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May be given to me to speak in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen. Please do be seated.
There are many things that I read the Scriptures for.
Comfort, wisdom and insight into the ever-developing relationship between humanity and God.
One thing I tend to not look for however are gaths
But on our gospel reading Saint Mark gives a throw away line which is such a understatement that I can help but smile every time I read it
Because it does sound like a joke
And he could do no deed of power
that expect that he laid his hands on a few sick people
and cured them
Medicine has come quite a way since the first century,
but even the best doctor in the world
can heal a patient with a touch.
And I should know, I'm married to the best doctor in the world.
Jesus touching a few sick people
and making them well should, by any standard,
count as a great deed of power.
Surely, the gospels are full of accounts of Jesus touching people who are sick.
Disabled, even dead and making them well.
But unlike in this strange account from Saint Mark,
those deeds were praised as multi-acts of God,
and Jesus was hailed as the Messiah because of them.
But in Nazareth's hometown,
those same deeds touching a few sick people and making them well
are dismissed by Saint Mark with a casual aside,
as if Jesus is handing out a scrap of bread,
not miraculously touching people and healing them with a word.
Why did Saint Mark suddenly adopt a tone of such benign indifference
that even a young person in the depths of their teenage-on-wee
would feel that he was rather understating things?
Well, to understand this, we need to look at the context,
not just of the chapter, but of the gospel as a whole.
In biblical studies, there's a principle known as the Messianic Secret.
In Saint Mark's gospel, in nearly every account of a miracle
which Jesus performed,
he told the person not to tell anyone else
after they received their miracle.
Of course, they never paid any attention whatsoever.
We're told repeatedly that as soon as Jesus healed a person
and asked them to keep quiet about it,
that healed person ran out and shouted the news to everyone.
But the request for the secret was always made.
For years, theologians have debated
why Jesus would ask people not to mention the things that he did for them.
After all, if you had the power
to heal a person with a touch,
or in fact to heal with a word from a distance
which Jesus did on multiple occasions,
wouldn't you want people to know?
Imagine someone could do that today.
Imagine here in Saint John the Baptist
someone could heal any kind of infirmity with a single word.
The cues would be out of the door.
They'd be down the street, they'd be all the way to the tube station.
There would be camera crews and newspaper articles
and a podcast and social media up the wazoo.
And we know this
because even in a world without social media,
or the internet, or newspapers,
or frankly access to the written word for most people,
Jesus was still a sensation.
We're given account of how he was so popular
that people crowded him in houses
so much so that if you wanted to get access,
you had to take the roof off.
By word of mouth, Jesus managed to gather 5,000 men,
plus women and children, to listen to him speak.
And, I'll hasten to add, they stayed for days.
Not just the 10 minutes I'm going to make you listen to me.
Given that Jesus was already that famous,
given that he was doing things that no one else could do,
why on earth did he insist on people keeping it quiet?
Well, some theologians have speculated
that it was in fact one of the earliest examples
of reverse psychology.
If I say to all of you, don't think of a pink elephant,
I know exactly what you're all going to be thinking of.
So maybe Jesus was asking people to keep quiet
because in a roundabout reverse sort of way,
it would make him more famous.
After all, who doesn't want to do the very thing we're told not to do?
But I'm not convinced.
Aside from this being somewhat more devious
than Jesus' character implies, it would be pointless.
Jesus had more than enough going for him to be famous.
He didn't have to play games with people
for it to be interesting that he could heal any infirmity
by a touch or a word.
So why the secret?
Because miracles were never the point.
Jesus had such compassion for those that he healed,
but Jesus did not come as a healer.
Whilst there were probably hundreds of people
who had their physical lives transformed
by Jesus' touch or word,
if he had wanted to come as a healer,
then that's all he would have done.
He would have given up on the preaching,
on the teaching, on the disputing with Pharisees,
and he would have been a whole lot more effective as a healer
without wasting all of that time
and all of the other business that fills the gospels.
If he'd come as a healer,
then he'd just set up shop in Jerusalem
and let people come to him.
And instead of hundreds, it had been thousands.
Almost every miraculous healing that Jesus performed
followed a similar formula,
and this tells us what the point was.
First, Jesus would ask a person what they wanted.
Always seems like a stupid question
to ask a person who's sick,
what is it that you want,
but Jesus always made the point of asking
so that a person could demonstrate their faith.
Or else, he was approached in such a deliberate
and faith-filled way
that the faith of the person was already evident.
Then, once a person had made their request
or a request had been made on their behalf
and they'd received their healing,
Jesus would say,
your faith has made you well.
Jesus didn't say those words
because faith is a prerequisite of healing.
When Jesus healed a little girl who had died
and brought her back to life
and gave her back to her parents,
she couldn't have had any faith in him.
He said those words,
you have been made well
because being made well
meant something more than being physically well.
The miracles were intended to inspire faith,
specifically faith in Jesus as the Messiah.
People came to Jesus with a hope
that he was who they thought he might be
and a desire to see
if he really could do the things that they'd heard.
That faith probably never more than a spark
was found into flame,
not just for them,
but for the people around them by the miracles.
And then the real healing happened.
The person got their physical change, absolutely,
but more importantly,
they and the people around them
understood who Jesus is,
the Son of God.
And most of them went away
so full of worship
that they couldn't keep it to themselves
even though Jesus asked them to.
And so their faith made them well,
not temporarily, not physically,
but into eternity.
Jesus asked for secrecy
because he didn't want people coming to him
for the wrong reasons.
We're told in the Gospel
that because people went away
and did spread the news about what he'd done,
eventually Jesus' faith spread so much
that he couldn't go into towns or villages
in order to meet with people.
If Jesus had gone into a town or village,
he would have been mobbed by the people
who asked for healing day and night.
And so eventually he had to stay outside the towns
in order to do the job that he'd come for.
And of course, it's understandable,
it's understandable
that if Jesus went into towns and villages,
he was mobbed by people desperate for healing,
after all, who doesn't want relief from suffering,
for them or for their loved ones.
But Jesus knew
that if he spent all of his time
tending to physical needs,
he would never be able to do the thing
he actually came to do,
teach and enable humanity
to come back to eternal loving relationship
with God the Holy Trinity.
Now I know that that is a tough lesson to swallow,
even 2,000 years on.
Personally, I find it really hard to square
the belief that Jesus didn't come back to heal,
in fact that Jesus didn't heal everyone he could
with my belief
that Jesus loves and values everyone equally.
But we only need look at the account of Jesus
at the pool of Bethsaida to know that this was so.
At the pool of Bethsaida,
we know that there were scores of people
hanging around outside of a pool
because there was a myth
that when the water stirred,
if you could get into the water, you would be healed.
We now know that the water stirred
because of the change in the water table,
but the myth was that water nymphs
would stir up the water
and if you managed to get into the water at the right time,
then the nymphs would have pity on you
and heal you with your infirmity.
We told that Jesus went to this pool of Bethsaida
and he met with someone
who had been unable to walk his entire life.
He'd spent years at the pool
and when Jesus asked him what he was doing here,
the man explained that there's no one here to help me
get in the waters when the waters are changed.
It's a lovely account
because Jesus touches the man,
heals him, tells him to get up and walk
to take his mat home.
But look beyond that man.
The pool of Bethsaida had scores of people around it,
just like him.
Did Jesus heal all of them?
Well, if he did,
we're certainly not told about it
and I assume that we would be.
The truth is that throughout his ministry,
Jesus disappointed people.
He disappointed St John the Baptist,
who from his jail cell
sent disciples to ask if Jesus really was the Messiah,
presumably because nothing was being done
to free him from Herod.
We know that there were many people
who expected Jesus to be a military leader,
leading the people in glorious revolution
against the Romans.
It never happened.
We know that Judas was disillusioned
with Jesus' ministry.
We know that scores of disciples
left Jesus after difficult pieces of teaching,
such as in John 7,
unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man
and drink his blood,
you have no life in you.
And we're told many left because of this teaching.
Jesus wasn't.
He isn't the person
that so many people want him to be,
because their goals and his don't align.
And to be clear,
their goals are not unworthy.
Freedom from tyranny,
the right to self-determination,
healing from sickness.
These are all good things to want,
but they're not what Jesus came to do.
As human beings,
we are so good at setting our sights
on what we believe is best for us.
We know what we want,
and we know how to get it.
And often, the goals that we set for ourselves
are perfectly lovely,
and we bring those goals in prayer to God,
as we should.
We lay out the roadmap from here to there,
and we tell God in my new detail
all of the bullet points that he has to meet
in order for us to achieve
what we believe is right for us.
But the truth is
that even if we want something good,
it is not always the right thing for us.
When I was 21,
I was certain that God wanted me to go
into theological academia.
But more importantly,
it was my dream.
And there wasn't anything wrong
with wanting that for myself.
But it wasn't my path.
Instead, I was brought down a path
that I swore I would never walk,
sometimes with joy,
often in difficulty to the priesthood.
Now, of course,
over a decade later, I rejoice.
I have the honour of being able to serve this community,
of serving you.
I have so much joy in my life,
which would never have been
if my prayers for funding
for study in America had been answered.
But at the time,
when my funding failed,
it felt like God was rejecting me.
There will be people in this room
who have asked for things
and received the answers that they hoped for.
God does do that.
And there will be people
who have asked for things
and waited for longer than I did
after the door has shut on their hopes,
who still don't understand
what on earth God is playing at.
Trusting and following Jesus
is not an easy path.
It wasn't for the people
who grew up with him in Nazareth,
who said,
How dare this upstart
from our small town have such wisdom?
How dare he pretend to preach to us?
It wasn't easy for them.
It isn't easy for us.
Jesus sent his disciples
on their first journey
to spread the gospel
with nothing but the clothes on their back.
And he did that because he knew
that learning to trust
takes time and effort.
It is a marathon, not a sprint.
We have very little idea
how those trips went,
but I imagine that they were filled
with all kinds of hardship
and moments where the disciples wanted to give up.
Moments when they said,
Why on earth didn't he let us bring
a bag of coins with us
so that we could pay for some food on the journey?
But in Luke 22 verse 35
Jesus asked,
When I sent you out
without a purse, bag or sandals,
did you lack anything?
They said, No, not a thing.
We are always looking
for the miracle which will fix everything.
The quick road
which answers our heart's desire.
Sometimes Jesus answers that hope.
Sometimes the healing comes immediately.
But there are also plenty of times
when the road that he has for us
doesn't go in the direction that we expect.
Maybe it even takes us
in a direction we don't want to go.
Whether we get our desired answer
or something totally different,
we are called to remember
this difficult lesson.
The miracle isn't the point.
Trusting is the point.
Trust in the one who is leading.
Let go of the things
which you don't need for this journey.
The things which are getting in your way.
Trust even when it's hard to trust.
Hope even when it's hard to hope.
Have joy even when it's hard to be joyful.
And know that at the end
when you reach your destination
you will be able to say
I didn't lack anything.
Amen.