond himself, to the land of night and coldness and ice and bitter desolation? He could have said, "Jairus, I congratulate thee: is she gone, is she at home, have the angels taken her?

But there was another prayer: not only was the little girl dead, but the living man was dead too. He answered the prayer not for the child's sake, but for the man's sake. The house was no longer worth going into, the house had become a ghastly tomb, the house had shaped itself into its ghost's faces, and miserable spectacles Jesus went for the living man's sake. "When such friends part, 'tis the survivor dies;" so wondrous is the way of mercy, so subtle and incalculable are the methods and issues of divine providence, that sometimes they who are in heaven have to be called back again in order to make up our life, or we shall fall right down in the pit of despair, and our lamp shall go out in total and perpetual darkness. Selfish man still not wholly selfish. If a man has lost one of his wings and cannot fly, he may surely ask to have it returned to him. If the lame man has lost his one crutch, surely God will not account it inexcusably selfish if he should ask to have it given back to him.

My daughter in another place, my little daughter, my only daughter is dead. Does death go into great houses? This man was governor, a ruler, a man of station and social influence. Does death go into the house of the ruler, into the dwelling of the magistrate, into the habitation of the judge, into the palace of the monarch? Is he not affrighted by the great gates gilded at their tops like pinnacles? He makes others fear, he knows no fear himself. Let us proceed with the narrative, for it is full of action. There is no rest in the outward life of this Christ: He has to cut out days and nights in which to rest, for the world's necessity would never allow him even to sleep. He had to create a Sabbath sometimes in the night that he might go to church and sing and pray. This portion of the chapter is full of action, it moves, it trembles with a strange energy, divine and human.

"And behold, a woman------" Yes, I will, and I know she will develop something in Christ that no man could ever touch. I will behold this woman; I have known Christ worsted by a woman; I have never known him beaten really in his own field but by a woman. He once told a woman that the meat was not for the dogs, and she said, "Truth, Lord, but the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from the master's table." And he could not stir one step from that spot till he had given a great "Yes" to her great prayer. Let us then in very deed behold this woman. She has been diseased twelve years, which was exactly the age of the little girl that was dead. The little child had twelve years, let us hope, of joyous life and daily dreaming, much laughter, high glee; and this poor woman, all the time, year by year through every one of the twelve, had been suffering much. No physician could treat her case successfully; she had nothing bettered, but rather grew worse. She came behind him. There is a touch of modesty and a touch of something more than modesty and nearer divinity still if there be aught nearer divinity than downright, healthy, real humbleness. She was going to entrap him, she was going to perpetrate what centuries afterwards was known as a pious fraud, she would steal a blessing. She had a speech in her heart who has not? You are going to face some difficulty to-morrow, and you have told your nearest friend what you will say, or you have kept it altogether in your heart, and turned it over and over with many an amendment. You will begin so, and continue thus, and then you will wait. What secret preparations we have, what speeches gotten by heart, what prayers stored up in the silent chambers, to come out some day and surprise heaven!

What would this good old mother say? She said within herself, "If I may but touch his garment I shall be whole. I need not trouble him with any speech or with any form or ceremony of restoration, I am one that need not go to him in trouble if I may but touch the hem of his garment, the dusty hem, the hem that is trailing on the ground. I need not ask to touch his dear hand, nor need I pray for that dear hand to be laid upon me. I will go behind him and watch the train of his dress as it goes along the ground, and if I can but touch it for a moment, I shall be whole." That was faith, that was religion! A soul that could burn with such spirituality must cure any body which it tenanted for a few frail years. Your bodies would be better if your souls were stronger.

Does Jesus Christ permit any theft? Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, as no other eyes had ever looked upon her, he said, "Daughter." We are all his daughters, we are all his sons, he is our Father and our Brother; all relations in marvellous contradiction represent themselves in him, just as we put ourselves in relation to him. "Daughter, take heart again, be happy: thy faith hath made thee whole." He asks no questions regarding her disease, or the time of its continuance, or the peculiarity of its symptoms, or the keenness of its pain. He knows us altogether.

But how kind to make this little speech as well as to give the healing. A flower is all the better for having fragrance as well as beauty. How sweet to say something to her, to make a whole little speech to the woman herself! Sometimes he made the speech to the multitude: he said, "I say unto you I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel." He took, so to speak, her little birthday book, which we give to our friends to write their names in, and he writes a little speech with his own dear hand, and it is all the woman's own. "Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole." He almost made the woman feel she had cured herself. He takes no glory he needs none. He does not say, "Behold the virtue of my clothes, see what can be done by this oversoul that flows into the hem of my garment. He tells the poor woman that she healed herself. He loadeth us with benefits!

And then these people came to Jesus, not because of their richness and health and strength, but because they wanted something of him, because of their helplessness and pain, or poverty of some kind. That is just what we do if we come to him in the right way. Sometimes you mock us, and when you see us going to church you say, "There go the good ones, there go the patterns of society, there go your pious ones. We poor creatures do not go to church or to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper we leave that for you patterns of high virtue and noble piety." There is no sense in your mockery, you are altogether wrong in your conception, and therefore wholly unjust in your criticism. We come to Christ because we are bad. If you could say to us, "There go the bad ones," you would speak with some justness. "There go the cripples, there go the helpless ones, there go those that cannot make up their own life and redeem their own soul, there go the paupers, the dependents, the helpless ones." Say so and you touch the reality of the case. I do not remain to partake of the sacred bread and wine because I am good, but because I am the chief of sinners. I never knew any man come really and truly to Christ who did not come because he was helpless, because he was suffering from mortal distress, because he was conscious of an emptiness and impotence of soul which nothing can touch but the divine hand of Christ.

Think of us, therefore, as worse than you. You can do without him, we cannot. You want to wait till you have washed yourselves and apparelled yourselves and made yourselves fit for his presence.

Now we resume the story that was interrupted by this woman, and beautifully interrupted. Such parentheses are the very glory and blossom of the history. It would be poorer history but for these interruptions. Jesus Christ does a great deal of good on the way towards doing some other good. He preaches as he is walking down to the church. His very passing by the house of the people leaves a blessing behind it. He is as a flower carried through the quiet air that breathes its fragrant blessing, that all may receive it and be made glad. This is an aside in his ministry which does not lie on the direct line as part of one continual purpose: it is something that happened intermediately.

Now he comes to the ruler's house. "When he saw the minstrels" for heathenism had made some incursion even into Jewish habits "when he saw the minstrels and the people making a noise (an artificial noise; hired mourners made to create a sensation), he said unto them, Give place, for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth." Thus he would always reduce his own miracles. He did not say, "She is sevenfold dead;" he always made light of his miracles; he said, "It is only the death swoon, she is asleep;" and they laughed him to scorn. They knew better so did he, if it came to a merely literal interpretation; but he includes death itself in sleep. So he will strip death itself of all its terrors and stings, and make it at last into a child's slumber. They laughed him to scorn they had seen a thousand children dead, and they knew that this child was as dead as any child that had ever been buried in rock or in pit.

"And when the people were put forth, he went in." I see his stoop as he passes under the door and takes her by the hand. She could not touch him, and therefore he touched her. He will have it either way, only the touch must take place. He does not care whether it be your touch or his touch, but the hands must meet, the lives must impinge, there must be a beneficent collision. The woman had strength enough to touch on the ground, as it trailed along, the hem of the mean garment; the little girl lay there stiff and cold, and motionless, she could do nothing; he therefore did it all. "He took her by the hand, and the maid arose."

These miracles must not be blotted out of human history. They set mind in its right place; they set the moral forces of creation in their true position; they will not let death have all its own rude, violent way in the world; they put life on the throne; they elevate soul above body, spirit above matter. That is the grand interpretation of the miracles, that mind is regal and matter slavish, servile, and wholly helpless under the dominion and beneficent regnancy of the soul. If you have been trying to reconcile the miracles with your little laws of nature and partial conceptions of the universe, no wonder that your heads are dizzy and in the whirl of scepticism; but if you see in these miracles types of the supremacy of mind, the royalty and divinity of spirit, the right relation of the universe to the King and Creator, then these difficulties become as the small dust in the balance, as a drop in the bucket They are not to be accounted of. When you come into this spirit of high, loving, pure, sublime, and noble criticism, then all these miracles wrought by Jesus Christ will no longer be the surprises of such a history but the commonplaces of a life so divine.