I believe we are inspired by Jesus the Christ, taught by his words and guided by his ways and healed by his power. 1
Every true sermon is a collaboration. The preacher works together with the holy Spirit and also with the community of believers. The community works with the Spirit, with the nation and the neighborhood, and with the heritage from our faithful ancestors. When this collaboration is successful, the preacher's words express the mind of Jesus. When you and I and God work together, the Spirit of Jesus Christ lives in the preacher — at least long enough to speak some bit of the Truth.
I've said before that in every the sermon the preacher, or at least this preacher, is preaching a message to himself. What happens is that while trying to discern what God wants me to say to you, while I'm remembering who you are and what you say and do, I find a message that God has for me. Usually I preach that message to you, and you hear something different – hopefully, you hear the message God has for you. And so we work together, you and I and the Spirit of God.
For this message, we owe particular thanks to Myron Talcott, a friend of mine and a member with us in the body of Christ. Myron served as an emissary of the Spirit by providing the sentence which is my text for the day:
I believe we are inspired by Jesus the Christ, taught by his words and guided by his ways and healed by his power.
What does it mean to be inspired?
The origin of the word is to breathe in
and so to be inspired by Jesus means
to have the Spirit of Jesus inside of you,
as close to you as your own breath.
To be inspired by Jesus means to have his Spirit
soak into your blood and infuse every cell
with that life which is also in Jesus.
To be inspired by Jesus means that the same Spirit
which animates his being animates you as well;
the breath he breathes, you breathe;
the thoughts he thinks, you think;
the life he lives, you live.
We may be inspired in different ways. Limited as we are, capable of one or two thoughts at a time and not very adept at doing more than one thing at once, no one of us breathes the fullness of Christ with a single breath. Yet with each breath we may accept the inspiration of Jesus.
Limited as we are, just one of these may be the portion of the fullness of Christ that we are capable of breathing into ourselves. Yet each of these separate inspirations can express the Spirit of Jesus the Christ through our living.
How does this inspiration from Jesus come to us? The sentence which Myron gave us outlines the way.
I believe we are inspired by Jesus the Christ, taught by his words and guided by his ways and healed by his power.
What are Jesus' words? We are taught by his words.
The story today is about a worried father,
but the first words of Jesus recorded in this story
are not spoken to Jairus.
They were spoken to a woman in the crowd along the road.
Jesus told her, Your faith has made you well.
Jesus said, Go in peace. Be healed of your disease.
Our world and our private lives are diseased
by illnesses biological, social, and psychological,
from type H1N1 influenza to shooting wars.
Jesus teaches us that the starting point to health
is being full of faith, being faithful.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we hear the words,
Your faith has made you well.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we hear the words,
Go in peace.
It was only later that Jesus turned again to Jairus
and said to him, Do not fear, only believe.
By this time, people had come from the house to tell Jairus
that it was too late for healing, that his child was dead.
But Jesus, who had just healed an anonymous woman in the crowd,
said something different.
Jesus turned to Jairus and said, Do not fear, only believe.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we hear the words
Do not fear, only believe
.
So they continued down the road, and they came to the house.
There were friends and relatives there who had seen that the girl had died.
Jesus said, Why do you make such a commotion?
She is not dead but only sleeping.
The people had seen with their own eyes that she was dead.
The words Jesus spoke to them teach us
that we do not see everything that is.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we hear the truth
that more is possible than only what we can see.
Jesus went up to the daughter and said, Little girl, get up.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we act on the message
that more is possible than only what we can see.
Then Jesus said, give her something to eat.
I think I remember another preacher painting a word picture
of what was happening in the house when the little girl stood up.
There was joy, excitement, amazement, and surprise.
The girl was standing there, still weak from her illness,
and everyone was looking at her, pointing at her,
talking about her, and not really paying any attention to her.
So Jesus said, give her something to eat.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we hear his call
to be useful to those near us.
What are Jesus' ways? We are guided by his ways.
Jesus went with Jairus. In turning to go with Jairus, Jesus was being faithful: faithful to his own mission and faithful to the distraught father who had come to him pleading for help. Sometimes I think it was easier for Jesus to be faithful to Jairus because he already knew that the man's daughter would live. Then again, Jesus also knew that by helping Jairus he was going down a road along which people would ridicule him, and then fear him, and finally kill him. Jesus knew that life would be better despite the setbacks, that God's kingdom would be more real in human life, because he was faithfully doing what he could to help. And we know this, too. We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we faithfully go with those who plead for our help.
When the woman came to Jesus in the crowd and touched him, Jesus turned around in the crowd, looking for the woman who had touched his clothes. But if Jesus is being faithful to Jairus, why does he stop and look around? The woman was healed instantly; that work was done, and Jairus' daughter was on the point of death. Why delay to search the crowd for this one woman? It is in fact precisely because Jesus is faithful to helping Jairus that he stops and searches out this woman. Jairus is already at the edge of despair. By now his friends may have set out from his house carrying the news of his daughter's death. It is for Jairus' sake that Jesus stopped. It is so that Jairus can see Jesus's power, so Jairus can remain faithful to his daughter. We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we are alert for the opportunities presented by the actions of others.
At last we reach the climax of the story. What did Jesus do then? Jesus took the girl by the hand and spoke to her. We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when we reach out and touch another life.
How many of you are parents? How many of you have lost a daughter? Those are the ones who understand Jairus.
My parents were among those who understood the death of a little girl. My sister died in the ambulance during the last polio epidemic in 1955. No one came to the hospital room afterward and told my sister to get up. Where was the power of Jesus? Yet any of you who knew my parents know that the power of Jesus was in my parents' lives. My parents carried the scars of their loss to their dying days, but they were healed. They breathed in the Spirit of Jesus and they were faithful to others.
We breathe the Spirit of Jesus when our lives testify that more is possible than what we can see and hear, more is possible than what we can do, more is possible than what we can say.
What is the power of Jesus the Christ? We see his power in the story of the anonymous woman. We see his power in the story of Jairus. We see his power in the stories of our own lives. What is the power of Jesus?
Breathe in the Spirit of Jesus. We are inspired by Jesus the Christ. We are healed by his power.
Weekly, we who gather at West Side Moravian refer to Jesus as a lamb – our lamb of sacrifice, the one who yielded to death for our benefit. But we do not stop with that image, for in that act of giving up Jesus showed his power. We say Jesus is our lamb, but we also say, our lamb has conquered.
When we breathe the Spirit of Jesus, our lives testify that we can see and hear some small part of what is possible. When we breathe the Spirit of Jesus, our words testify to that small bit of the Truth which we can express. When we breathe the Spirit of Jesus, our lives show that we will do some little part of all that is possible.
I believe we are inspired by Jesus the Christ, taught by his words and guided by his ways and healed by his power.
Jesus healed the woman on the road of her illness.
Jesus healed Jairus of his fear.
Jesus raised the little girl from death.
And Jesus said, give her something to eat.
1 Myron Talcott, personal communication, 1 May 2009.