Sermon: “Brookfield’s Best-Kept Secret”

As I said last week, we forget what a superstar healer and miracle-worker Jesus was back in his times – and we forget how dangerous and exciting his mission turned out to be.  The Gospel According to Mark is an action-packed drama – from the moment that wild man John the Baptist appears in the wilderness – to the end, where the women run away in fear from the open tomb, afraid to say anything to anyone.  Mark chapter 1, verse 1 even provides an exciting “headline” for what follows:  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”  Mark doesn’t waste time with a birth stories or genealogies.

From the very beginning Jesus and his disciples are on the move all over Galilee and in the provinces beyond.  As Sally began today’s reading, “31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.,” it’s hard to get a grip on all those place names – unless you brought your Bible map to church.  If you want to put it on a map we’d understand, it’s as if the disciples had walked from here – if we’re in Capernaum on the Sea of Galilee – up to Silver Lake, when they go to Tyre to escape the crowds.  But then, as we read they return by way of Sidon – it’d be like returning to Candlewood Lake by way of Torrington.  It wasn’t exactly on the way.  They were making a circuit of the entire area, and gathering followers as they went.

Word spreads so fast about Jesus, that he often gets up before dawn to slip off by himself in the wilderness to pray – and when the crowds catch up with him, he and the disciples go on the run again.  We can see why Jesus in Mark is always telling the happy people he’s healed to “tell no one.”  Bible scholars call this paradox “The Messianic Secret,” but in many ways, it is just common sense.  Everywhere Jesus goes, he picks up more followers – desperate people with dread diseases and disabilities, or with mentally disturbed or terminally ill family members.  At times, Jesus is nearly crushed by these crowds, and his success makes him a marked man to the authorities in Jerusalem.  He was wise to keep a low profile, at least at first.  Jesus needed to stay a secret to stay alive.

So that’s why Jesus keeps ordering people he heals to “tell know one.”  And since the man whose tongue he loosened literally could not keep his mouth shut, in the second healing story, Jesus warns the blind man:  “Don’t even go back into town!”  If he did, chances are that even if he didn’t tell, people there knew the man had been blind.  So Mark’s “good news of Jesus Christ” was Galilee’s worst-kept secret.  But why is the good news of Jesus Christ, as we know it here at our church, Brookfield’s best-kept secret?” 

I think we aren’t telling the good news as loudly as we might because we – like the deaf-mute and blind men Jesus healed – we don’t hear and see the miracles that take place around us as well as we might.  Jesus spat on those two men, and touched them, but how can Christ heal our blind eyes, deaf ears, and mute tongues today?  Maybe we need to allow ourselves to define healing in new ways – less literal ways, perhaps, than the ones most familiar to us in this age of X-rays, chemotherapy and open-heart-surgery. 

For example, in my last church, we had one older member who had worked as a research chemist.  He was a well-educated, thoughtful Christian and faithful church-goer.  He and his wife had one son who, after moving to the Bible Belt, joined a fundamentalist mega-church that taught him that his parents, as members of our United Church of Christ, were not “really” Christians.  When I began my ministry at that church, the father (I’ll call him Frank) was already very sick – in his late 80s and in Hospice care for cancer.  His wife (I’ll call her Erma) was caring for him, but mostly she was trying to make peace between the stubborn Born-Again son and his equally stubborn father. 

The son (let’s call him David) began preaching at me when I arrived and didn’t stop even when he was showing me the door.  Before going out, I said, “Would you like me to lead us first in a word of prayer?”  The son looked surprised, but he did get quiet, and he joined hands with me and Erma as we prayed around Frank’s bedside.  Basically I just asked Jesus to be close to us and to support Frank and his family in the days to come.  After that, David followed me to the door – and his temporary silence had ended.  He picked up where he’d left off, critiquing my prayer and saying we should be praying for a miracle cure and that his dad would really “accept Jesus as his personal Lord and Savior” before it was too late.  I don’t think I would have tried to say anything at all to him – he was a tall guy and intimidating – but I saw the look in Erma’s eyes.  She hadn’t said one word the whole visit, I don’t think, except to offer me tea.  But her eyes then were so full of sadness and fear and frustration, and I could see she was looking to me for reassurance.  Somehow I just blurted out, “David, your dad is a fine man, and a good Christian.  I suggest you spend the next few days listening to him.  And be nice to your mother – she needs you!”  I don’t know where the strength to stand up to him came from.  Really, for me back then, raised as a Southern lady, acting that assertive was a true miracle – a gift of the Holy Spirit.

In the days after that – after Jesus opened my eyes and loosened my tongue – things really began to improve for that family.  Frank loved having Hospice at the house.  Like a true scientist, he interviewed every nurse who came to see him – wanting to everything about how the dying process worked.  When I came by, he asked me what I thought the end might be like for him spiritually. And David was spending time with his dad in a way neither of them could remember – his ears were opened to hearing every story from his life that his dad would tell.  And Erma was really opening up to me – this formerly silent and shy woman was literally following me around the house telling me what she believed and how she had come to believe it.  Jesus had set her tongue free too, and she was a theologian!

I wasn’t at the house when the end came for Frank, but Erma came to church to tell me how it happened.  “Bryn,” she said, “it was so beautiful.  Frank, as you know in those last days, was sleeping a lot so we didn’t always know how much he was with us.  And one of those times, I was sitting there and around Frank’s head there came the brightest light – kind of gold and shimmering, in a sort of column that went up to the ceiling.  And this was on that cool gray morning last week, so it wasn’t coming from the window.  But Frank – he hadn’t spoken to me for days – Frank opened his eyes and looked up, only he didn’t see me.  But he said, ‘Erma, do you see the light?’  ‘Yes,’ I said.  ‘Yes, Frank, I see it.’  And, Bryn, at the very end, just before he died, he didn’t open his eyes, but Bryn, I think he smiled.  Do you think he saw it again?”  “Yes,” I said.  “I’m sure he did.  I’m sure he did.”

Aren’t we sure?  Jesus is like that – he makes the deaf to hear, the mute to speak, and the blind to see.  So here’s my question:  Why, if it’s true – if in ordinary congregations like ours here in Brookfield – if right here in the midst of our everyday human struggles, Jesus still breaks into our lives and makes miracles of healing happen – why then is that good news such a well-kept secret?  I have to confess Erma whispered that story to me, and I haven’t told it to anyone since.  People sometimes ask me if I’ve seen healing miracles with my own eyes, and to keep it short, I’d probably say, “Yes.  And no.”  God doesn’t always give us the miracle cures we’d like to have.  God doesn’t always appear on cue – either at the deathbeds of those we love, or at church.  But Christ the healer is always opening our ears and eyes to the God’s presence here with us. 

You and I see and hear these miracles every day – when a sick or grieving person perks up after being given a prayer shawl or flowers or a hot dish, when a person long-absent from our worship returns and is greeted with open arms, when newcomers get a warm welcome to worship, or find their way around back to Fellowship Hall and enter recovery from addiction with Narcotics or Alcoholics Anonymous – that’s a healing miracle – or when our new refugee families arrive and find their smiles again, when a baby is baptized or child gets excited about Sunday School, when a reluctant teenager goes on a mission trip and comes home having discovered gifts he didn’t know he had and friends he didn’t know he would like, or when Yankee Fair committees get up and running and literally, sometimes, seem to spin straw into gold.

All these things find their source in the Good News of Jesus Christ, as it is proclaimed and practiced right here in Brookfield.  And that’s too good a secret for us to keep.  May God loosen our tongues and help us to tell and share this Good News.  Amen.

 

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Mark 7:31-37

31Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”

Mark 8:22-26

22They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him. 23He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” 24And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.”