For Sunday
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Collect

Grant us, O Lord, to trust in you with all our hearts; for, as you always resist the proud who confide in their own strength, so you never forsake those who make their boast of your mercy; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.
Amen.

Reading

From Mark 7:24-37

Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.

Reflection

This morning we get a pair of seemingly unrelated healing stories. In one, Jesus heals a girl and in the other, he heals a man who is deaf and suffering a speech
impediment. I don’t know about you, but reading another healing story has become a bit mundane. Haven’t we already read a dozen like it? Hasn’t he already pulled off this trick? And, most importantly, isn’t he the savior of the world?

This seems like small potatoes.

It is hard for us to escape reading this without the end in mind. And not just the end of the story, but of the theological conviction that Jesus is not just a healer or the Son of God, but that he is part of the Trinity. He is a persona of God. So, yeah, healing should be no big deal.

What the disciples are experiencing, however, is something all together different. They certainly have seen this man heal people. But they have also seen him compel the storm to stop raging and a legion of demons to exit a single human being. The power Jesus has displayed has struck them with awe and fear.

And because they have seen it all, there is little doubt that this would be something like normal. But there are two new elements in this story. Both of which demonstrate new expressions of power. One is that Jesus manages to heal a girl that isn’t even there and then in the other, Jesus heals two maladies at the same time: something that appears to be unheard of.

And yet, through all of this, Jesus keeps telling people not to talk about it. There are several evident reasons for why he would say this.

1. it isn’t time yet.
2. this is dangerous.
3. the mission could be snuffed out.

But I think there is a less practical but more spiritual reason. Jesus’s purpose isn’t to get people excited about the signs and wonders. His job is to reveal God’s work in the world.

And these moments, when God makes miracles through Jesus, make truly wonderful transformations in the lives of real people. Moments that bring new life.

I suspect that these people are themselves a sign. Like we are a sign when we know the transformative power of God. They don’t need to tell people that a man named Jesus did it, because that isn’t the point of the story. And yet they might try to make it the point of their story. But the point of Jesus’s story is something else.

Wholeness. This is God’s promise for us and all creation. And God’s command.