I love the story of Captain Hook and the nasty crocodile in Disney’s version of Peter Pan. At some point in his life, Captain Hook’s hand was bitten off by a crocodile. The crocodile liked it so much that he spent the rest of his life chasing after Captain Hook, anxious to eat the rest of it.
Now, the crocodile had also swallowed an alarm clock, for which reason he made a ticking noise everywhere he went. Whenever Captain Hook heard a ticking noise, he went crazy — instead of being firm, steady and confident that he would be able to face and even stop the crocodile, Captain Hook would lose his bearings and run scared.
In the face of imminent danger, sometimes we behave like Captain Hook, foolishly running away. Now, there are times when we simply hide, which is as bad as running away from things that may threaten us. Either response — running away or hiding — is bad enough in itself, won’t you agree? They both reveal our deepest fear and lack of control.
But sometimes we don’t run away or hide, we just laugh, and sometimes we even laugh at the Lord! Confronted with big challenges or even big blessings, we laugh at the Lord for the simple reason that over the years we have become so skeptical, so plain cynical, we even stopped believing that a new miracle might happen to us!
Our distrust of the Lord, and of what our Lord can do for us and with us is such, that we just laugh at the Lord. Don’t be surprised — it happens more often than we are ready to acknowledge. You may remember how Abraham and Sara laughed at God in disbelief when divine messengers told them they would have a child even though they were quite old for that.
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Here in this Gospel “incident” a bunch of folks laughed at Jesus — it was the day he visited Jairus’ home. Everybody in Jairus’s home was heartbroken, for Jairus’s daughter had died. The local flute players and mourners were already at the house weeping and wailing for the little girl. Jesus heard the noise and sees all the people, and then he asked, “What is all the commotion about?” “Why are you weeping and wailing? The girl isn’t dead, she is asleep!” — and then everybody laughed at Jesus!
Rather than shouting out of joy, they simple laughed at Jesus – and Jesus became a laughing matter. God’s promise of a resurrected life and new beginnings became a laughing matter. Are we so different from those folks around Jairus’s home? As we just said, there are those times when we too laugh at Jesus for the simple reason that we rule out the possibility of yet another miracle in our lives.
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Let’s pause for a moment – I have an assignment for you. In ten, just ten, and only ten seconds, you will answer this question — what we can learn from this Gospel “incident”? Let me count — I’ll do it in Spanish to make sure I don’t mess up my numbers . . . 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0!
Please, don’t panic! You don’t have to share right now! You can email me later! Or call me before midnight! Since I had a full week for this assignment, let me share my own tentative answer.
Here it goes — I believe that we can learn from this incident is that a narrow, limited view of life translates into a narrow, limited life. Let me explain — if our view or perspective of life is so narrow and crabbed, so withered and shrunken as to include nothing but what we can see and feel and taste and smell and hear and reason, and nothing else, then our life is going to be very deprived and poverty-stricken.
This is how it was in Nazareth in those days — Jesus had been in Nazareth the year before this incident. The had tried to kill him on that occasion because he
would not do what they wanted. Now he comes back again and teaches in the synagogue, and this time they simply laugh at him because he is willing to do more than they would have wanted.
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From afar, all miracles – and this one in particular — are spectacular stories, and we draw comfort as we watch Jesus still the perfect storm, heal the sick, and raise the dead.
But as we come closer to Jesus’s miracles, we may also find comfort in the truth that there is a greater power available to us through our friendship with him. Which is what Jairus himself found out the day he took Jesus seriously and took him into his own house.
“Do not fear, Jairus, only believe.” If Jairus was able to do that, then he would have survived whatever happened next. Even if Jesus had walked out of his daughter’s room with the worst news any father, any mother could ever receive — “Sorry, Jairus, Mrs. Jairus, your daughter is dead”. . .
Even in those circumstances Jairus’ belief would have become the miracle, for now he would be willing to believe that his precious daughter was still in God’s good hands even though she had slipped out of his.
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Stephen Hawking, the famous British physicist whose groundbreaking work focused on black holes and on the origins of the universe, spent most of his life confined to a wheelchair.
A few months after entering Cambridge to work on his Ph.D. at the age of 17, Dr. Hawking was diagnosed with motor neuron disease, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease, an incurable condition that slowly but steadily paralyses all the muscles and causes death.
Not long after, Dr. Hawking lost his speech — imagine a brain like his without the ability to communicate! When an American computer engineer heard of Dr. Hawking’s plight, he built him a speech synthesizer to register the electrical waves produced by Dr. Hawking’s oral muscles still alive. Thanks to this machine, attached to his wheelchair, Dr. Hawking was then able to give many scientific and popular talks, dictate several books and dozens of academic papers.
Just a few years ago Dr. Hawking floated free in zero gravity on one of those NASA flights over the Atlantic where future cosmonauts train for weightlessness – you may have seen that video on YouTube. For the very first time in almost 50 years, Dr. Hawking was able to float free, unrestricted by his paralyzed muscles and his wheelchair — “It was just amazing,” he said after the flight. But such a realization was just part of the miracle.
The other part of the miracle was his child-like wide, delightful smile, a smile his paralysis had taken away from him many years ago. Friends, I don’t know whether Dr. Hawking ever laughed at God –some people think so.
As you know, highly schooled people — scientists and lawyers, doctors and engineers, politicians and teachers, and even theologians and preachers– sometimes laugh at the mere insinuation of a miracle in their midst.
Yet what I saw in that NASA video was a man so deeply touched and humbled by such an overwhelming sense of freedom and sheer joy, that he could not but smile in a way that shocked everybody who had never seen him smile. And I want to believe that’s what happened to Jairus and his wife the moment they realized God in person was stopping by their home.
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Can you keep a secret? OK — no matter how often we may have laughed at the Lord, our Lord still takes us very seriously, so seriously in fact that he is ready to put back on us a delightful, reassuring smile that everything is well with our soul. We will notice, immediately — everybody around us will notice, right away.
In the name of the Risen Christ who has taken us so seriously, to the point of living and dying and raising for us, don’t ever laugh at the Lord — rather smile for the Lord.