When he had entered, he
said to them, “Why do you make a commotion and weep? The child is not dead but
sleeping.” And they laughed at him. Mark 5:39-40a
Of course they laughed at him. The KJV
translation says they ‘laughed him to scorn’. This is not the unconscious chuckle
of anxiety in times of tragedy or the awkward smile when something ludicrous is
suggested; rather it is the mocking indignation of people living with their
feet firmly grounded in the real world where dead children are dead, and not
snoozing past their wake-up time. The same indignation might have crawled into the
murmuring of the crowd that surrounded the hemorrhaging women. After twelve years
of failed medical help, all she has left is her implicit trust in God’s power
to heal. Poor dear, the people may have said. Twelve years of misery and isolation, twelve
years of childhood now lost; both of which become the site of the miraculous on
the same day. No wonder skeptics read the bible like it’s a bed-time story of
fables and myths. Laughter just might be the most apposite response.
