The Storm, and the Little Girl Who Got Up

It had been a long day of teaching by the lake of Galilee. When the evening came, Jesus saw the great crowds all round him, and he looked across the water at the far hills and said to his friends, “Let us go across to the other side of the lake.” While they were getting ready, a man came up to him who was one of the teachers of the law, and he said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “The foxes have holes to live in, and the birds of the sky have nests. But the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” Then another man, one of the people who already followed him, said, “Lord, let me first go away and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Follow me. Let the dead bury their own dead.” Then they left the crowd standing on the beach, and his followers got into the boat after him, and they took him along just as he was. Other boats went out with them. And as they sailed, Jesus fell asleep. Now the lake of Galilee lies low down between the hills, and the wind comes over the top of those hills with no warning at all. That night it came down hard. A great squall of wind swept across the lake, and the whole lake shook, and the waves began to break over the side, until the boat was filling with water and they were in real danger. And Jesus was still asleep. He was in the back of the boat with his head on the cushion — the little leather cushion the steersman sits on — fast asleep, while the water came in. Grown fishermen were bailing for their lives, and their teacher slept. So they went to him and shook him awake, all of them shouting at once: “Master! Master! We are dying!” “Lord, save us!” “Teacher — don’t you care that we are dying?” He woke up, and he stood in the rocking boat, and he spoke sharply to the wind, and he said to the sea: “Quiet! Be still!” And the wind dropped, and the rough water stopped, and there was a great calm. The waves went flat, and the ropes stopped banging, and there was no sound anywhere except water dripping off the oars. Then he turned round to them and said, “Why are you so afraid, you of little faith? Have you still no faith? Where is your faith?” They had been afraid of the storm. Now that it was over, a great fear came over them, and they were full of wonder as well, and they said to one another, “Who is this, then? What kind of man is this? He gives orders to the winds and the water — and even the wind and the sea do what he tells them.”

They sailed on down the lake to the other side, across from Galilee, and came to the country of the Gerasenes, where the people were not Jews and kept great herds of pigs out on the hills. And the moment Jesus stepped out of the boat onto the shore, a man came running down at him out of the graveyard. Everybody in that country knew about the man. He came from the town, but he had not lived in a house for a long time, and he had not worn any clothes for a long time either. He lived out among the tombs — the caves cut in the hillside where the dead were laid. There was an unclean spirit in him, a bad spirit, and it had hold of him so badly that nobody dared go along that road. People had tried again and again to tie him up and keep him under guard. They put iron chains on him and irons on his feet, and he tore the chains apart and smashed the irons, and the spirit drove him away into the empty places. Nobody was strong enough to tame him. All the time, night and day, out among the tombs and up in the hills, he was screaming, and cutting himself with stones. That is the man who came running down the hill. He had seen Jesus from a long way off. And he did not attack anybody. He threw himself down on the ground in front of Jesus, and cried out at the top of his voice, “What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? Have you come here to torment us before the time? I beg you, by God — do not torment me!” He said it because Jesus was already ordering the spirit to go: “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit.” And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” And the answer came back: “My name is Legion — because there are many of us.” A legion was a Roman army, thousands of soldiers marching in step. A great many bad spirits had gone into that one man. And they begged Jesus over and over not to send them away out of that country, and not to order them away into the deep pit. Now there was a great herd of pigs feeding on the hillside some way off, about two thousand of them. And the spirits begged him, “If you throw us out, send us into the pigs. Let us go into them.” And Jesus said to them, “Go.” So the unclean spirits came out of the man and went into the pigs. And the whole herd went rushing down the steep bank into the lake, and they were drowned in the water. The men who looked after the pigs saw it, and they ran. They ran into the town and out into the farms, telling everybody, and everybody came out to see for themselves. And this is what they found. The man from the tombs was sitting at the feet of Jesus. He had clothes on. He was in his right mind, talking quietly like anybody else. The man nobody could tie up was sitting on the grass, perfectly calm. And the people who had seen it all told the others what had happened to the man, and about the pigs. A great fear took hold of them all. And the whole countryside began to beg Jesus to go away and leave their country. So he went back down to the boat. As he was getting in, the man who had been set free begged him to let him come too. He wanted to be with Jesus, wherever Jesus went. But Jesus did not let him. He said, “Go home to your own house, to your own people, and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he had mercy on you. Tell them all that God has done for you.” So he went. He went all through his own town, and then all round the Ten Towns, telling everybody how much Jesus had done for him — the man who used to live in the graveyard, going from door to door with his news. And everybody who heard him was amazed.

Jesus got into the boat and crossed back over the lake, and there was a big crowd waiting for him on the shore. They welcomed him; they had all been waiting for him to come back. And a man came pushing through the crowd. His name was Jairus, and he was one of the leaders of the meeting house in that town — an important man. When he got to Jesus he went straight down at his feet, in front of the whole crowd, and begged him to come to his house. He had only one daughter, about twelve years old, and she was dying. “My little daughter is at the very end. Please come and put your hands on her, so that she will be saved and live.” And Jesus got up and went with him, and his followers went too. And the crowd came along, pressing in all round him, so that walking was slow. Somewhere in that crowd there was a woman who had been ill for twelve years, with bleeding that would not stop. She had suffered a great deal under a great many doctors. She had spent every coin she had on them, and nobody had been able to heal her; she was not better, she was worse. Twelve years — about as long as Jairus’s daughter had been alive. She had heard about Jesus. She did not ask him for anything out loud. She kept saying to herself, “If I can only touch his clothes, I will be saved.” So she came up behind him in the crush, and reached out her hand, and touched the tassel on the edge of his cloak. And at once the bleeding stopped. She felt it happen. Right then, in her own body, she knew that the trouble she had had for twelve years was gone. And at once Jesus stopped walking. He knew in himself that power had gone out of him, and he turned round in the middle of that crowd and said, “Who touched my clothes? Who was it that touched me?” Everybody said it was not them. And Peter said, “Master, the crowds are all round you, pushing and pressing on you!” And the rest of his friends said the same: “You can see the crowd shoving you from every side, and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’” But Jesus said, “Somebody touched me. I know that power has gone out of me.” And he kept looking round to see who had done it. Then the woman saw that she could not stay hidden. She came out, frightened and shaking, knowing what had happened to her, and fell down in front of him, and told him the whole truth. In front of all the people she told why she had touched him, and how she had been healed that very moment. And he called her Daughter. “Take courage, daughter. Your faith has saved you. Go in peace, and be well, free of your trouble.” And from that hour the woman was saved.

And while he was still speaking to her, some men came from Jairus’s house and said to him, “Your daughter has died. Why trouble the teacher any more?” Jairus had stood there and waited, all that while, as Jesus stopped for somebody else. And now word had come from his own house that his little girl was dead. But Jesus heard what they said. He turned to Jairus and said, “Do not be afraid. Only trust, and she will be saved.” Then he left the crowd behind, and let nobody come on with him except three of his friends: Peter, and James, and James’s brother John. They could hear the house before they reached it. That is how it was done then: when somebody died, the neighbors came, and the flute players came to play the music for the dead, and people wept out loud and wailed and beat their chests. The whole house was full of the noise of it. Jesus went in and said to them, “Why are you making all this noise and crying? Do not cry. Go away. The child has not died. She is asleep.” And they laughed at him. They knew she had died. They had seen her. So he put them all outside — every one of them — and took the child’s father, and her mother, and the three who had come with him, and went into the room where she was lying. And he took hold of her hand, and he called to her in the everyday language they spoke at home: “Talitha koum.” Which means: little girl, I tell you, get up. And her spirit came back into her, and she got up. She got straight out of bed and walked about the room — she was twelve years old. Her father and mother were beside themselves with wonder, and so was everybody else who was there. And Jesus told them, firmly, that nobody was to know about this, and they were not to tell anyone what had happened. And then he told them to give her something to eat. But the news of it went out all over that country.

As Jesus went on from there, two blind men came following along behind him, calling out over and over, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” They followed him all the way to the house, and when he had gone indoors they came in to him. And Jesus said to them, “Do you trust that I am able to do this?” They said to him, “Yes, Lord.” Then he touched their eyes, and said, “Let it be done for you, as your faith is.” And their eyes were opened, and they could see. Then Jesus spoke to them sternly: “See that nobody knows about this.” But they went straight out and told everybody about him, all over that country. And just as they were going out, some people brought him another man. This one could not speak, and there was a demon in him. Jesus threw the demon out — and the man who could not speak began to talk. And the crowds were amazed, and said, “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel!” But the Pharisees were saying, “It is by the ruler of the demons that he throws the demons out.”