Sharing that bubbles up

Mark 1:40-45

After a wonderful week of Palm Sunday and Easter services, we are back to looking at stories in Mark’s gospel. We celebrated the big events in the life of Jesus but now we return to the stories of Jesus that make Jesus personal and real to us.

A man with leprosy came to him. We don’t really have good equivalents of people who suffer with leprosy in our day. The closest I could come in my thinking of this was a boy in my class in school when I was in fifth grade. That’s when I was about 10 years old. His name was Teddy and he had epilepsy. I saw him once lying on the floor, his lips purple and the teachers had put a pencil in his mouth so he wouldn’t bite his tongue.

I remember coming to school on the bus and he was in a corner by a window of the school and we stood around him yelling, “Cooties, cooties, Teddy has cooties.” I have thought about him a lot and recently I’ve had the desire to try to track him down and go see him and talk with him to apologize for what I did to him.

I’ve wondered how he has suffered from what we did to him? What was it like for Teddy to be subjected to our taunts and insults. What was it like to go to school and have no one talk to him, to have everyone move away when he came down the hall, no one sit with him during lunch in the cafeteria?

Teddy suffered from epilepsy but he might as well have been a leper in the days of Jesus. Like Teddy, the leper suffered not just from his disease, but from the fact that people who knew him were the ones who rejected him. It was people who knew him, knew his family, knew him when he was a boy growing up, perhaps he had even been married and it was his own immediate family, wife and children who avoided him.

The leper suffered from leprosy but he suffered more from the social ramifications of his disease than he did from the disease itself.

The story Mark recorded tells us a lot more than it seems to tell. The Law of Moses states in Leviticus 13:45-46
The person with such an infectious disease must wear torn clothes, let his hair be unkempt, cover the lower part of his face and cry out, ‘Unclean! Unclean!’  46 As long as he has the infection he remains unclean. He must live alone; he must live outside the camp.

A leper had to avoid coming into accidental contact with others so he would not make them unclean, just by coming near them. So for the man to come to Jesus was itself a desperate act. How many years had it been since this man had been an outcast? Five? Ten? Twenty? We have a need to be touched and hugged, to be in personal contact with people. And for however many years it had been, he had been deprived of what we all want and need.

He lived without hope and then he heard about Jesus. Jesus had healed and cast out demons. A ray of light came into his world. Maybe it was possible that he too could be healed.

Leprosy was considered a serious disease and was greatly feared. Rabbinic opinion considered leprosy as difficult to cleanse as raising someone from the dead. Jesus had healed many who had suffered from various diseases. But leprosy was a special case. Could Jesus heal even this disease?

This was a desperate man and so with the little hope he had, he broke the law and came near to Jesus, making Jesus in the process unclean, and he begged Jesus to heal him.
A man with leprosy came to him and begged him on his knees, “If you are willing, you can make me clean.”

What response could he have expected? People often threw rocks at lepers to make them keep their distance. One likely response would have been for Jesus, in obedience to the Law of Moses, to run from the leper and demand he keep his distance. Especially a rabbi was charged with being clean and would have been expected to act with great indignation at what the leper was trying to do to him. This response, if you notice, puts all the attention on the cleanliness of the rabbi and ignores the suffering of the leper.

But look at how Jesus responded.
Filled with compassion, Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. “I am willing,” he said. “Be clean!”

Jesus was focused not on himself and his cleanliness. Jesus saw the leper and was filled with compassion. His thoughts were not for himself but for the suffering of the leper and his thoughts about the leper who had been living for many years as an outcast caused Jesus to be filled with compassion.

And then Jesus reached out his hand and touched him. Jesus did not have to do that. Jesus healed a Roman centurion’s servant from a distance. He never even saw the servant but at the hour Jesus declared he was healed, the centurion later learned his servant had in fact been healed. Jesus one time gave sight to a man who was blind without touching him. Just his word  was enough to give the man sight.

So when Jesus touched the leper, he did so for a reason beyond healing him of his leprosy. Jesus touched the leper and cured him of his social isolation and then healed him of his leprosy. This touch of Jesus was probably the first touch this man had received for years and there was healing power in his touch.
Immediately the leprosy left him and he was cured.
That’s the story that we are looking at today and there are two questions I want to ask about this incident that will lead us to some practical application for our lives.

What Jesus did for the man who suffered from leprosy was wonderful and astounding and magnificent. What Jesus said to him afterwards seems strange.
Jesus sent him away at once with a strong warning:  44 “See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

This raises the first question for me: Why did Jesus tell him not to tell anyone what he had done?

Last Sunday was Easter and we were treated to four resurrection stories. Renae, Tertius, Rose and Don shared with us stories of how God had worked in their lives. We delighted in hearing these stories. We are encouraged in our Christian faith to share our stories. In fact, Rose mentioned a song many children are taught.
This little gospel light of mine
I’m going to let it shine
The next verse makes further reference to Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount
Hide it under a bush, Oh no!
I’m going to let it shine.

Jesus’ teaching was very explicit
“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.

We are taught to share our faith, share the good things God has done in our lives, so why is it that Jesus told the man who had been a leper not to tell anyone what Jesus had done for him?

From the moment Jesus cast out a demon in the course of his teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum, the crowds came to Jesus. It became virtually impossible for people in need to come to Jesus because there were so many other people surrounding him. Next week I think we will be looking at the story of the four men who lowered a man who was paralyzed through the roof to get to Jesus. There were so many people this was the only way they could think of to get their friend to Jesus who they believed would help him.

Jesus began spending his time out in the wilderness, away from the towns and cities, so he could do things that were important to him that he could not do when he was surrounded by crowds of people demanding healing. He needed to spend time with his disciples, teaching them. He needed time alone with his father. Jesus tried to find ways to keep the crowds from coming to him.

And so Jesus told the man who he had just healed from leprosy
“See that you don’t tell this to anyone. But go, show yourself to the priest and offer the sacrifices that Moses commanded for your cleansing, as a testimony to them.”

And a bit earlier in this chapter, in verse 34, Jesus cast out demons but
he would not let the demons speak because they knew who he was.

There appears to have been some strategy behind Jesus’ instruction to the man he cured of leprosy and his refusal to allow the demons to say who he was.

This is most clearly seen in John’s gospel.

In John 2:4 Jesus is at the wedding in Canaan and Mary, his mother, instructs Jesus to solve the problem of there not being enough wine for the festivities. And Jesus responds to her request in this way:
“Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”

My time has not yet come. The time for Jesus to reveal himself in a complete way had not yet arrived. This sense of time is repeated through John’s gospel.

In John 7 Jesus’ brothers pressured him to come with them to the Feast of Tabernacles.
Jesus’ brothers said to him, “You ought to leave here and go to Judea, so that your disciples may see the miracles you do.  4 No one who wants to become a public figure acts in secret. Since you are doing these things, show yourself to the world.”  5 For even his own brothers did not believe in him.

This last phrase, For even his own brothers did not believe in him, is an interesting insight into how the family of Jesus viewed him. There is a bit of mockery in this, isn’t there?

But in Jesus’ response to this mockery, there is again a sense of time
Therefore Jesus told them, “The right time for me has not yet come; for you any time is right.  7 The world cannot hate you, but it hates me because I testify that what it does is evil.  8 You go to the Feast. I am not yet going up to this Feast, because for me the right time has not yet come.”

Jesus had a growing awareness of who he was and what he was to accomplish and it was clear to him that he was supposed to keep as low a profile as he could for a period of time.

Finally in John 13 Jesus knew it was time for him to move into the center of the spotlight.
It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father.

The synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke put this event after Jesus is revealed in his heavenly glory along with Moses and Elijah and Luke records that:
As the time approached for him to be taken up to heaven, Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem.

When Jesus met with Moses and Elijah, he received a fuller understanding of what was to come and what he was to do and so he set out for Jerusalem. His time had come. Now he no longer told people not to tell what he had done for them. Now he no longer forbade demons to say who he was.

We are to share our faith with other. We are to tell our stories of how God has worked in our life with others. Sometimes we do not do this because we are afraid of what will happen. We are afraid of what people will say or do to us if we share with them the good news of what Jesus has done in our lives. Sometimes we are too embarrassed to tell others what Jesus has done in our lives. Sometimes we simply don’t know what to say. We don’t know how to articulate what Jesus has done for us.

In these cases we need to pray for boldness and be like Peter and John. They were put in prison and threatened by the same Sanhedrin who had just a month before orchestrated the crucifixion of Jesus and warned them not to talk anymore about Jesus.
They came back to the other believers and prayed
Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness.  30 Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”

We need to learn how to articulate our faith as Peter instructed in I Peter 3
Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have.

We need to pray for boldness, we need not be afraid, we need to learn to articulate why it is we believe, but there may be times when it is best for us to keep silent and not share what it is God has done in our lives.

There are some of us who come from families and cultures that are distinctly antagonistic toward Christian faith. In such cases, sharing boldly and articulately what Jesus has done is to throw gasoline on a fire. It may be wise to keep silent about what Jesus has done until the Holy Spirit gives you a sense that the right time to share has come.

You do not need to feel bad about keeping silent. Keeping silent is not always an act of disobedience.

Let me go back to Jesus’ teaching from the Sermon on the Mount that I quoted earlier. I did not read all of the teaching.
“You are the light of the world. A city on a hill cannot be hidden.  15 Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
But Jesus continued in verse 16
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven.

When the light of Christ comes into your life, you will be a different person and those who have known you and even those who meet you for the first time will recognize that there is something different about you and they will come to you to ask what has happened, what makes you act the way you are. They will do this because they see your good deeds.

You will not have to tell others about what Jesus has done in your life, they will come to you to ask what has happened to you.

That is a long response to the question of why Jesus told the man who was cured of leprosy not to tell anyone what Jesus had done for him. Let me move to a second question.

Why, when Jesus gave such a strict warning to the man who had been a leper, did he go and tell everyone anyway?
Instead he went out and began to talk freely, spreading the news.

There is a much better question. How did Jesus ever expect that the man he cured of leprosy would keep quiet about what had happened to him? That is really the question that most puzzles me.

For however many years it was this man had been a leper, an outcast, unable to earn a living, dependent on what people gave to him to live, stones being thrown at him, his own disgust when he saw his skin or his image in a pool of water or a shiny piece of metal, for however many years it had been, this man was a desperate man. And then Jesus came along and healed him and he was supposed to keep quiet about it?

This experience he had with Jesus was so powerful that it was impossible to keep it inside. If Jesus had wanted him not to share, he would have had to cure him of leprosy and cause him to become mute at the same time.

This story leads me to make three observations about sharing.
1. When we share our story with others, we need to touch them as we share. I don’t mean by this that we have to put our hand on theirs. But we have to become involved in the lives of those with whom we share. Our personal involvement with people will make the words we share have power.

My first year of seminary I lived with an elderly Christian couple. One day two Jehovah’s Witnesses came by and rang the doorbell. She went to the door and saw who they were and began to close the door. Then she opened it wide once again and said, “Jesus was born a man. He died for our sins and rose from the dead so we can have hope of life after death. We can have this hope if we accept his free gift of salvation,” and she shut the door. She turned to me and said, “There, now they can never say that they did not hear the gospel.”

Did they hear the gospel? Where was the touch in that encounter? How would it have been different if she had invited them in for a cup of tea and explained why it was she did not share their beliefs?

The people we meet have needs and when we take time to listen to them, pray with them, help them in any way we can, then the words we share, our story we tell, will come with a power that is lacking when we only tell our story but do not touch.

2. Do not share out of duty. Mormons do this. Each Mormon male spends two years somewhere in the world, going door to door, telling people about the Mormon faith. Why do they do this? The Mormons believe that “God was once a man as we are. We can become a god as he is.” If you, as a Mormon, live an exemplary life, you will become god of a planet, have spiritual intercourse with your mate who you married for eternity and your spiritual seed will populate that world.

To become god of a world requires you do a number of things, including spending two years somewhere in the world sharing the Mormon faith.

The Christian view of sharing is quite different. Sharing your faith will not earn you a special place in heaven. God will not love you more than he does now if you share your faith with someone else.

Sharing out of duty is sterile and lifeless and not very productive. God may still use what you say, but that is testimony to God’s creative power, not your sharing out of duty.

3. Instead, let your story bubble up in you as it did for the man who Jesus cured of leprosy. He could not contain himself. He had no choice but to share because his experience was so powerful. If he tried to keep his mouth shut when he met a friend or family member or even a stranger, it lasted just a few seconds because the power of his experience made the story burst out of him.

If you want to share your story, make sure your story is fresh and not stale. If you sit down with someone at a café and tell them, “15 years ago Jesus came into my life and he made a difference to me,” that may be an interesting piece of information but will it come with power into the life of the person listening?

One of the struggles for a preacher is to keep growing in faith. If a preacher relies only on past experience, he or she becomes quickly stale. To preach sermons that feed a congregation, the preacher must keep working to be open to what God is doing now, in the moment. The preacher must be transformed regularly by the sermons he or she preaches.

In the same way, if you want to share your faith with others, make sure your stories are fresh and alive. Seek God and draw closer to him in an intimate relationship and then your experiences of Jesus will bubble up in you and you will not be able to contain them.

Even if you live in a culture that is distinctly antagonistic to Jesus, your stories will bubble up our of your life and into the hearts and minds of those listening to you. The life in your story will be difficult to ignore.

Everything in the Christian life comes back to this. Seek Jesus first and foremost. Seek him with your whole heart. Open yourself to God’s work in you and then you will have stories to tell that will speak with life and power and those who hear your story will not be able to easily dismiss the truth that lies in it.