"Say Nothing to Anyone"

Mark 1.42-45 Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean. ⁴³After sternly warning him he sent him away at once, ⁴⁴saying to him, ‘See that you say nothing to anyone; but go, show yourself to the priest, and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, as a testimony to them.’ ⁴⁵But he went out and began to proclaim it freely, and to spread the word, so that Jesus could no longer go into a town openly, but stayed out in the country; and people came to him from every quarter. (NRSV)

Back when I was in seminary there was an old joke, which popped up when discussing texts like this one from Mark’s Gospel, about how Lutherans have really only taken one commandment out of the hundreds in the Bible seriously and that is Jesus’ command to those who have just been healed to “say nothing to anyone.” What is interesting about this, is that the person being told to “say nothing” seldom does.  The first thing they do after experiencing health and well-being for the first time in a long time (if not ever) is to tell everyone.  In many ways it is a somewhat surprising command.  After all Christianity has been and continues to be a mission or evangelistic oriented faith.  How many times throughout our lives or in how many church mission statements have we been told to tell others about our faith, our church, and to invite people to our worship services?  Which leads us to wonder why Jesus would give such a commandment? 

It is a question over which much ink has been spilled over the centuries, and there are probably as many answers to this question as there are years between Jesus’ day and ours.  So I don’t think it is a question we will be able to answer definitively this morning.  Now I know we live in a society that consistently wants answers (hopefully simple answers) and wants those answers to be definitive, but that doesn’t mean we should shy away from exploring the question more fully.  Often times what is important is to simply ask the question. 

What might such a command by Jesus mean for a religious tradition that has always had a strong impulse for evangelism and mission?  What might such a command mean for a church living at a time when religious, culture, and social diversity has never been as great as it is now?  Does Jesus' command change how we engage the world and how we shape our mission? 

Some might want to answer the question of why Jesus didn’t want people to say anything by pointing out that Jesus was no longer able to enter a town openly for fear of being mobbed by a large number of admirers.  Others might want to say that Jesus did not want to be known as a miracle worker, because that wasn’t really who he was.  If Jesus’ command was only an attempt at crowd control, not only did it not work, but people continued to flock to him in the wilderness in great numbers.  If it was all about not being known as a miracle worker, one has to wonder why he would continue to perform the miraculous, especially in front of large crowds (feeding of 5,000 and 4,000 for example).

But what if Jesus tells the man to “say nothing to anyone” because he knows in the world in which he lives that he himself has now become one of the unclean, and knows full well that he would no longer be welcomed in the towns.  While the leprous man has been made clean, by touching him Jesus has made himself unclean.  He has gone from being one of the privileged to being an outcast.  The people continue to come to him because they, too, are among the outcast, but yet find life in this person who has identified with and in fact has become one of them.  Rather than forcing everyone to become like him, Jesus became one of them. 

In a world where the church is often hard at work trying to make others more like us, what might it mean to become more like others?  We don’t just want anyone to come to church, we want people like us to come to our church, or at least people willing to become like us.  We cling desperately to the hope that Christianity, in the sea of diversity that is our society, will always remain the dominate religion.  But imagine what mission, evangelism, and the church would look like if we stopped trying to maintain our own place of privilege and dominance. 

“Say nothing to anyone” isn’t some accidental statement by Jesus but a challenge to all who claim to follow him.  A challenge to worry less about our own places of privilege and begin to identify with those who are still considered to be outcasts whether it is a result of skin color, culture, language, or economics.  A challenge that opens us up to see God’s image in people different from us, rather than trying to make them into an image of us.  It is a challenge, but one that leads us, and the church, to become more truly human, so that all can have eternal life.