It is forever until lunch time.  I am so hungry that I could eat a horse!  After lunch, I think I’ll watch endless football.  Some of those pro football players are so big that they can use a tree trunk for a toothpick, and good old Brett Favre has been playing so long that he probably helped God create dirt!  And like most Sunday afternoons, I think I will take a nap.  I could sleep for a year!  I am as tired as 100 men right now because I’m doing a million things to get ready for next week’s Charge Conference.  My stack of annual reports must weigh a ton!  I think our District Superintendent suspects that my reports contain an ocean of fabrication!  He’s told me a million times to stop exaggerating.

I don’t think I have ever used as many hyperboles in one paragraph before!  Hyperbole is such a normal part of our language that we immediately know that the exaggerations are not to be taken literally but symbolically.  I worked especially hard on the order of service today to be sure that even the hymns use hyperbole to express truths.  “O for a thousand tongues to sing my great Creator’s praise.”  Professor Bedenbaugh used to say to us that this hymn was absurd!  Why would we want a thousand tongues to praise God when we rarely use the one we have?  “Jesus shines brighter, Jesus shines purer than all the angels heaven can boast.”  “Take my silver and my gold; not a mite would I withhold.”  Really! Most of us are doing a fairly good job at withholding a mite or two.

By definition, a hyperbole is an obvious and intentional extravagant exaggeration.  It is a figure of speech not intended to be taken literally.  It is a form of humor, a fact that adds credence to my contention that Jesus liked jokes and that He often used humor in His sermons and His daily life.  We know that He gave people nicknames.  James and John had bad tempters and so Jesus nicknamed them “the sons of thunder.”  Simon was as reliable as quicksand, but Jesus nicknamed him “the Rock.”  I’ve never known anybody who liked giving nicknames who didn’t have a terrific sense of humor.  Jesus’ use of hyperbole as a teaching tool would be scary if you took His words literally.  But if you see it for what it is, then His words will help you see what Jesus considered really important.  Just listen again to these words: “It would be better for a person to tie a millstone around his neck and then go jump in a lake than to lead a little one into sin.  If your hand causes you to sin, cut it off.  If your foot causes you to sin, cut it off. It is better for you to enter life maimed and crippled than to go into hell with two hands and two feet.  If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out. It is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and be thrown into hell.”  Just what is Jesus telling us here?

Jesus’ use of obvious and intentional extravagant exaggeration is meant to tell us what He considered to be of ultimate importance.  Nothing is more important than caring for those who are young in the faith, helping them become established in the faith.  Nothing is more important than belonging to the Kingdom of God.  Nothing should get in the way, and if it does, we should gladly eliminate it from our lives, especially if they are things that will lead us to total destruction!

Regarding jumping in the lake with a heavy millstone tied around your neck being preferable to causing a little one to sin, Jesus is telling us that nothing should be more important than caring for children and others who are of immature faith.  He is not speaking about just children, but neither is He excluding them.  People whose faith in Christ is still in the formative stage are very vulnerable to being led astray.  Their immature zeal can cause them to follow some charismatic leader who could be leading them astray into a cult group or into a life of sin.  These little ones can become so disillusioned by being blown this way and that by the winds of false doctrine that they give up on faith all together.

Paul dealt with this same issue in Romans 14.  One of the contentious debates in the early church was over kosher foods.  People of different cultures ate different foods then and still do today.  I saw a television program recently about life up in Appalachia, primarily West Virginia.  The story told of how the people there survived the rugged mountain climate by hunting for food, and the television showed  a big dinner, complete with possums, squirrels, and other assorted meats!  No thank you!  And those Cajuns in Louisiana eat just about anything they can over-season!  I might not want to share those foods, but I wouldn’t doubt someone’s faith based on what they eat.  But that was the case in the early church.  Some folks thought that if one ate meat that had been cooked down at the pagan temple, it meant that this person was worshiping that idol!  After arguing against that idea, Paul’s instructions take an unexpected twist: even though there is nothing wrong with eating such food, it would be wrong to eat it in the presence of a “little one” in the faith who might be led into idol worship after he sees you eat that meat.  “All food is clean, but it is wrong for a man to eat anything that causes someone else to stumble,” says Paul.

So we might translate Jesus hyperbole concerning tying a millstone around your neck and taking a flying leap into a lake this way: Never forget that there is nothing is more important than helping children and Christian novices become strong in their faith.  As we say in our baptismal service, “With God’s help we will so order our lives after the example of Christ, that this child, surrounded by steadfast love, may be established in the faith, and confirmed and strengthened  in the way that leads to life eternal.”

Next we come to the section where on the surface it would appear that Jesus was advocating a rather harsh treatment of the body: removing a hand, a foot, and an eye.  When it comes to things we depend upon each day, are their any more important parts of the body than these?  Break a bone in your foot like I did back in the spring and you will discover just how important one foot is!  Try taking a shower on one foot!  Don’t lose your balance and fall out of the tub like I did.  Shave and brush your teeth while hopping on one foot!  Crutches aren’t much help when you need to use both hands.  I couldn’t drive for three weeks.  The Waffle House almost had to shut its doors!

Break an arm and see how difficult it is to do even the smallest daily tasks!  One of my Waffle House friends wrecked his Harley-Davidson while with some buddies halfway across the country.  They had to transport him and his bike back to Greer, and he was as helpless as a baby.  He said that you learn real fast who your real friends are.  Loss of vision is the most tragic loss of our senses.  To lose even one eye robs us of 3-D vision and depth perception.

Without hands, we could not do important daily tasks or provide for our families.  Without feet, we would be unable to walk from place to place or work.  Without sight, we would need constant assistance.  In short, nothing much is more important than hand, foot, and eye.  But one thing is!  Belonging to God’s Kingdom is even more important than a hand.  Knowing and following God’s will is more important than a foot!  Experiencing eternal life on earth and in heaven is more important even than eyesight.  That is what Jesus is trying to tell us here.  Nothing is as important as belonging to God, doing His will, entering into His Kingdom, and knowing that we are going to heaven someday.  That is the meaning of these hyperboles.

Do you know of people who have used their gifts for evil purposes?  Do you know of folks who have used the strength of their hands to hurt themselves and others, who have allowed their feet to carry them to unsavory places, who have used their eyes to excite their senses for selfish sinful pleasures?  Their hands have abused little children.  Their feet have kicked their spouses.  Their eyes have helped them find drugs to shoot into their veins. Wouldn’t you agree with Jesus that they would be better off belonging to God’s Kingdom than so misusing their limbs and their eyes?  As Peterson translates it in The Message: “You’re better off one‑eyed and alive than exercising your twenty‑twenty vision from inside the fire of hell.”  Nothing is more important than finding our place in God’s Kingdom!  In God’s Kingdom, every small act of caring – even something as simple as giving a cup of water to a child of God – is valued and rewarded.

The closing verses of this chapter present their own problems for translators and interpreters, even though they don’t contain hyperbole: “Everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good, but if it loses its saltiness, how can you make it salty again?  Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with each other.”  One theologian, Torrey suggests that Jesus is quoting a common Aramaic proverb that said “Whatever would spoil is salted.”  Perhaps Jesus was saying, “We workers in God’s Kingdom need to busy ourselves with salting this rotten world.”  Again I like The Message translation here: “Everyone’s going through a refining fire sooner or later, but you’ll be well‑preserved, protected from the eternal flames.  Be preservatives yourselves. Preserve the peace.”  Nothing should deter us from our calling to be salt in this world.

Vision is important.  Hands are essential.  We depend on our feet every day.  But as important as these things are, nothing is as important as belonging to God’s Kingdom and being saved from total and final destruction.  Nothing is as important as taking care of little growing disciples of Christ.  Nothing is as important as doing God’s will. We need to busy ourselves in spreading the salt of friendship, preserving peace.  If anything stands in the way of our fully participating in God’s Kingdom, then we would be better off without it, even if it is something as important as a hand, a foot, or an eye.  Let us go forth, celebrating how wonderful it is to belong to God, happy that nothing kept us from seeing the truth and hearing the Good News!  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

I had a teacher in the 7^th grade who’s pet expression was “A word to the wise is sufficient.”  Whenever she announced a test or made an assignment that she wanted us to pay particular attention to, she would look at us and repeat her mantra:  “A word to the wise is sufficient.”  I would always underline the assignment, knowing that I had better pay very close attention to it!  Jesus had His own pet phrase: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”  That was Jesus way of saying, “Are you listening?  Did you pay attention to the very important words I just spoke?”  We’d better underline it!

There are some predictable ingredients in any student-teacher relationship.  One is that teachers speak and students don’t listen!  Another is that students don’t understand what is being said but they are too timid to ask the teacher for clarification.  A third is that rather than concentrating on what the teacher is teaching, the students are off in a world of their own, daydreaming about who might win the next game or which of them is the greatest.  Good teachers are aware of these distractions and build responses to them into their lesson plans.  As someone has said, “Good teachers tell the students what they are going to tell them, then they tell them, then they tell them again what they just told them.”

This was the second time that Jesus had spoken about His soon-coming death.  The first time was in Caesarea-Philippi when the Teacher had asked the students, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter had passed the test when he responded, “You are the Christ.”  Jesus then began to teach them that He would soon die and then be raised to life on the third day.  He began to teach them, and it was a lesson that had to be repeated many times because they didn’t listen and they didn’t understand and their minds kept wandering.  The Good Teacher knew that He would have to repeat the lesson often for it to finally be learned.

Sometimes we just don’t listen, do we?  God tells us plain as day what to expect if we do this or don’t do that, that there is a way to live in love toward our neighbors that will result in peace and plenty for all of us.  We just don’t listen.  When I was a child and disobeyed my parents or my teachers, they rarely asked me why I disobeyed.  The question was usually “Did you hear what I said?  Were you listening?”  Their assumption was that if I heard, if I really listened, then I would do what I was supposed to do.

Why aren’t we listening?         Sometimes it is because what we hear our teacher say goes against what we expected to hear him say.  During a children’s sermon, a pastor asked the children, “What do you call that creature who lives up in trees, that is able to jump from limb to limb and eats acorns and pecans?”  The children were silent for a few moments, then one brave girl spoke up and answered, “Preacher, I know that the answer to all your questions is always ‘God’ but it sure sound like you are describing a squirrel.”  The Disciples thought they knew all the answers.  Soon they would go with Jesus to Jerusalem where He would be crowned King of Israel.  Armed with God’s miraculous power, Jesus would heal all the sick, and a great invincible army of Israelites would drive the Romans out of Israel, and the Son of David would restore greatness to Judah.  With such dreams and expectations, the words about rejection, suffering, death, and resurrection went in one ear and out the other.  It is no wonder that they were devastated when Jesus’ words came true and all of their dreams were dashed to the ground and buried along with Jesus.

Don’t we do the same thing?  We have such rosy expectations of what life should be like, especially if we decide to go God’s ways.  We hear sermons and read books that promise us health, wealth, and happiness if we will just put God first and follow Jesus.  So we do our best to do just that.  Then we get knocked flat on our backs.  We lose our job.  We don’t succeed in school or in our social life.  Someone we love gets sick or killed in a wreck or on a battlefield half a world away.  I cannot tell you how many people give up on God and on faith because life turns sour on them.  They feel forsaken and failed by God.  Perhaps that is why Jesus Himself never promised His disciples a rosy future.  He said that following Him meant a life of carrying a cross, denying oneself, giving our lives for others.   Someone has said that Jesus’ invitation was this: “Come along with me and suffer for others.”  We can’t hear Jesus’ invitation because we have been sold a bill of goods that plug our ears to where we can’t hear.

We don’t hear because we aren’t paying attention.  We aren’t listening.  We have our minds clouded by wrong expectations.  The scripture also says that even though the Disciples didn’t understand what Jesus meant, they were afraid to ask any questions.  Isn’t that another dynamic of the teacher-student relationship?  We don’t want to appear to be foolish or dumb to our teachers or our fellow students, and so we just keep quiet.  The teacher might assume that we fully understand what we have been taught and so no further explanation is given.  We are timid and shy, afraid to ask questions.

The place where we often experience this is in our prayer-life.  Some folks just give up on God and quit asking God for answers.  They lose faith.  Not wanting to appear foolish, we don’t even ask our fellow students for help.  We don’t do any research.  We don’t read any books or go to any wise counselors.  We think that there aren’t any answers and so we settle for a life of agnosticism or else we retreat into the safe world of fundamentalism where there are pat-answers for everything.  I am so thankful for those occasions in my life when I hit a brick wall, when I did things I didn’t understand, when life’s experiences raised serious questions that I had to find answers to.  I am so grateful to those wise pastors, teachers, counselors, and friends who put up with my questioning and helped me arrive at some answers I can life with, some answers that help me have faith and make sense of this crazy world we live in.  We need to be a little braver, to risk being thought a fool or mentally challenged.  We need to take the risks of asking God and asking others for their understanding and help.  Those that I know who have the greatest faith used to have the greatest number of questions!  How much better off the Disciples would have been if one of them had just told Jesus, “Lord, we don’t understand what you are trying to tell us.”

Another reason we don’t hear the Teacher is that we are daydreamers.  Our minds wander constantly.  Some of you are having your minds wander right now instead of listening to me, and sometimes my mind wanders even when I am preaching!  I hate it when that happens!

My favorite singer Neil Diamond tells about how his mind wandered when he was a school-aged boy in his song “Brooklyn Roads.”

Mama’d come to school

And as I’d sit there softly crying

Teacher’d say, he’s just not trying

He’s got a good head if he’d apply it

But you know yourself

It’s always somewhere else

I built me a castle

With dragons and kings

And I’d ride off with them

As I stood by my window

And looked out on those

Brooklyn roads.

The Disciples’ minds were filled with dreams of glory when Jesus was speaking of rejection and death.  In the coming kingdom, they would each be given regions of Israel to rule. They wondered which of them would get the greatest territory!  They knew that this was not the right thing to be daydreaming about, but they were just so excited!  Their reaction to Jesus when He inquired about their conversation on the road shows that they knew they were wrong.  “What were you all discussing on the road?”  They all remained silent.  Isn’t that just how students react when the teacher has caught them in something wrong?  We all knew to clam up when we were wrong!

The Good News here is that even when we are daydreaming and discussing inappropriate things, God can use even these things for His glory and as teaching moments.  God can even use daydreams!  How many modern inventions are the results of daydreams?  Ben Franklin was daydreaming during a thunder storm and Mrs. Franklin told him to go fly a kite, and now we have electricity in our homes!  It was the daydream about greatness that gave Jesus one of the best teaching moments of His ministry.  “If anyone wants to be first,” Jesus said, “he must be the very last, and the servant of all.”  Then Jesus took a child up in His arms and said to them, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me does not welcome me but the one who sent me.”  Jesus was telling them that human reasoning has things upside down.  God considers the least the greatest and the greatest the least, and no one is more important to God than a little child.

If you think about the people who make lasting impacts on the world, they never are the richest and most famous.  It is the humble who leave their mark.  It is Mother Teresa and not a pope.  It is a humble George Washington who refused to be proclaimed America’s king who is remembered, not the names of the kings of England.  Those who were willing to strive to be last come first to our minds when we give thanks to God for human examples.  It is the man who died on a cross and not Augustus or Julius Caesar who reshaped human history.  The first are the last to be remembered; the last are the first ones we remember and whom God rewards with His greatest blessings.

Students don’t listen, they don’t understand, and they are too timid to ask questions.  Sometimes their minds wander.  But the Great Teacher knew all of this, and so He repeated the lessons.  He encourages a diligent searching study for answers to our questions, even using our daydreaming moments as a teaching aid.  A word to the wise is sufficient!  He who has ears to hear, let him hear.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

A father and son were talking one day when the father said, “Girl, girls, girls!  That’s all you think about!  Son! Girls are not the answer to everything!”  The son replied, “They are, if you have the right question.”

One question hounded Jesus all His life: “Are you the Messiah?”  That was the question John the Baptizer asked after John was thrown into prison and became filled with doubts.  It was the question the Sanhedrin asked Jesus at His trial.  It was the same question that Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, and today it still is THE question.  “Jesus, who are you?  Are you the Christ, the Son of the living God?  Tell is plainly,” they asked Him.

Why didn’t He come out and answer them directly?  I think it is because there are some questions that cannot be answered with a simple “yes” or “no.”  I have a friend who loves to be nearby whenever I am writing someone a check because he loves to yell out, “Arthur, are you still trying to pass bad checks?”  The answer is neither “yes” nor “no.” I don’t think I’ve never written a bad check.  I’ve always known how much money I don’t have!

In Jesus’ day, the term “messiah” was so loaded with political and military preconceptions and misconceptions that a simple yes-no answer would not have been accurate.  Some people were looking for another leader like King David.  Others were looking for another Moses or another prophet like Elijah.  The Messiah should be able to get rid of the Roman occupiers of Israel, they thought.  Jesus, it that you?  Jesus found these expectations to be rather limiting to His work.  That is not who He saw Himself to be.

In our day, the term “Christian” is also a loaded term, so loaded that I rarely answer the question, “Are you a Christian” without insisting on a definition.  I tell people that if they are asking if I believe that Jesus gave His life for me and that I have been forgiven through His name, the answer is “yes.”  But often I learn that they are really asking something else: “Do you think you are better than everybody else?  Do you think that you are so good that God will reward you with heaven?  Did you have a dramatic conversion experience that rescued you from a life of evil?  Do you believe that the Bible is infallible and meant to be interpreted literally?  Do you believe that science is all wrong and that the world was created in six days of 24 hours each?  Do you wear your hair and dress a certain way?  Were you baptized by being held under water until you turned blue?  Are you a member of the right political party?”  Or like someone described their Christianity: “I don’t drink, cuss, smoke, or chew, or run around with those who do.”  If those are what you mean when you ask me if I am a Christian, then I must answer “no.”  Those definitions of a Christian do not describe me.

Jesus’ answer to this question was so wise that He was able to redefine the term “messiah” at the same time that He gave an answer.  Rather than accepting a definition that would be a political or military concept, He defined “messiah” in terms of oneness with God, in terms of being a shepherd with sheep, in terms of His deeds.  Jesus was God on earth in human flesh.  He is, as we say in the Nicene Creed, “God from God, Light from Light… being of the same substance as the Father.”  To know Jesus is to know God in His fullness – in all of God’s attributes and attitudes.  Jesus and God are one in purpose and character.  Who but the Messiah would make such a bold claim!

Jesus indicated that those whose hearts were open to God would recognize the Messiah in the same way that sheep recognize their shepherd.  Our pets recognize us, don’t they.  Our dogs will bark at strangers, and our cats will run and hide.  I came home from last year’s ski trip with our youth, wearing a ski mask pulled down over my face, and our cat arched his back and went into panic mode until I removed the mask and was recognized by the cat.  Those who are close to the Father recognize the Son, and looking at the Son we see more clearly what God is like.

Jesus claimed a oneness with God, and His messianic work was to make us one with God, to bring us to where we know peace with God.  People frequently like to point out that the word “atonement” could be spelled out as “at one-ment” because the atoning work of Jesus has made us “at one” with God.  A Christian is one who through Christ knows oneness and peace with God.  Do you have peace with God today?  Do you feel at one with Him?  God has put an end to the conflict between humans and Himself when Jesus died on the cross.  The war is over!  You can know peace with God today.  God Himself would give Jesus the highest, greatest endorsement as the Messiah through the resurrection from the dead.

Jesus also stated that His followers could attest to the fact that He was the Messiah: “My sheep know me.”  Jesus was reminding the questioners that as David was a shepherd who became king, so was the Messiah to be a shepherd, not a warrior.  His sheep know His voice and knew who He was.  Because we are His sheep today, we should be able to testify to our world today that Jesus is the Messiah.  We can have a wonderful, personal relationship with our shepherd.

Where did you learn about the Messiah?  Where were you when you recognized Him as Lord of your life?  I was in church, in Sunday School, youth fellowship, and worship.  I was being taught by older sheep.  Thank God for mature sheep who know the shepherd!  They took me into the sheepfold and introduced me to the Shepherd.  Thank God for those wonderful little old ladies who kept me in the church nursery!  Thank the Lord for Polly Smith, Mrs. Berry, Miss Chapman, Mr. and Mrs. Foster, Mr. and Mrs. Fletcher, Mr. Hammond, and the rest of my Sunday School teachers!  Thank God for my pastors and my friends at church!  They help me learn the Shepherd’s voice and helped the faith catch hold of me.

I had a wonderful experience as a child and a teenager at Bethel Church in Spartanburg!  I was in children’s choirs, youth dramas, even one youth variety show.  We went on retreats.  We learned that there was nothing more exciting than experiencing Christ in our lives and helping others to experience Christ.  There were softball teams and basketball games to expend my energy.  We youth couldn’t wait to get together each week to share our ups and downs, to talk about what we were learning about life and faith, to discuss the Bible.  We wore out several youth counselors and put one pastor in the hospital by overworking him!  But while other young people were tempted to try booze and drugs, we were so happy together that we weren’t even tempted.  That youth group produced four preachers, several youth directors, and at least one music director.  Faith is still the most exciting aspect of my life, thanks to those sheep that I shared the pen with!

The Messiah was one who was at one with God and one who was the Shepherd.  A Christian is one who is at one with God through Christ, one who is in the sheepfold with the other sheep.  If you want to know Jesus personally as your Messiah, stick with His sheep!

Then Jesus said that it should be obvious from His deeds who He really is.  He did what God did.  He did what no one else had ever done and He empowered His disciples to do the same.  He and they healed the sick, and we help in the healing process in people’s lives today.  They cured mental illnesses, and the church has always been in that caring business.  Jesus gave hope to the hopeless, food to the needy, and love to the unloved.  He forgave sins, and we offer grace and forgiveness in His name today.  Our deeds flow from our oneness with Christ and our combined strength as His sheep.  Jesus’ deeds testified that He was the Messiah.  Our deeds should testify that we are His followers.  By our attitudes of humility and acceptance and our acts of charity, we let people know whose side we are on.

The story is told about a town in France which was liberated by our army soon after D-day.  An excited old lady grabbed her broom and began marching alongside the soldiers through the town.  Someone ridiculed her, asking her how many enemies did she hope to shoot with her broom, and she replied, “At least the enemy will know whose side I am on.”  Our actions should tell others whose side we are on.  Our deeds should shout so loudly that we belong to Jesus that no other explanation should ever be needed.

“Jesus, are you the Messiah?”  He responds, “Look at my oneness with God and God’s endorsement of me.  Think about that empty tomb.  Ask my sheep; they know.  They were willing to sacrifice everything, even life itself, for me.  Examine my deeds.”  These testify that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.  And the next time people want to know if you are a Christian, you can reply, “Look at the peace with God I enjoy – the oneness with God in my life.  Ask my fellow sheep, the other Christians who know me well.  And look at my deeds, my attitudes and my actions.  These should testify as to who I am and what I believe.”  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt

Now, here is the strangest poem I have ever shared with you folks:

I hear somethin’ sayin’ (Hooh! aah!) (hooh! aah!) (Hooh! aah!) (hooh! aah!)

(Well, don’t you know)

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain ga‑a‑ang

That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.  (Sam Cooke)

I used to wonder why my Daddy made moans and sighs when he was doing something so simple as getting up out of bed, but now I completely understand!  You ought to hear me get out of my car!  Groans and sighs are sounds of work being done, of labor being performed.  According to Mark, when Jesus was healing a deaf man with a speech impediment, He put His fingers into the man’s ears and put some saliva from His own mouth on His finger and then touched the deaf man’s tongue.  Then Jesus looked up to heaven and gave a deep sigh before He said to the man, “Be opened!”  With this detail, Mark is telling us that Jesus’ work took strength, energy, and labor.  Jesus sighed; that’s the sound of a man working.

Dr. Tom Long of Emory University’s Candler School of Theology says that Mark, more than the other Gospel writers, emphasizes the hard work and energy that Jesus put into His work.  Dr. Long says that the picture of Jesus in Mark is that of the Son of God who is constantly doing battle against Satan for all the things that Satan tries to inflict upon human beings.  Everything in Mark is an exorcism, says Dr. Long. In Mark’s version of the “stilling of the storm,” Jesus speaks to the storm as if it were a demon, telling it to be still. The detail of Jesus’ moaning and groaning as He prayed for the man’s healing is just one more detail that Mark includes to tell us that Jesus labors; He works hard on behalf of all of us always.

The story begins when Jesus traveled up north near Tyre.  We are told that He went into a house and didn’t want anybody to know He was there. Doesn’t it seem a bit strange to see how very often Jesus is trying to get away from crowds and plays down His popularity?  Again and again we read passages that tell us that Jesus was trying to get away from the crowds to spend some quality time with His 12 Disciples, to teach just them, to rest with them.  Each time His solitude is spoiled.  There is just no escaping the paparazzi! It is equally interesting to me that Jesus repeatedly told people not to tell others about what He did for them.  In healing the deaf man, Jesus took Him away from the crowd to a private place where He healed the man in private, with just a handful of people present.  Then he commanded those who were with Him not to tell anyone, which of course, they did.  The more Jesus told them to keep quiet, the more that spread the news!  The harder He tried to be incognito, the more people tried to find Him.  Mark wants us to know that Jesus was a humble man, One who did His miracles because of love and not for fame, fortune, or show.  In fact, His fame eventually got in the way of His work.  He was not able to come and go as He pleased, nor could He preach and teach wherever He wanted to.  Perhaps it is good for us to remember that one of the sacrifices that Jesus made for us was the sacrifice of His privacy.  He even had to go outside His own home territory – to Capernaum, Tyre, and the Decapolis because of His popularity.

The story of the healing of the daughter of the Syro-Phoenician woman is one of my favorites.  We are given these details about the woman: she was of Greek origin, meaning that she was not a Hebrew but a person whose ancestors were part of the dominant Greek culture of the Mediterranean, one who spoke Greek as her native tongue, one who was probably a pagan who believed in the gods of Mt. Olympus.  Her daughter was very sick, or as they said in those days, her daughter was possessed by a demon.  Perhaps she suffered from epilepsy or another seizure disorder.  She begged Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter, and Jesus’ response to her is fascinating!  He tells the woman that He is there to tend to the children of Israel who are living in that area and that the children must eat all they want first. Then He adds that it wouldn’t be right to take bread intended for children and toss it to their puppies.  Of all the politically incorrect and insensitive things that Jesus could have said, this was probably the worst!  It makes me want to invite Jesus and that woman to the White House to meet with President Obama, over Southern iced tea, of course!

There are many theories as to why Jesus responded to this woman as He did.  Some think that Jesus really believed that He wasn’t supposed to offer God’s grace to anyone except  members of the Hebrew race and that He learned that day that God wanted Him to expand His ministry to include Gentiles.  I can’t accept that interpretation. I think that a better interpretation is to think that Jesus already wanted to include Gentiles but that He needed to convince His Jewish followers that it was all right to do so, to convince them that God wanted to include these outsiders.  The way Jesus chose to do this was to speak openly to this woman some prejudicial words that exposed the way Hebrews felt about Gentiles – that they were as low as dogs.  His words would have so shocked His Hebrew followers that they would have had to confront their prejudices against Gentiles and then be willing for Jesus to help this outsider.  Still another interpretation is that Jesus was testing the depth of this woman’s faith and her love for her daughter, and so when she responded in faith, saying “even puppies get to eat the children’s crumbs from under the table,” Jesus knew of her faith and her love.  It does seem that Jesus was always moved by a parent who would not take “no” for the answer when it came down to helping the child because that kind of love reminded Jesus of God’s love for us.  Whichever interpretation is correct, it fascinates me that Jesus used this witty little joking proverb to explain why He is hesitant to help a Gentile: “Let the children eat first; then we will see about the puppies.”  The woman of faith went home to find her daughter healed and the Hebrew followers saw that Gentiles were loved by God and that they, too, could receive good things from God through faith.  As one more-politically active pastor than I said about this passage: the lesson in this miracle is that all of God’s children of all backgrounds and nationalities deserve good health care!

The setting of this passage next moves a bit to the west, to a section known as the Decapolis, a group of ten cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire in Jordan which served as fortified outposts of the empire.  Some people there brought a man to Jesus.  They brought him to Jesus.  It isn’t clear if the man himself wanted to go or if he had any faith in Jesus.  He was just carried on the faith of his friends to Jesus.

Philip Carrington pointed out that this passage was used in the early church as part of the baptism ritual.  As the people brought the deaf man to Jesus, so parents bring their children to Christian pastors for baptism.  As Jesus healed the deaf man by uttering the Word of God, so does Jesus through His Church open the ears of those who are baptized by teaching them God’s Word.

Who carried you on their faith before you had any of your own?  Parents?  Friends?  Whom are you carrying on your faith?  Who will find an open door to Jesus because of your faith?  People who join a church do so because someone opened the door for them.  Someone carried them on their faith.  Whom are you helping to find the way into Jesus’ presence?

We are told that this deaf man could talk, but not clearly.  People who are born deaf find it almost impossible to learn to speak, but those who once upon a time could hear and then later on lost their hearing are able to speak, even if not as clearly as the rest of us.  Back in those days they didn’t know how to remove tonsils and adenoids to help clear up blocked Eustachian tubes, and so this poor man could have become deaf due to severe infections.  People who believed in Jesus asked the Lord to put His hand on the man and heal him.

Mark gives us several nice details in this story.  First of all, he tells us that Jesus took the man aside, away from the crowd.  The same Teacher who told us to pray in secret, not to be seen and praised by people but so that we would be seen and praised by God, took this man aside so that God alone would hear His prayer and answer it.  When you contrast Jesus’ actions with some preachers and evangelists of our day, the difference is obvious. Jesus wanted God to heal Him.  But Jesus wanted God to be praised for the man’s healing.  He did nothing for show or ego or fame.  Mark says that Jesus took the man aside, away from the crowd so that God alone would hear His prayer.  Jesus was, indeed, a very humble man!

Secondly, Jesus took this man away from the crowd so that the man would not feel like an object to be stared at. Jesus deeply cared about this deaf man.  His world of silence was confusing enough to him without his being thrown into the spotlight, not understanding what was happening to him.  Removed from the paparazzi, the deaf man could relax and give all of his attention to God and Jesus.  He, too, was free from the crowd to seek God.  Separating the man from the crowd was one of the kindest things Jesus could do.

The next detail that Mark gives us is that Jesus put His fingers in the man’s ears and then He spit on His finger and touched the man’s tongue.  What was that all about?  Contrary to what you might think – that the touching of the ears was the way Jesus healed the man – the touch was a form of sign language. It was all about communicating with the frightened deaf man.  By placing His fingers in the man’s ears, Jesus was communicating to the man that He understood what his problem was, that he was deaf.  Spittle was thought to have healing properties; we still think that today.  The next time you cut your finger, see if you don’t stick it in your mouth!  It cleanses the cut, maybe not as well as soap and water, but it cleans it.  Spittle was used in healing rituals of that day, although the priests discouraged it. But by spitting on His finger and then touching the man’s tongue, Jesus was using sign language to tell the man, “I am going to heal your speech impediment, too.”

As for the healing itself, Jesus looked up toward heaven and prayed.  Jesus knew where His help came from!  He knew where His power and authority came from.  Jesus sighed deeply.  He inhaled a deep breath of air.  In the Jewish tradition, God’s Spirit was believed to be God’s breath, and the sighing of Jesus may well have been meant as an expression of His utter dependency upon the Spirit of God to work through Him.  Then Jesus spoke the Word of God for this man, “Ephphatha! Be opened.”  Jesus, relying upon God’s Spirit, spoke the Word of God to the man, and God’s message to us always has the power to heal us, to help us hear the voice of God in our lives.  What good news this is to us, for we are all somewhat spiritually deaf.  We have spiritual speech impediments.  And someone carried us to Jesus on their faith, and Jesus let us know that He understands our problem and that He will open our ears to where we can hear the message of God, and He will remove our speech impediment so that we can speak the message of God to others.  Amen.

Arthur H. Holt