Something To Eat

Mark 5.39-43 (ESV)
And when he had entered, he said to them, “Why are you making a commotion and weeping? The child is not dead but sleeping.”

And they laughed at him. But he put them all outside and took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was.

Taking her by the hand he said to her, “Talitha cumi,” which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.”

And immediately the girl got up and began walking (for she was twelve years of age), and they were immediately overcome with amazement.

And he strictly charged them that no one should know this, and told them to give her something to eat.

* * *

There are many things we can learn from this beautiful story. Jesus went to the house of Jairus (Luke gives us the man’s name) during a time of mourning. Lesson: “weep with those who weep” (Romans 12.15).

The crowd laughed at Jesus — the crowd still laughs at him — but this did not, does not deter him from the business of turning death into life. Lesson: Do not be deterred from doing good by the scorn of others.

Christ immediately raised the girl from the dead. Lesson: We can comfort in knowing that Jesus is stronger than death, that in fact he raised himself from the grave as he promised when he said, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (John 2.19).

Notice, however, the understated closing to the story: he “told them to give her something to eat.” Jesus had already gone further than anyone else could have — he performed a miracle — but now he goes even further, a third mile. His concern for this little girl existed not only at the great life-or-death level, but also at a more mundane and very human level: Is she hungry?

Food was an integral part of Christ’s ministry and I believe this is a neglected theme of the gospels. He fed five thousand famished men on one occasion, four thousand on another (“I do not want to send them away hungry,” he had said in Matthew 15.32, “for they might faint on the way”). He once allowed his hungry disciples to pick grain to eat on a Sabbath and defended them from the accusations of the Pharisees afterward. After his resurrection, he even cooked breakfast for Peter and some of the other disciples.

Moreover, he was always accepting invitations to eat — and using such occasions as opportunities to teach. It is almost startling to note just how often Jesus was found eating with people: at the home of Simon the Pharisee (Luke 7); at the home of Mary and Martha (Luke 10); at the home of a prominent Pharisee (Luke 14); at the home of Simon the Leper (Mark 14); with his disciples the night of his betrayal (Luke 22); with two disciples he met on the Emmaus Road (Luke 24). In fact, food was such a central feature of his ministry that he was unfairly accused of being a glutton. (Luke 7.34)

Sometimes we seem to think that we can win people to the Lord simply by overwhelming them with doctrinal soundness. But this was not Christ’s method: He supplied them with loaves and fishes, in addition to doctrinal soundness. It has been said that people don’t care how much we know until they know how much we care. There are few better places to show how much we care than around a dinner table.

(Painting by Dinah Roe Kendall)

Justice is a terrible thing...

Dorothy Sayers and Jill Paton Walsh, Thrones, Dominations (1998)

I have lately been in a reading mood. After reading three novels I was less than impressed with — The Company of Strangers by Robert Wilson, And Then There Were None by Agatha Christie, The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown — I turned to this book. Sayers is one of my favorite authors (her Nine Tailors is marvelous) and I was not disappointed with Thrones, Dominations.

One interesting aspect to this novel is that Sayers left the work unfinished; Jill Paton Walsh completed it, and quite recently too (1998 was the publishing date). I could not tell where Sayers’ prose ended and Walsh’s began.

The novel concerns two deaths, the first an accidental killing because of a misunderstanding, the second a deliberate murder. The hero of the novel is the amateur detective Lord Peter Wimsey, who has recently married Harriet Vane. (The fact that Harriet is herself a mystery writer allows Sayers and Walsh to have some fun discussing the art of writing detective fiction.)

The best parts of the novel are the conversations between the two highly intelligent newlyweds. Sometimes the banter back and forth strains credibility, especially when Harriet mentions that away from Peter she is “just sitting in the centre, like the fixed foot of the compasses, and doing a little sublunary leaning and hearkening” — which (Peter realizes instantly) is an allusion to John Donne’s “Valediction Forbidding Mourning”. He replies with his own allusion to the same poem. (p. 168)

But even though the conversations between Peter and Harriet may be full of obscure references to John Donne and other esoteric allusions, the discussions are often touching. At one point, Harriet asks Peter if it is right to bring a child into the world. The times are perilous; Hitler has just remilitarized the Rhineland. Peter’s reply contains hope and vulnerability. “There’s what we can do for any child of ours,” he says, “and there's what no one can do for any child at all.” (p. 302)

At another point in the book Harriet and Peter discuss Peter’s detective work. Harriet assures him that she thinks it is a very “serious” and important undertaking. She also expects that it is tied to his war-time service (during the First World War) but can’t quite see the connection. “When you have seen people die,” he replies, “when you have seen at what abominable and appalling cost the peace and safety of England was secured, and then you see the peace squalidly broken, you see killing that has been perpetrated for vile and selfish motives...” Now she sees the connection and he adds: “Justice is a terrible thing, but injustice is worse.” (p. 131)

In a day when Al Qaeda terrorists crash people-laden planes into crowded buildings and Hezbollah terrorists fire rocket into Israel, this is something to remember. I enjoyed reading Thrones, Dominions.

Fridays with Red

Bob Edwards, Fridays with Red: A Radio Friendship (1993)

Every Friday morning for 12 years (from 1981 to 1992) National Public Radio’s Bob Edwards would speak with former Dodgers’ announcer Red Barber in a four-minute segment which quickly became the most popular segment of NPR’s Morning Edition. Not only would Barber talk about sports headlines of the day, he would also reminisce about his days as the announcer for the Reds, Dodgers (with whom he gained national prominence) and Yankees, and discuss just about anything that popped into his head — he was particularly fond of discussing his garden, his cats and the Psalms. After Barber's death in 1992, Edwards wrote this little book, memorializing their friendship.

For a brief taste of Barber’s perspective on life, consider this exchange in November 1991 after Florida State lost to Miami in football...

Bob: Are hearts still heavy in Tallahassee this week?
Red: Well, I’ll tell you something. I was around the Ohio State-Notre Dame game in 1935, and the Bobby Thomson home run, and the Mickey Owen dropped third strike and the Chicago Bears’ 73-0 win over the Redskins. And I saw the FSU-Miami one-point game, and you know what happened the next morning?
Bob: What?
Red: The sun rose right on time. (p. 131)

Though Edwards admits that Barber was not always easy to work with, the younger man (nicknamed “Colonel Bob” by Red) clearly idolized his elder. In a eulogy which Edwards prepared for NPR, he noted that Barber “taught us respect for the listener, respect for the language and respect for the truth.” (p. 219)

The book is a must-read for anyone interested in sports journalism. Edwards’ prose is fun to read (especially the humorous little digs he takes at fellow NPR announcers), but near the end it reaches a height of poignant eloquence. “Red Barber’s ashes now are part of the Florida soil,” he writes. “His body couldn't last, but there's not another thing about him that has to die.” (p. 231)