Jesus more than a miiracle worker

Dear friends:  This Sunday we are going to talk about secrets.  Our text will be Mark 7:31-37, and I encourage you to take a look at this between now and Sunday.

 

The passage is very straightforward enough.  Jesus heals a deaf-mute, restoring him back to health and wholeness.  Oddly enough, the Master is very secretive about this healing, .  They go off to a private place for the miracle to take place.  And Jesus makes a number of gestures -- touching his tongue, putting His fingers in the man's ears -- to effect the healing.  It's all very strange, closed to the public, almost like a secret society!

 

And then at the end of the healing, with the man restored to health, Jesus orders the people to tell no one!  Like, they're not going to talk about a miracle!!  And so the Gospel tells us that the more Jesus ordered the people not to talk about the incident, the more they did! 

 

Why all the secrecy?  Some scholars say that this "Messianic Secret", that is, Jesus' reticence to tell about certain incidents, was done to keep the crowd size to a managable level.  Certainly that may be true, but it didn't seem to work.  The size of the crowd seeking the Master was enormous!  Some scholars say this Messianic Secret was reverse psychology.  You know, when you tell someone not to do something, they usually go right out and do it.  But I think there is a simpler explanation.

 

Perhaps Jesus wanted the miracle kept a secret because no one would understand who Jesus really is by just watching the miracle.  To the crowd, a miracle per se might just indicate that Jesus is the powerful conquering Messiah, ready to take away all their problems and restore the Jewish Kingdom of old by kicking out the Romans.  But Jesus' Messiahship can't be understood without the reality of the Cross.  By looking at the miracles He did through the vantage point of the Cross, we see Him ushering in God's Kingdom -- a Kingdom of transformed lives -- by being a suffering servant. 

 

This Sunday we're going to talk about all this, and what it has to do with each one of us.  Have a blessed holiday weekend, and I'll see you Sunday!!