The Sound of God
Jairus appears as an administrator. He was named, titled, and located inside a functioning system. He knew how things worked, when to ask, when to stop, when a situation was resolved. When he knelt before Jesus, it was already a breach of role, but the text does not stop there. It presses him.
While he was still on the way, while the instruction was still unfolding, a message arrived from his own house: Your daughter has died. Do not trouble the Teacher.
It sounds compassionate. It sounds final. But it is not merely a report. It is a deception and a false command. Those who pressed Jairus pressed him to stop searching Scripture, to stop pursuing the call of the Prophet. They said: return to your place. Accept the verdict the system of human words has rendered.
But there is only one Judge.
Jesus answered without addressing death at all. He promised nothing. He uttered the command, Do not fear. Only trust.
With that command, the axis of the text shifts. Fear here is not panic. Fear is obedience to human reasonableness. It is enclosure within narrative walls built of human words. Trust is remaining under instruction, exposed to reality, out in the open, where only living, breathing divine words can give life, even when every visible sign says the moment has passed.
The crowd moves with them. They are practical. They know how death works. They know when grief must become resignation. They are not simply onlookers. They are the stone Temple outside the synagogue, walls built of human words, set against the living, breathing Word.
They do what walls always do. They mark the human boundary. They decide what may pass and what must stop. What they call wisdom is fear of man disciplined into respectability. What they call obedience is resignation taught to bow to something other than God. They are the domesticated gatekeepers of reasonableness, the infrastructure of Herod, the architecture of fear.
They are like the children in the marketplace who said:
“We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.” (Luke 7:32)
They do not listen for the sound of God. They pipe their own tune. Whether the sound is mourning or rejoicing, their demand is the same: respond within our script. The problem was not his music. It was their refusal to hear.
They are the makers of garments, woven out of fig leaves. As Moses wrote:
“Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)
“I heard the sound of you in the garden, and I was afraid, because I was naked; and I hid myself.” (Genesis 3:10)
Jesus emptied the room. Only Peter, James, John, and the parents remained. When Jesus said She is not dead but sleeping, they laughed. Their laughter was not a misunderstanding. It was fear covered, not by God, but by human craftiness. It restored their order. It set a guard around the girl’s tomb. It domesticated the moment. It said: this voice may sing only within the borders of our melodies.
No one expected what was about to happen. No one could later claim trust in his Command:
“And he led me around among them, and behold, there were very many on the surface of the valley, and behold, they were very dry. And he said to me, ‘Son of man, can these bones live?’” (Ezekiel 37:2-3)
Jesus took the girl by the hand and spoke: Child, arise. The text is not Greco-Roman. It is not written that her “mind” returns. It is not written that her Platonic “soul” is restored. It is written that her pneuma, her ruaḥ, returns. Breath that had gone out came back in. Life does not rise from within the human system of words. It enters from outside, at the sound of his voice (Genesis 2:7; Ezekiel 37:2-10).
“Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.” (Ezekiel 37:4)
Peter, James, and John, like the parents, said and did nothing. They bore witness. Life does not come from parents. Wisdom does not come from disciples, let alone stone temples:
“So I prophesied as I was commanded, and as I prophesied there was a sound, and behold, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. And I looked, and behold, sinews were on them, and flesh came upon them, and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them. Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, son of man, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God, Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’” (Ezekiel 37:7-9)
The living breath comes not from human words, but from him who commands the four winds, who commanded the Son of Man to breathe his living words upon her.
Immediately, Jesus commanded practical care. Feed her. Life is not human spectacle. It is divine instruction, followed by silent obedience:
“Tell no one.” (Luke 8:56)
Silence is not secrecy. It is judgment. To speak at that moment would rebuild the stone temple of human words in narrative form. It would turn instruction into explanation, breath into human property, life into idolatry.
Silence is the test.
Like Zechariah leaving the temple unable to speak, the witnesses were stripped of their voice so that God’s voice was no longer imprisoned.
Hearing must remain intact.
Come from the four winds, O breath!
The girl was raised and returned, not unto comfort but unto function under his command. As with the man freed from Legion, return to the path of Scripture is always the assignment. Living, moving breath restored from God cannot be managed by those who witness it. They too are sent back under his command, to love the neighbor.
Luke tears down every refuge at once. The crowd’s boundary-making, parental love, administrative reasonableness, and Jairus’s partial trust are all human shelters made of fear. Life, which came before man, will not be housed, measured, ruled, judged, explained, or secured by the words with which humans try to protect themselves.
Life, it is written, is not from men, nor through man, but from God, through God:
“Behold, like the clay in the potter’s hand, so are you in my hand,
O house of Israel.” (Jeremiah 18:6)
“On the contrary, who are you, O man, who answers back to God?
The thing molded will not say to the molder, ‘Why did you make me like this,’ will it?
Does not the potter have a right over the clay, to make from the same lump one vessel for honorable use and another for common use?” (Romans 9:20–21)
Fear, St. Paul explained, tries to build a platform over God. Fear builds. The gospel dismantles (Genesis 11:4).
This week, I discuss Luke 8:49-56.
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