Getting Out Alive

 Ilya Repin, Christ Raising Jairus's Daughter from the Dead (1871)

(Homily for the 13th Sunday of Ordinary Time, preached at Little Flower Church, Bethesda, Maryland)

Like a lot of kids, when I was in high school I discovered my parents’ record collection and listened to a lot of the albums they had liked at my age, hoping to expand my musical horizons. One of the bands that especially interested me was The Doors. I thought their music had a cool sound. Their singer had a charismatic aura about him; he even kind of looked like a secular Jesus. However, my attraction didn’t last long. As I learned more about the history of the band, the darkness of their ethos and especially how their frontman’s life came to a sad and early end, the mystique that they had had turned into something more menacing. As one of their lyrics said, “no one here gets out alive” – and I could well believe it.

In my priestly work in Arkansas, I am pastor of a university parish where, as you might imagine, much of my time is spent working with and counseling young people. Working with students, I have found that the experience I just mentioned is not unique. So many people these days – especially young people – feel an enticement to what is dark or dangerous, to whatever bucks tradition, especially morality and religion. However, they soon find that the reality is much different than the allure. The “sex, drugs, and rock and roll” lifestyle promises freedom and joy, but all it yields in the end is frustration, emptiness, and regret.

In our first reading today, the author of the Book of Wisdom reminds us that such was never the plan of God: death – and all that leads to it – was not originally part of his creation. Rather, it entered the world through the temptations of the devil and the sinfulness of mankind. Through the Fall of our first parents, human beings became enslaved to the experience of sin and, through our weakened nature, we were inclined to all that leads away from God. When viewed through this lens, God’s plan to send his Son Jesus was nothing short of a rescue mission. God decisively acted – in the Lord’s Incarnation, and Passion, Death, and Resurrection – to set free his creation and restore it to life.

We see this laid out very clearly in our Gospel today. Jesus performs two miracles, one sandwiched in between the other. Both of them display his power over death. First, he heals the woman with the hemorrhage apparently inadvertently, curing her from an illness that has ostracized her from her community, has driven her to destitution, and has robbed her of life altogether, for all intents and purposes. Second, he literally raises from the dead the daughter of Jairus, the synagogue official. The implication from our evangelist, St. Mark, is clear – the Lord has at last arrived on the scene to rid his creation of the infection of death and restore to life all those enslaved to sin and its effects.

The readings of the liturgy today invite us to consider how God’s rescue mission is playing out in our world. The liberation that Christ offers is not something just for the daughter of Jairus or the woman with the hemorrhage – he offers it to all. To those desperate, to those addicted, to those fearful or enraged, to those who are spiritually lifeless, emotionally despondent, physically deprived, to anyone who wishes to experience new life and freedom – Christ says, “Arise!” His grace offers us redemption and hope; his love affords us the promise of resurrection and new life. And through the good that he continues to do in his Church – that means not only for us, but also through us – he offers help to those who are in need: comfort for the afflicted, charity for those who are needy, and especially hope for the downcast. Not even suffering and death, as terrible as they are, can rob us of the life that Jesus can give – because, as he showed, he will undo even those afflictions at the end of all things. 

Ariel Amegian, The Face of Christ (1935), based upon a negative of the Shroud of Turin

Perhaps we might consider today: What is holding me captive? From what do I wish to be liberated? Maybe it is something that has a grip on our life, driving us to desperation, like the woman with the hemorrhage; maybe like Jairus or his daughter, it is mortality itself, our own or another’s. Whatever it is, Christ says to us, “Arise!”. We have to learn to rebuke those voices, whether interior or exterior, which tempt us to doubt, to hesitate out of fear, or to hold back for any reason from placing all of our confidence in the Lord’s power. No secular “Jesus” can save us – only the true Savior, who has redeemed our humanity and raised us from death to new life. 

Friends, it may be true that in this life, from this world, “no one here gets out alive.” While God did not create death, he did permit us to choose it by our own sinfulness. But in Jesus, he has launched a rescue mission, one that will bring us to the shores of an eternal life in a world without end. May we learn each day to bow low in complete faith before the awesome power that the Lord has to liberate us from all that can ensnare us and raise us by grace to the freedom and joy that he alone can give.