[Jesus] took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum,” which means, “Little girl, get up!”

Mark 5:41

Three with a Secret | Gerhard E. Frost

“Lazarus, come forth!”
our Lord had said, and he came
to live on earth again.

I think of Lazarus, and wonder,
what was it like for him
to have glimpsed the other side?
Did he become a misfit then?
Did they make fun of him?

And was he absent-minded?
Was he known to chuckle when those beside him
were over-solemn about trite and trivial things?
Was he out of step like that?

Did he hear of the gossip from Nain,
of the widow's son and the funeral that never happened?
And what of the young daughter in the household
of Jairus? Did he hear her story too?

Most of all, I wonder, did they find each other
and beat a path to a familiar place
because they liked to be together,
these three, with their incommunicable
secret?

---

This poem by Gerard E. Frost, who was a Bible teacher and seminary professor, is from an out-of-print collection of his poetry that I own, “Seasons of a Lifetime“. It is a poem that I almost used for this Sunday’s sermon, but decided not to, so I thought I would share it here. It is a reflection on the three people that Jesus raised from the dead, Lazarus (John 11), the widow’s son in Nain (Luke 7:11-17), and the daughter of Jairus, one of the leaders of the synagogue (Mark 5:21-43). This Sunday’s gospel reading tells the last of these stories.

As Frost reminds us in this poem, these three share an “incommunicable secret,” which is certainly true. But don’t we share an “incommunicable secret” as Christians? We who have died with Christ, and been raised to new life? As Paul reminds us in Romans, “we have been buried with [Christ] by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 6:4-5).

Our shared, but open, secret. We have been buried with Christ and raised to new life. And so, we, too, “beat a path to a familiar place,” in our case, the house of the Lord. Where we worship and give thanks, because we, too, like to be together. With each other, and with our Savior. I am looking forward to Sunday!