NOTES for Mar 5:22-6:1
Death. People are ready to believe in the miracles Jesus performs, that is, to acknowledge His tremendous power. But when the word "death" appears, there is no more reason to trouble the Teacher. Death is the end. Even the most terrible disease still leaves hope, but death is everything.
Yet this is precisely what turns out not to be true. Resurrection takes its place alongside the other healings. Disease and death turn out to be phenomena of the same order. Death is not something beyond the world, something we cannot fight because it is immeasurably greater than we are, nor is it something sacred in that sense. No, death is only the end of a chain of diseases that testify to the corruptibility of this material nature.
That is why the two stories of people being raised from the dead, Lazarus and Jairus's daughter, do not have a special style compared with the miracles of healing. Yes, death is a very important event. But birth is far more important, because death is only a passage. To our earthly eyes, death and birth are events of the same order in the strength of the experience; only the sign of that experience differs. And for our earthly feelings, this is how it should be. It is frightening when people do not weep at funerals out of some false religiosity. But when the soul weeps, the spirit must quietly and calmly learn new paths of connection with the beloved person now that there is no material connection between you. This is possible only if we are filled with the spirit of today's reading.
Death is not an impassable wall. There is One who always gives our dead back to us: the Lord Jesus Christ.