As well as the audio recording, here is a full transcript of the Bible reading and Bishop Pete’s excellent sermon.
Luke 8: 40-56 (NIV)
Now when Jesus returned, a crowd welcomed him, for they were all expecting him. Then a man named Jairus, a synagogue leader, came and fell at Jesus’ feet, pleading with him to come to his house because his only daughter, a girl of about twelve, was dying.
As Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him. And a woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak, and immediately her bleeding stopped.
‘Who touched me?’ Jesus asked.
When they all denied it, Peter said, ‘Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.’
But Jesus said, ‘Someone touched me; I know that power has gone out from me.’
Then the woman, seeing that she could not go unnoticed, came trembling and fell at his feet. In the presence of all the people, she told why she had touched him and how she had been instantly healed. Then he said to her, ‘Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace.’
While Jesus was still speaking, someone came from the house of Jairus, the synagogue leader. ‘Your daughter is dead,’ he said. ‘Don’t bother the teacher anymore.’
Hearing this, Jesus said to Jairus, ‘Don’t be afraid; just believe, and she will be healed.’
When he arrived at the house of Jairus, he did not let anyone go in with him except Peter, John and James, and the child’s father and mother. Meanwhile, all the people were wailing and mourning for her. ‘Stop wailing,’ Jesus said. ‘She is not dead but asleep.’
They laughed at him, knowing that she was dead. But he took her by the hand and said, ‘My child, get up!’ Her spirit returned, and at once she stood up. Then Jesus told them to give her something to eat. Her parents were astonished, but he ordered them not to tell anyone what had happened.
The late great Billy Graham, who, as it happens, died the very week I was here last time, in February 2018, used to tell a story against himself. He used to say that he had once heard another evangelist say that every born-again Christian, on waking up in the morning, should fling back the bedclothes, stride across the bedroom, throw open the bedroom window, take a deep breath, and say, “In Christ I am a Super Conqueror!” So Billy thought he should at least give this a try, so the following morning, he used to say, he had pushed back his duvet, stumbled out of bed, hobbled across to the window, leant on the window enough for it to open a crack, took half a breath, and said, “I need a cup of coffee!”
I love that story not just because I also need a cup of coffee before I can get going in the morning, but because it shows up Billy Graham for what he really was, which is to say, an ordinary human being. I admire him all the more for the capacity he had to tell that story against himself, and it gives me hope because it was that Billy Graham, who had difficulty getting up in the morning, who by the grace of God was used in such an extraordinary way as a servant of our Lord Jesus. It was by grace that he met with God and by grace that he was able to be an agent whereby hundreds of thousands of other people came to meet with God too. It was by grace that he himself throughout the course of that long life grew daily more and more into the likeness of his saviour Jesus, and it was by grace that he was enabled to help other people grow into the likeness of Jesus.
As we return to this Bible passage which we’ve just heard read, I want to suggest to you that it is actually only in your ordinary everyday-ness that you will meet with God. And in your everyday-ness that God will pour out his Spirit upon you so that you can grow in him. It’s the real you that God loves; it is the real you that God calls; it is upon the real you that God gives his Holy ...
