Mark I: 40-45
Knowing When to Tell…
What do you make of that last line – don’t tell? Honestly I have shrugged off these words over and over as just an arcane add-on. I have also thought that this is an odd statement for Jesus to make and out of sync with the abundance that I have come to recognize through the Gospel stories.
More recently I have acknowledged that I did not understand the final line and I chose to just sit with it. To abbreviate the text and to cut out the last line changes the entire message. It certainly makes the text much easier to understand. Ah a healing story – great! Isn’t Jesus great? Yes and this morning I want us to take time to ask if there is also another message we need to hear.
Mark’s Gospel is filled with don’t tell instructions from Jesus to his disciples and then the Gospel ends with a disappointment that the women don’t go and tell the apostles that Jesus has risen. No doubt the women like you and I are confused with how to read this text and more importantly when to tell and when not to tell the Good News. The people of Mark’s Gospel always seem to get it wrong – telling when they have been told not to tell and not telling when it would have been the right thing to tell.
What is going on here? Is Jesus being humble here? So he heals but then does not want credit for it? That does not make sense given all his other healings before and after this story. Scholars refer to this not telling in the Gospel of Mark as the Messianic Secret. Of course scholars cannot agree on what the Messianic Secret means nor do we need to agree today, but it is still good to ponder this conflict between telling and not telling.
The Messianic Secret has to do with the timing of revealing Jesus’ mission as the messiah. Historians say that there were many self-proclaimed Messiahs at the time and Jesus did not want to be confused with these.
Scholars have also argued over the extent to which Jesus knew his mission from his Father and that he anticipated going before Pilate, being crucified, dying, buried and rising. In such a reading Jesus’ primary work is not all the miracles he performs during his public life. In such a reading Jesus primary purpose for becoming human was to share in our humanity, a part of which is participating in our fleshy struggles and rising from the dead. Then Jesus’ kingdom is not just a new and better Roman Empire that is more friendly and gentle or even inclusive. Jesus kingdom is that we are blessed, anointed and loved into new life through his death and resurrection. This is the Good News!
As some readers have wished to erase the last lines from the Gospel text all of us may at one time or another many have also wanted to erase the mysterious resurrection. Yet we have been taught to accept the resurrection on faith based on the tradition that has been given to us. Even before Lent begins in two weeks time we know how the story is going to go. One more time we will hear the story of the passion on Palm Sunday, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and the early services of even Easter. We do know the story, but do we really know the story? Do we really know how to discern the Good News from the great news and when to tell the Good News and to whom?
Isn’t the story different every year? Don’t we hear the story differently every year depending on where we are in our life? In one of the darkest moments of my life I just could not do the passion and so I skipped Palm Sunday through Lent and went straight to Easter. Although I skipped it I realize now that more than any other year perhaps in my life God was with me in an even more profound way that Lent in my lonely isolation from the light. In my darkness Jesus was at my side.
In other years the passion story was less painful for me to enter and also less real and I could participate in Lent. Isn’t that ironic? Collectively through all my times of absence and presence God continues to weave through my story as he does yours too. I have learned so many times that we can try to leave God, but God never leaves us. His Holy Spirit lives within you and me. Yes the Spirit dwells within us, but do we recognize the Spirit working within us?
How do we know when to tell? We discern. Discernment is a process of listening to the Spirit working within our lives. We discern by paying attention to our hearts, minds and bodies – are we drawn closer to Jesus’ story or caught in our own stories?
Our Anglican theology says that the three sources of authority - reason, tradition and scripture. Contrary to popular belief, reason does not mean that Episcopalians get to do anything we desire and the Roman Catholics have to obey the Pope. No, our reason is to be informed by the Gospel, nurtured by the sacraments and strengthened by our experience of community with one another. Through a combined listening and nurtured reason we know when to share our faith with others and when to receive care from others.
We are human and sometimes we are not attentive to the Spirit working within us. Sometimes our selfish needs get in the way of our listening. Returning to today’s Gospel the leper wants to tell the Good News of his healing, but Jesus asks him not to do so. If the leper does not listen to Jesus and he hears his voice then what can we expect of ourselves who must discern the Spirit working within us. Clearly we have the more challenging task.
Fredrick Beuchner wrote a book called Telling Secrets. Well obviously you don’t tell a secret – right? The book is a true story about Buechner when his daughters were diagnosed with anorexia when they were teen-agers. Buechner told absolutely nobody his secret even though he was burdened by the isolation he felt by his daughters’ illnesses. He did not know how to tell others of his need. He was ashamed and resisted asking for help from others.
I mentioned Buechner’s story to a man in exactly the same situation, a man who was struggling with his own daughters who were diagnosed of anorexia to read the book. The man wrote to me and said, “Joe, I don’t understand this book. I have no secrets.” Buechner did not want to tell his secret, but this man did not even know that he was keeping a secret. Both men were so isolated that they could no longer hear the Spirit working within them, losing sight of the Good News.
It seems to me that these men in their pre-occupation with themselves did not recognize their needs for care. Was either man listening to the Spirit? Was the healed leper listening to the Spirit? Are we listening to the Spirit? One way of knowing if we are listening to the Spirit is asking if we are growing in the gifts of the Spirit – are we more loving, more patient, more gentle?
So as we anticipate Lent how do we use today’s lessons as our spiritual food? I think the Messianic Secret challenges us to listen to God working in our life so we will know when to tell others. But not just listening for ourselves but listening in a way that opens us up to be attentive to the needs of another, their comfort and their care.
The way I read the Gospel story this morning is that Jesus is inviting the leper, you and me into something greater than our own story. The Gospel calls us not just into one healing but the healing of all humanity. Perhaps the leper missed the wider significance of his healing. The leper celebrated his own healing wanting to tell his friends the Good News. But perhaps his healing was not the Good News. Don’t get me wrong – it was great news, but was it the Good News still to come?
Would you have heard Jesus’ instruction in the same way as the leper and emailed your friends or would you wait to share the Good News of Easter? Is there news in our life that we tell when we should not or we should speak when otherwise we choose to be silent?
We have received the Good News already and yet we are not free from the task of discerning when to tell and when to be silent. Our telling is not just about us as the healed leper or the men with anorexic daughters appeared to think. If this were so then we would become spectators to the Gospel story rather than people who are called to be in dynamic relationship with God.
Telling follows our listening and discerning thus knowing when to invite others to bless us. Then the one who receives the blessing and the one who blesses are both healed by the Good News of Jesus words. When the time is right to tell, then Jesus’ story and our story become intertwined as one.
Even in our darkest struggles when we are deaf and blind to God’s healing hand working in our lives, even then we are called to listen, to discern and to tell the Good News.
Listen – Have you recognized the Good news in your life?
Listen – Is Jesus calling you to tell the Good News today?
Let us listen to Jesus and then, let us all go out and tell the Good News.
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