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“Say Nothing”
A sermon by Dr. Jim
Somerville
Pastor, Richmond’s First Baptist Church
Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Seventh in the series, “The Seven First Words of Christ”
You
know, it’s the strangest thing, being in a church like this one in the city of
Richmond where our worship services are broadcast to the entire community. Our
media minister, David Powers, tells me that this broadcast, this worship service
will reach literally thousands of homes in the Richmond area. Every once in a
while one of those thousands approaches me in some public place. I’ll be there
in the produce section at Ukrop’s grocery store when someone will come up and
say, “Oh, Dr. Somerville, I watch you on television.” It’s the strangest
thing! It’s never happened to me before anywhere else in my ministry that
people I don’t know would come up to me at a restaurant, at a soccer game, at
the shopping mall and say, “Oh, Dr. Somerville, I watch you on television.”
It’s
gotten to be a little embarrassing from time to time, it makes you think twice
before you go out and get the morning paper. But every once in a while I do
come across somebody who doesn’t know me, who hasn’t seen the broadcast and we
get engaged in conversation and it gives me a chance to do some evangelism. I
try to steer that conversation around, you know like you can steer a
conversation, until it comes around to church. And then I’ll say something
like, “Oh, are you going to church anywhere?” And he’ll say, “You know, not
currently no, I’m not.” I say, “Well let me recommend for you an excellent
church, Richmond’s First Baptist Church, what a great place.”
And
he’ll say something like, “Oh yeah my girlfriend goes to that church.”
“Really?”
“Yep,
she’s deeply involved over there, goes to a Sunday school class, I think she is
in the women’s Bible study, serves on one of the committees.”
“Really?”
“Yes
and you know, she’s crazy about the pastor of that church.”
“Is
she now?”
“Well
yes she is, I mean she’s all the time going on about what a great preacher he
is.”
“Uh
huh, tell me more.”
“Well
about how smart he is and about how funny, about how good looking.”
“Uh
huh yeah.” I said, “You know this may come as a surprise to you, but um, I am
the pastor of Richmond’s First Baptist Church.”
And
he’ll say, “Are you really?”
“Yes
I am!”
“Well
good to meet you Dr. Flamming, I’ve been hearing about you for years.”
It’s
a case of mistaken identity, which is almost exactly the opposite of the problem
Jesus is having here in the gospel of Mark. You may remember that when he was
baptized, as soon as he came up out of the water the Holy Spirit descended on
him in the form of a dove and a voice from heaven whispered in his ear, “You are
my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” If you look in the gospel of
Luke or the gospel of Matthew you will hear the voice of God shouting out from
the heavens, “This is my son everybody, the beloved!” But in Mark’s gospel
these words are for Jesus’ ears only. The second person singular pronoun is
used, “you are my son, the beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” God confers
upon Jesus his divine identity and in the strength of those words he is driven
by the Spirit into the wilderness where he is tempted by Satan for forty days.
In
the strength of those words he goes into Galilee preaching the good news that
the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God has come near, telling people to
repent and believe the Gospel. He comes along the shore of the Sea of Galilee
and calls forth fisherman to come with him, to help him in this work. And
Peter, Andrew, James and John get up from what they are doing, they leave their
nets behind, they follow Jesus. “Come with me,” he says, “let’s bring in this
kingdom together.”
On
the Sabbath day they went to the synagogue there in Capernaum. Jesus was
teaching in the synagogue and if he said anything like he said in Luke’s gospel,
chapter four, then he must have said “The spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has
anointed me to bring good news to the poor, recovery of sight to the blind, to
proclaim release to the captives, to set at liberty all those who are oppressed,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
And
the people were astounded by what they heard and they said, “This is a new
teaching with authority and not like our scribes.” But no sooner had Jesus
finished teaching in the synagogue than a man with an unclean spirit came in and
he looked at Jesus and said to him “What do you have to do with us Jesus of
Nazareth? Are you trying to destroy us. I know who you are, the holy one of
God!” And the next words out of Jesus’ mouth are these words “Be silent!” In
Greek it’s even stronger, it’s something like “be muzzled” or “shut up.” And
then Jesus says to the spirit, “Come out of the man!” And the spirit does and
the man is made well, but his first words were “be quiet.” Don’t tell all that
you know because later on that same day all the sick of Capernaum gathered
around the door where Jesus was and he healed many of those who were sick and
cast out many unclean spirits, but he warned the spirits not to say anything
because they knew who he was.
Here
early on in chapter one you begin to get the idea that secrecy, in some form, is
essential to the mission of the Messiah, that he has to keep quiet to some
extent about who he is and about what he is up to.
He
goes out into the wilderness to pray and while he is praying the disciples come
to him, they say “Lord everybody is looking for you.” And he says, “I know, but
that’s not why I came. I didn’t come to heal everybody who was sick. I didn’t
come to cast out every unclean spirit. I came to bring God’s kingdom to earth
as it is in heaven and the best way for me to do that is to go from place to
place preaching this good news, that the time is fulfilled and the kingdom of
God has come near and is now available to everyone who will climb down from the
throne of their own lives and let God sit their instead.”
“I
came to preach,” Jesus said, “I came to bring in the kingdom.” And apparently
some secrecy is essential to the success of that mission. We find out why in
the very next section of Mark’s gospel.
While
Jesus is making his way from village to village he is approached by a leper who
kneels down at his feet and says, “Master, if you choose, you can make me
clean.”
Jesus
says, “I do choose. Be made clean!” And immediately, Mark says, he was. He was
clean. And just after that Jesus charged him sternly saying, “Now don’t go
around telling this to everybody. Keep it to yourself.” But do you know what
that man did? Just as soon as he left Jesus’ presence he began to tell
everything he knew to everyone who would listen, he couldn’t be stopped. I
picture him going form door to door in Galilee knocking on every door he could
find and saying, “Excuse me, could I have just a few minutes of your time to
tell you about a miraculous new cure for leprosy? His name is Jesus of Nazareth
and he is just down the road right here!”
Everywhere he went he was telling people what Jesus had done for him and in
between he was singing that old song, you have probably heard it before,
Amazing grace how sweet
the sound that saved a wretch like me.
A man named Jesus healed me of my stinkin’ leprosy.
He
couldn’t help himself, had to share the good news with anyone who would listen,
the result of which was that Jesus could no longer go about openly from town to
town. He was so well known, so sought-after that if he tried to enter one of
those little towns to preach the good news of the coming kingdom, he was mobbed
by people. It got so bad, Mark says, that he had to stay out in the country and
all the people came to him. There’s a reason that Jesus told the leper not to
say anything, a very practical reason, if he did Jesus would no longer be able
to do what he came to do. Would no longer be able to go from village to village
in Galilee and in all of Judea sharing the good news of God’s coming kingdom.
He told the leper to be quiet, but the leper couldn’t do it. He had to share
what he knew.
That
was one reason Jesus told everyone to be quiet, but there was another reason
that isn’t quite as obvious.
If
you look at chapter two in Mark’s gospel you see that Jesus went back to
Capernaum where he was healing and teaching and four friends brought to him a
paralytic and opened up the roof of the house where he was and let the paralytic
down. Jesus looked at the man, he had pity on him and he said to him, “Son,
your sins are forgiven.”
The
scribes were there in the room and when they heard what Jesus said they began to
murmur amongst themselves, “Who does this man think he is? Who can forgive sins
but God alone, this is blasphemy!”
A
little later in chapter two Jesus calls Levi, the tax collector, to follow and
he does and a number of other tax collectors and sinners come along with him.
Eventually they sit down to eat and the religious authorities say to Jesus’
disciples, “Why is it that your master is eating with sinners and tax collectors
and thereby violating our purity codes? Doesn’t he know any better?”
A
little later on in that same chapter, Mark chapter two, Jesus and his disciples
are walking through a wheat field on the Sabbath day. His disciples are
plucking heads of grain, rubbing them between their hands, eating the wheat.
And the scribes and Pharisees say to Jesus, “How is it that your disciples do
this and thereby break the Sabbath law? Don’t they know any better?”
In
the synagogue on that same day a man comes in with a withered hand and the
Pharisees are watching Jesus to see if he will break the Sabbath law by healing
this man and Jesus does, reaches out, touches the hand, it becomes straight and
strong again. And the Pharisees went out from the synagogue and began to
conspire with the Herodians against Jesus, how to destroy him.
Good
Lord, what’s happening here? Within the space of a few chapters, this
opposition has arisen against Jesus, this controversy has surrounded him, the
religious authorities of Israel are plotting against him to take his life. If
things keep up at this pace, he will be dead and buried. It’s because he has
this power, this great power that comes from God. And it threatens the little
bit of power the religious authorities have. They are afraid that if Jesus has
more, then they have less and if they have less soon they won’t have any. It’s
because their power is threatened by his power that they look for a way to
destroy him. If things keep up at this pace he won’t last much longer.
I
hadn’t noticed this until last week, but over in chapter four of Mark’s gospel,
Jesus begins to teach his disciples in parables. It’s the first time he’s done
it. But he begins to talk to them about a sower who went out to sow and sowed
some seeds of different kind in different places. It’s a parable they can
hardly make sense of, and later they ask him why he has been teaching in
parables. And he says this, verse eleven, “To you has been given the secret of
the kingdom of God but for those outside everything comes in parables in order
that they may indeed look but not perceive and may indeed listen but not
understand.”
What
Jesus is telling his disciples is that he is training them for the work of the
kingdom. Training them to take over when he is no longer able. The success of
his mission depends upon secrecy and so he is teaching them in secret parables,
coded language, the mysteries of the kingdom so that they may take this great
treasure and share it later with the whole world when Jesus is gone. For the
next few chapters he talks to them and teaches them. He trains his disciples in
the way of the kingdom so that when he is gone they can take over and assume
that role in his place.
On
the road near Caesaria-Phillipi he tests them to see if they are ready. “What
are people saying about me,” he asks.
“Oh,
they are saying a lot of things,” the disciples replied.
“Really, who do they say that I am?”
“Well
some say that you’re John the Baptist come back from the dead. Others say that
you are Elijah or one of the other great prophets from of old.”
“What
about you?” Jesus asks. After all this time, after all this teaching who do you
say that I am?
And
Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the Christ of God.”
And
the next words out of Jesus’ mouth are these, “Don’t tell anyone.” Because the
success of his mission depends in some measure upon secrecy and it isn’t time
yet to break this news to the world. But at this point Jesus is fairly sure
that his disciples understand who he is and he feels free at this point to tell
them what comes next.
“Next,” he says, “the son of man is going to fall into the hand of the chief
priests and the scribes, he is going to undergo great suffering and be rejected
and be killed and after three days rise again.” And they can’t believe it, not
him, certainly not him.
Was
this the reason Jesus led three of them up onto a mountain six days later? Was
it so they would know once and for all who he really was? So that they would
never again suffer from a case of mistaken identity.
He
took Peter and James and John up on the mountain with him and there on the
mountain he was transfigured before them. His face began to shine, his clothes
became dazzling with like no bleach on earth could have made them and suddenly
standing there with him, Moses and Elijah, the two greatest figures from Old
Testament history. Peter, this time, didn’t know what to say. “Lord it’s a
good thing we’re here, isn’t it? The three of us, because we can go to work
right now and we can make three little huts- one for you and one for Moses and
one for Elijah.” He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he was saying,
he was so terrified, but standing there with his knees knocking together on that
mountain, he saw the cloud overshadow the whole mountain as it had to Mount
Sinai when Moses was there with God, and heard the voice of God speak from the
cloud and say to those three disciples, in words loud and strong so they
couldn’t misunderstand, “this is my son, the beloved, listen to him.”
In
the days ahead everything would change. Jesus would fall into the hands of the
chief priests, the scribes and the Pharisees. He would suffer rejection,
humiliation, shame. He would be put to death on a cross. Did God hope to burn
onto the retinas of those disciples this image? Of Jesus in all his shining
glory with Moses on one side, Elijah on the other so that on that day when Jesus
hung from the cross between two thieves, his disciples would not see that image
but this other one- Jesus in glory, Moses and Elijah. And hear again the words
of God, “This is my son.”
No
sooner had it happened than everything went back to normal again. Just Jesus
there on the mountain with his three disciples. They started down the trail and
on the way he said to them, “Don’t tell anybody what you have seen until after
the son of man has risen from the dead.”
I
wonder how they could keep from telling everybody what they had seen. How they
could not race down that mountain and begin to say to anyone who would listen,
“Jesus of Nazareth is the beloved son of God we saw it for ourselves, Him in all
his glory, Moses, Elijah- right up there on top of the mountain.”
“Don’t tell anyone,” Jesus said, “until after the son of man has risen from the
dead. The success of this mission depends in some measure upon secrecy, and in
the next few days things are going to happen that you need to pay attention
to.”
I
think Jesus wanted his disciples to see him ride into Jerusalem on a donkey. I
think he wanted them to hear the crowd saying “Hosanna to the King who comes in
the name of the Lord.” I think he wanted them to watch him confront the
religious authorities and beat them at their own game. I think he needed them
to see him hanging on that cross and to hear the good news that he had risen.
“Don’t tell anyone,” he said when they were coming down the mountain, “don’t
tell anyone until the son of man has risen from the dead. And then, then you
can tell everyone. You can tell anyone who will listen, then you can tell the
world who I am.”
Isn’t
it interesting that those of us in this room know all about Jesus. We have been
impressed by his true identity. We have seen him on the mount of
transfiguration and watched him hang on Calvary’s tree. We have heard his
words, “don’t till anyone until the son of man rises from the dead.” And yet,
so often we fail to say anything. It’s as if we still believe that the success
of this mission depends in some measure upon our secrecy. We keep it to
ourselves, locked up tight inside when all the time Jesus is saying, “Don’t
tell, until… but when that time comes, tell everyone.”
It’s
a wonder that we don’t, isn’t it? It’s a wonder that we aren’t going door to
door in Richmond knocking and saying to people, “Excuse me, do you have just a
few minutes for me to tell you about the incredible things Jesus of Nazareth has
done for me? Do you have just a moment? Could you just hear me out, I can
hardly keep from sharing the good news of this gospel.”
Hard
to believe we don’t do that and hard to believe that everywhere we go you don’t
find us singing that old song.
Amazing grace how sweet
the sound, that saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see.
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