Anonymous Christians?

Mark 3: 7- 12
22 May 2011

It is more than 66 years ago now that the hostilities in Europe, known as World War Two have ended. On May 8, 1945, finally the people of Europe could breathe a sigh of relief and think about rebuilding their lives, let alone millions trying to rebuild their hones and towns.
Sailors, soldiers and airmen from around the world could start their journey home, although some were simply rerouted to the Japanese theatre of War which would not end until August 15, 1945. As serving and demobilised military personnel returned to their countries and neighbourhoods, stories were shared amongst those who served. (The stories were seldom shared with their families or those who did not see overseas service until much later.)They told of the places they had been, spoke of funny or strange things that may have happened in their travel. They spoke of their superiors and perhaps also of the friends they left behind. Some undoubtedly also told of the people of the opposite sex they met and families they boarded with.
But there were a few people who were never allowed to talk about what they did because their line of work was so secret that they vowed never to say anything. In Canada, those who worked in the fledgling radar field had such secrets, as those who worked in special operations as spies. I met one such person many years ago. She never revealed what she did until she was in a veteran’s nursing home in Ottawa, fifty years after risking her life on many missions mingling with German officers.
About two years ago, I read a fascinating book about a special American unit, composed of actors, painters and other related fields. Their task was to deceive the enemy in creating invisible soldiers. Air blown fake tanks and truck were created and parked in strategic places. All the sounds that an army could make were recorded in high fidelity and then projected toward the enemy to make them believe that a large formation was near them. Actors took to the radios and made believe that large military formations were giving and receiving orders for an imminent battle.
It was not well over fifty years later that the story could be told. Even the base where this secret unit had trained prior to going overseas had no record of them until a few years ago. Talk about keeping a secret. And then there is the story of these American Wrens who build a supercomputer, maintained it and fed it with information to discover after the war that what they had contributed to was the decoding of the German enigma machines. They too were sworn to secrecy after the war.
I can’t imagine being that easy to keep a secret for that long. But they believed it was for the good of the country and they did what they were told.
The gospel according to Mark is known for its call for secrecy. Time and again, Mark quotes Jesus as telling some people not to tell who He was or what He did. This morning’s passage is no different. Let’s read it together.
“Jesus departed with his disciples to the sea, and a great multitude from Galilee followed him; hearing all that he was doing, they came to him in great numbers from Judea, Jerusalem, Iduma, beyond the Jordan, and the region of tyre and Sidon. He told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, so they would not crush him, for he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, ‘You are the Son of God!’ But Jesus sternly ordered them not to make him known (Mark 3: 7- 12).”
The question has often been asked, “Why would Jesus forbid people to tell who He was?” Didn’t He come to be known? And if He forbade people not to tell, then why did so many people come to Him to see Him, listen to Him and touch Him? His secret was not a very well kept secret!
There are two approaches to this secrecy. Some say that Jesus used reversed psychology. What do you do when someone tells you a secret? I know some people have told me they would rather not know the secret because keeping it is so difficult. We like to tell others spicy news about others. If that was not true, all those celebrity magazines and television shows would have ceased to exist a long time ago. We simply like to spread the gossip. And we know from all the four gospels that Jesus did enough miracles and taught enough provocative parables to create much gossip. Even if He tried to stop it, people had to tell what they had seen, heard and experienced. And that may have been why Jesus told people to be quiet.
Bu there is another theory about this messianic secret as scholars call it. It was not so much that Jesus was trying to keep the lid on who He was. He was streamlining where the message was to go. If Jesus’ mission was to keep His presence secret, He failed miserably as this passage would show. But if His mission was to let those who were in need to know to discover Him and do His best to attenuate any opposition that would get in the way of the Good News to spread, then Jesus was more successful.
As we travel through the gospel according to Mark, we have met Jesus who hangs around sinners, forgives sins, removes evil spirits from people and heals even the untouchable. He has declared that He is the master of the Sabbath and even dared to heal on the Sabbath. All these things, to the religious person of His day, made no sense. If someone was sick, it was because they had done something wrong for which they were punished. They had committed some sin or other, or they parents or grandparents had. If someone was possessed of a demon, that person should not be approached. They were cursed, probably for who they were or what they had done. If a person was untouchable, they should be removed from the community, lest they contaminate others. And the Sabbath was reserved for rest and worship, nothing less, nothing more. Anyone who did more could not possibly be holy.
Can we really fault the religious leaders of the day when, upon witnessing Jesus disregard for the law of the Sabbath, decided that they must find a way to get rid of Jesus? They approached their nemesis, the Herodians. How interesting company one keeps in fighting a common adversary! The Pharisees, who despised the Romans because they were ungodly gentiles, aligned themselves with a political party that had very close ties to Rome. They had formed their own religious lines, rejected by the Pharisees and other orthodox Jews. They were called the Herodians because they were the party and perhaps the militia of Herod Antipas, the ruler appointed by Rome over Galilee.
Jesus’ mission was not to overthrow the Roman government as the Pharisees led the Herodians to believe. Jesus’ mission was not to do away with the Jewish Law. He came to free people from the wrongful interpretation of the Law God gave to His people through Moses. Over the centuries, religious lawyers had created a vast array of interpretations and descriptions of what God really wants from people and what make Him happy. These had become so burdensome that either one was super religious, as were the Pharisees, or one was a reject and lived in the shamed of feeling abandoned or rejected by God because of all the rule, demands and verdicts rendered by the religious Law.
How many of us, if we fall prey to sickness, or face a negative situation, see this as a punishment from God? I would venture to say that most of us do – especially when we pray for a reversal from the situation and it does not come. We figure that God must be punishing us for something we have done or said or left undone. When we feel that way, it is rather discouraging, wouldn’t you say? If God is our only hope and we feel that God is now against us, what hope is there?
This is the kind of thinking that Jesus came to undo. That is why he hung around “sinners” and the sick and the marginal people of his society. They needed to know that God cared and their situation had nothing to do with being unloved or being unlovable or because God was punishing them for some unknown sin. Bad things happen, to anyone – not necessarily for any purposes or reasons. We live in a world that is not perfect, that is in many ways and because of that, many of us have to suffer.
Yet, despite Jesus’ coming and despite His message of freedom and forgiveness, despite His death and resurrection, how many of us struggle with the issues of forgiveness and freedom that are ours through Him? How many of us publicly shy away of expressing our faith because we struggle with these issues? We say to ourselves that we are a poor example for a follower of Jesus so we would rather keep it hidden so that we are not judged on our poor performance. We quietly wonder if we are Christians at all. We wonder if Jesus’ life giving message is true.
There were no doubts in the mind of so many who pressed around Jesus when he was near the sea. They came from everywhere on the rumours about Jesus that had travelled in their direction. They went looking Jesus and found Him, most having their lives touched and transformed forever.
But we, who are two thousand years removed from this event look with wonder. If only we could see Jesus with our own eyes, touch his garment with our own hands. Then all our doubts and all our weakness would be removed. It wouldn’t be so hard to have faith and be people of faith. It wouldn’t be so tough to follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
What we forget is that despite have seen Jesus, it was much tougher for His followers then than it is today. How many of us will die because of our faith? How many of them did?
No, Jesus early disciples did not keep His presence and His message a secret. They made it a point to spread the message of freedom and forgiveness they had received. Jesus told those who would provoke the authorities about the Good News to be quiet. His time to be killed had not arrived and they should not hasten it. He told those who might misunderstand His actions to be quiet so that false rumours would not spread faster than they already were.
But for the rest, there were no warnings; there were no injunction to be quiet. And the word spread. Has our lives been touched by Jesus somewhere along the journey of our lives, however long ago that may be? If you have encountered Him and made the decision to be one of His own, then know that you are a free person. You are free from your sins. You are free from thinking that God is indifferent to you., You are free from thinking you do not matter to god and that he can’t possibly love you because of your situation. It is simply not true. Christ died for you to prove it. He came for you – whether you are dealing with a setback in your life, whether you live with an health issue, whether your family is together or broken apart, whether you’re not sure where your life is heading or whether you are facing the end of your journey. You have been made free to life to the fullest of life you were made for.
There is nothing the evil spirits like better than to make us doubt the validity of God’s love or of our faith. Jesus doesn’t – and never has – wanted secret followers. To follow Jesus is to be out in the open because He is out in the open. It is to be strong in the belief that His spirit lives within us and will guide us on the right path. It is to live in the hope and the joy that we are free to be the persons God has meant us to be. We are not meant to be burdened by religious restrictions or fears of insignificance. We are freed by the grace brought to us by Jesus.
Where are you at this morning? Are living as a free person, freed by the Good News of Jesus and His life giving death and resurrection? What stops you from being free?