What's the Big Secret?

Sermon for September 6, 2009 Proper 18 Text:  Mark 7:31-37 Title:  What's the Big Secret? A.  The story is told of a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman whose sales technique was to get his foot in the door of a prospective home and then throw a bag of manure on the entryway before the resident had a chance to object.  One day, however, his trick backfired, because the owner of the home had a secret.  As the potential customer answered the door, the salesman threw a bag of manure into the home, as was his habit.  Before the woman could object, however, the salesman explained: "Lady, this vacuum is so powerful, and I have so much confidence in its ability, that I believe it will pick up every speck of this manure or I will personally get on my hands and knees and pick up every speck by hand." To which the lady replied, "Well, come right on in, young man. We don't have any electricity."  I told you she had a secret.   Secrets come in all shapes and sizes.  There are big, classified government secrets, there are personal, embarrassing secrets, and there are secrets that we can't wait to share. When it comes to secrets, many of us might identify with Mrs. Thurston Howell III on the old Gilligan's Island series, who said, "Secrets are fun to hear and even more fun to tell!!"    Well, Jesus had a secret.  Scholars call this big secret the "Messianic Secret".   In a nutshell, that means that He told people over and over again not to tell folks that He was the Messiah.  Typically, Jesus would work a great miracle, or He would shush an exorcised demon who knew who He was -- all proof that He was bringing in the Kingdom of God with power – and then He would tell people not to tell anyone what they had seen or heard.  The passage this morning is typical, "Then Jesus ordered the people to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it."  Herein lies the problem.  Why would Jesus tell people not to proclaim Who He is?!  He is the Savior of the world – why not spread this Good News?    Scholars have speculated endlessly about why Jesus wanted to keep His identity secret. Some scholars have said that Jesus was using reverse psychology – He really wanted the people to spread the news about what they had seen and heard concerning Him, so He told them not to tell it, knowing that human being's love to tell tales when told not to tell them.  I don't know about you, but personally, I think this explanation is a little weak!  Some scholars have proposed that Jesus had a secret because He couldn't handle all the crowds who would come around Him once they found out that He was the Messiah.  There is some truth to that; He certainly was swamped by both the curious and the needy.  But I suspect that there is something else going on here as well.  Let's get into the passage a little more closely, to see if Jesus' secretive nature had a purpose.   B.  Jesus has moved closer to the Sea of Galilee when this scene opens, but He is still in the non-Jewish region of the Decapolis (a word that means "Ten Cities"). He is easily accessible to the crowds that approach him.  The crowd brings a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus for healing.  Jesus immediately takes this man away from the crowd, to a private place, where the healing takes place.  Now there are a couple of strange things going on here.  First of all, the crowd asks the Master to lay His hands on the deaf man; instead, Jesus takes Him away from the crowd.  He doesn't want the crowds to share in this healing, and He doesn't want them to tell about it once they find out what had happened.  All this is part of the "Messianic Secret" we just discussed. The second strange thing we notice is that Jesus uses hand motions along with the healing.  Most of Jesus' healings are performed merely with a spoken word.  But this healing mentions that Jesus puts His fingers in the deaf man's ears, and touches his tongue with spit.   Jesus also looks to Heaven, sighs, and uses the Aramaic term "Ephphatha" which means, "Be opened," when doing the miracle.  Some translators have been so squeamish at the thought of Jesus' poking his fingers into this man's deaf ears, spreading his saliva about and actually touching the mute tongue with it, that they have tried to finesse the text into something more acceptable.   There are some translations that have the deaf man poking at his own ears -- ostensibly to demonstrate his deafness to Jesus. He supposedly spits before opening his own mouth to show Jesus his muted tongue. The sigh, in this translation, is the mute man's inarticulate way of expressing his plight. But an honest rendering of these verses clearly makes Jesus the poker, the spitter, the toucher, the sigher, and the speaker.   Why, we ask, if Jesus can exorcize demons long-distance with a simple word, does it take such extreme physical measures to cure this man's deafness and give him the gift of speech?  Good questions, and I'm getting to the answer.   Well, the healing does indeed take place.  "Immediately, the man's ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke plainly."  The crowds who witnessed this cure were moved to wonder and overcome with zeal.  Even when Jesus told them to keep quiet, they were unable to contain their exuberance and eagerly proclaimed the news of this miracle all about. The crowd's ultimate conclusion is one that both recognizes Jesus' power and articulates their faith.  Jesus "has done everything well". Now we are still left with the mysterious way Jesus did this healing, and the whole big Messianic secret thing.  A clue to solving these mysteries lies in the Greek word describing the man's condition.  Some of your translations may use the English "deaf-mute", but actually the word means that the man had a speech impediment, due to his lack of hearing.  He could still utter sounds.  This word is used only twice in the entire Old and New Testaments:  once is here, and the other is in Isaiah 35:6, which was the companion verse in this morning's lectionary reading.  Here it says, "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped," referring to the coming of God in power to save the people.  So Jesus performed this miracle in this way to graphically demonstrate that God's Kingdom is coming into their midst in power!  The Day of the Lord had arrived!! You might have heard the story of the little girl who got separated from her mother in the busy department store.  The man saw her crying and heard her mumbling something, but he couldn't quite make it out.  "Don't cry.  I'll help you find your mommy."  He proceeded with her to the front of the store, to the customer service desk, and an announcement was made over the loudspeaker about the "found" child.   While they were waiting for the girl's mom, she said to the man, "I knew you would come.  I was waiting for you."  "Waiting for me?" said the man. "What made you think I was coming?"  "I was praying you would," she said.  "Praying? When I first heard you, you were saying A-B-C-D-E-F-G. What was that for?"  She looked up again and said, "I was praying all the letters of the alphabet and letting God put them together the way he wanted to.  He knows how to put them together better than I do." The people thought Jesus Messiah would come riding up on a white horse to knock the Romans in the head and put the Kingdom of David back together again in power.  But that's not what God had in mind.  God put the letters of our salvation together in a wholly different fashion than what everyone had in mind. C.  So why the big secret?  Why does Jesus over and over again tell the people not to tell anybody what they had seen and heard?  Well, to put it bluntly, it is because no one could possibly understand the secret fully at this stage of Jesus' ministry.  The people got all caught up in the idea of a miracle-working Messiah; they were so excited they could hardly contain themselves:  "The more Jesus ordered them (not to tell), the more zealously they proclaimed it.  They were astounded beyond measure."  These folks were like kids at Christmas.  Kids just can't stand to stay in their room a moment longer.  They just have to go into the living room to see what Santa has brought them, even if it is 5:00 in the morning!!  These people who surrounded Jesus, watched His miracles in amazement, and turned into extreme blabbermouths, just couldn't believe their salvation – their political leader, their Messiah, their anointed one – had come.  What a joyous day! But they misunderstood that the miracles really meant that the Kingdom of God had come into the world to battle the Kingdom of Satan, not the Empire of Rome.  They couldn't possibly understand at this point that the Messiah had to die, not conquer.  His throne was a Cross; His throne room was Calvary.  But this was the only way God could give people what they really needed -- salvation from sin.  The Roman Empire would come and go.  It has settled into the dust and memories of history.  What people really need is a Savior!!  What we really need is Jesus Christ the Risen and Living Lord.  What we really need is a relationship with the Lord.  What we really need is to be forgiven of our sins!! Listen again to the words of Isaiah, and we can see why Jesus had to keep a Messianic secret until after His death and Resurrection.  The words of Isaiah, seen through the shadow of the Cross, say it all.  "Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense.  He will come and save you." Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water."   Another way to look at it is that God is in charge.  That little girl in my previous story was right.  We can trust God to put the letters of our lives together in the proper order.  The most powerful prayer we can possibly say is "Lord, thy Will be done!"  When we live as though we know that God will provide everything we need in the proper way and at the proper time – and by that, I mean God will provide money, job, health, hope, and all the rest when it is needed – then we live out that prayer with our lives.  Paul called this walking by faith and not by sight.  It's not living with blinders on.  Rather, it's living knowing that God loves us and that nothing can separate us from the love of God, and that God is in control.  It's living knowing that ultimately, we can't be in control of life.  Too much that is out of control can happen.  But God is always in control. A frazzled young mother locked her sick toddler in the car while she ran into the pharmacy to pick up an emergency prescription.  While in the store she discovered that she had left the keys in the ignition.  It was late at night, she didn't have a cell phone, and the pharmacy had locked its doors and pulled down its metal shutters by the time she realized what she'd done.  She ran out to the car, and could hear the sound of her daughter crying.  Tearfully, she prayed for help. A few moments later, a young man walked past and turned to look at her in curiosity. "Can you help me?" she begged him desperately. "I've locked my keys in the car and my daughter is in there!" He nodded, and looked around the empty parking lot until he found an old coat hanger that he straightened. She had never seen anything like it — it was simply amazing how easily he got into her car. A quick look at the door and window, a couple of twists of the coat hanger just like that, the door was open. When she saw the door open she thanked him profusely. "Oh," she said, "the Lord sent you! You're such a good man. You must be a Christian!" He stepped back and said, "No ma'am, I'm not a Christian, and I'm not a good man. I just got out of prison yesterday." She laughed and said, "Praise the Lord!  He sent me a professional!" My friends, do we trust Christ with our lives.  Can we let God be God, and be in charge of our lives?  Let's pray about it right now:         Keith Almond P.O. Box 4388 Leesburg, VA  20177 703-344-3569 almond_keith@yahoo.com