Ponette learns from her young cousins that Jesus brought a little girl back from the dead with the “magic words,” talitha koum--Aramaic in today’s Gospel for, “Young woman, arise.” She then decides to try the words herself in order to bring back her mother. Of course, she fails. And her valiant attempts rip our hearts in two as we watch. What makes Ponette such a heart-wrenching story about grief is the contrast between Ponette’s unshakeable yet misinformed faith, and the harsh reality of death that we, the adult viewers, know she must accept. Like her father and her aunt and her teachers, we know that her mother isn’t going to come back to her, at least in this world, for her mother is dead. But Ponette refuses to give up.
When she chooses to sit and wait for her mother rather than to play with her young cousin, even he warns her: “Dead people don’t come back.”
Ponette patiently explains, “Jesus did it for his friends. I’m more than a friend. I’m the daughter of my mommy.”
“Gran’pa never came back,” argues her cousin.
“That’s because no one was waiting for him,” counters Ponette with certainty.
In scene after scene, I wanted to shout to her, “No, Ponette, it’s too late. Give up. Go play with your cousins. Live your life. God hears your grief, but it’s not going to bring back your mother to you. Please don’t keep waiting for something that’s not going to happen.”
We live in a world in which it’s often too late. It’s too late to hug a loved one who has died. It’s too late to return to a pre-pandemic world. It’s too late to have taken that other life path 30 years ago. When we feel the rush of time heading into the moment of “too late,” we panic. We try to hold back the time that is slipping inexorably through our fingers. Just as Ponette sobs and claws at the earth on her mother’s grave, trying to dig a pathway to the one that she loves, we claw at time. We try to tunnel our way past the blur of events in our lives that are so quickly becoming “too late,” in order to reach some kind of better resolution.
In our Gospel story, both Jairus and the bleeding woman act under the looming threat of “too late.” The woman with the hemorrhage has already spent all of her money over the past twelve years, seeking a cure for her affliction. Nothing has worked. She’s at the end of her rope. Her bleeding has made her unclean, a total outcast in her community, as feared and despised as a leper. Like Ponette, digging her way through the grave to her mother, the bleeding woman grabs at Jesus’ cloak as he passes, reaching out in total desperation for a last bit of hope. If this story weren’t in the Bible, I’d want to cry out to her just like I did to Ponette: “Stop, you’ll just make a fool of yourself. Such desperation won’t get you anywhere!”
Jairus, too, while as wealthy and respected as the bleeding woman is poor and outcast, is also just as desperate. He, a leader of the synagogue, is frantic enough to throw himself at the feet of a poor, itinerant teacher and beg him to come and heal his daughter. When Jesus accepts and then tarries to help the woman, letting valuable time slip away, Jairus must have been beside himself with impatience and anxiety. “My little daughter is dying,” he must have felt like shouting at Jesus. “Hurry, before it is too late!” Alongside this grief-stricken father, we too plead, “Oh no! The little girl is going to die. Jesus, hurry up! Don’t let her die! Don’t let it be too late!”
It’s never too late for the healing, saving power of God’s love, says Mark, by weaving together these two stories of desperation. This is the Good News of our Gospel. It’s not too late for the daughter of a powerful, theologically educated man, who publicly asks Jesus for help. Nor is it too late for a poor, powerless woman who dares approach Jesus only secretly. No matter who we are or how we approach him, the healing that Jesus offers is poured out on every kind and manner of human being. Jesus’ touch brings abundant life out of living death, and it is never too late.
“But wait,” you must thinking. “That all sounds nice and pious in a sermon. But how can you say that it is never too late when four-year-olds lose their mothers? When sin and death hound us every day? We know better than to fall for such pie-in-the-sky happy endings in real life."
The trouble is that we tend to treat individual healings like some kind of magic. Like Ponette, confusing “talitha koum” for “abracadabra,” we focus on the amazing feats, the suspension of the laws of nature in Jesus’ miracles:
“Wow, Jesus heals someone who just barely touches the edge of his cloak. How does he do that?!” we wonder.
“Wow, he raises a little girl from the dead,” we squeal.
Mark, however, knows that this is the path to misunderstanding. That’s why Mark’s Jesus always insists that no one, neither the one who was healed nor the bystanders, should spread the news about the healings that Jesus has just done. Jesus doesn’t want people to see him as simply a cool worker of wonders who puts on a good show. Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord who has come to defeat the powers of both Sin and Death once and for all. The miracle cures that happen during Jesus’ lifetime are just signs of what happens at the end of his story; they are previews of the power of resurrection. It’s no accident that Mark points out that Jairus’ daughter is “merely sleeping,” the code word in his early Christian community for the death that leads to resurrection. It is no accident that Jesus says, “Little girl, arise,” instead of “little girl, get up.” He is choosing the same word used for his own arising from the dead.
Seen apart from crucifixion and resurrection, Jesus’ miracle stories are only sensational stories. But seen as part of a dawning new creation, they transform the present by way of the future. We only understand their true power after we know the end of Jesus' story. In our lives, the choice isn’t between the blind belief in magic words or deeds and the hopeless resignation that all is lost. In our lives, the small glimpses of God’s healing power that we grasp all around us open us to a familiar Easter ending, an ending that we are invited to live out in the present, an ending which makes the present never too late. I’ve been upset this week in hearing about the unreported and suspicious deaths of at least one thousand Native American children in those Church-run orphanages in Canada. I wish that I could shout, “Talitha Koum!” and have those children rise up from their graves to live their lives in the way and in the place that they were meant to live them. I can’t do that, but it’s not too late. It’s not too late for me to ask forgiveness for the evil done on my behalf; it’s not too late for me to speak the truth, to make reparation, to create a world where the dignity of every human being is truly respected. It’s not too late to join Jesus in healing action, to commit to God’s dream of a whole and just world.
In the movie Ponette, the little girl’s mother returns to visit her, “in her body and in her bones” so that Ponette won’t be afraid. Many movie critics snort at the unrealistic sentimentality of the movie’s ending, unhappy that a film that so honestly portrays the reality of grief “cops out” at the end and turns to fairytale. I would disagree, however. I find the ending to be an imaginative Gospel one, not a fairytale one. Ponette’s mother doesn’t come to stay. She doesn’t put the family back together happily ever after. Ponette’s mother answers the grief-filled cries of her daughter by paying her a loving visit. She explains that she is dead and cannot return again. Instead, she teaches Ponette how to jump up in the air and catch a fistful of memories, memories of a mother’s love that will sustain Ponette throughout her life. She tells her to live, to enjoy her world and each moment of her life. Her mother grounds her in a love that goes beyond death, a love for which it is never too late.
In a world in which it is never too late, we too are challenged to live, deeply live, into the Easter truth. Grounded in love, knowing the ending of the story, we can practice facing Death with grief, yet not despair. We can practice moving forward, like Ponette at the end of the movie, with a weary, yet understanding smile-- a smile that recognizes that it is never too late for joy.
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