Si 19:10-12 & Mk 8:22-30

20 August 2006

“You Have the Right to Remain Silent”

            When I went to school at Southeastern College in Lakeland, Florida, there was something that became part of my rule of life.  (Although, I didn’t think of it in those terms back then!)  What I did was to visit the school’s prayer chapel.  I would go there at night, usually not too long before going to bed.  It was located on the upper floor of the student union building.

            It was a good place to pray.  I liked it because it was quiet—usually only two or three other people would be there—sometimes, I was alone.  And unless someone flicked on the overhead lights (a very rare occurrence), it was dark.  The only illumination was the ambient light filtering in through the windows—and up front, a stained glass window with fluorescent lighting behind it.

            However, one evening, the prayer chapel was definitely not a good place to pray.  My visit was a rather short one.  There was a male student in one of the pews with his girlfriend, and he was praying out loud.  Understand, even though Southeastern College (now University) is an Assemblies of God institution, thus Pentecostal, the majority of students going to the prayer chapel would either pray silently or so softly that no one else could hear.

            But not this guy!  My exit was hastened, not only by the volume of his prayer, but by the content.  He was appealing to God for forgiveness of the sin he and his girlfriend had committed.  (Maybe you know where I’m going with this.)  In a voice about as loud as what I’m using to preach, he was begging pardon for the sin of premarital sex, of fornication!

His girlfriend’s prayers, on the other hand, consisted of sobs.  Clearly, I’m no mind reader, but I’d guess she was sorry for the same thing her boyfriend was announcing to everyone.  And she was probably sorry because her boyfriend was announcing to everyone!  I sincerely hope that this wasn’t some scheme of his.  I really hope that this wasn’t some way he figured he could brag while repenting.  Bragging and repenting do sort of…contradict each other!

The spiritual discipline I want us to consider this week is secrecy.  That’s something the fellow in the prayer chapel that night probably should have practiced!

In her Spiritual Disciplines Handbook, Adele Ahlberg Calhoun describes secrecy as “practicing the spirit of Christ reflected in hiddenness, anonymity, lack of display, and the holding of confidences.”[1]  I suppose our friend in the prayer chapel missed on two of those four, maybe more.

As I said when I first announced that I’d be doing this sermon series, secrecy is one of those spiritual disciplines that we probably wouldn’t think of as such.  Understand, I’m speaking of secrecy in the service of God, not in the service of sin!  In that light, the practice of secrecy is encouraged throughout the Bible.

It’s encouraged in books that the Catholics and the Orthodox consider to be scripture, which Protestants and Jews consider to be helpful for instruction.  One of those books is Sirach, which provided our first reading.  It’s also known as Ecclesiasticus, not to be confused with Ecclesiastes.  (That’s the book that has, “For everything there is a season…”)  Sirach was probably put into its final form some time between 130 and 100 B.C.

There’s a lot about secrecy in this book, especially on the subject of gossip.  And there’s plenty of humor in Sirach.  I like verse 10:  “Have you heard something?  Let it die with you.  Be brave, it will not make you burst!”

There are people who seem to behave as though keeping something to themselves would kill them.  As soon as they hear something juicy about someone, it starts to burn inside like a fire.  (By the way, that is not what the song, “This Little Light of Mine,” is all about!)  They need to be reminded that they have the right, and the responsibility, to remain silent!

Sirach describes the pain such people feel:  “Having heard something, the fool suffers birthpangs like a woman in labor with a child.  Like an arrow stuck in a person’s thigh, so is gossip inside a fool” (vv. 11-12).  Whether we compare it to a woman giving birth or somebody shot with an arrow, the torture is simply too much.  The rumor has to come out!

And here’s a clue, just in case you haven’t figured this out yet.  Last week, I said that the Bible gives those who are not teachable the name of “fool.”  Well, guess what?  Those who gossip are also given the scriptural name of “fool.”  In Romans 1, the apostle Paul takes a really dim view.  He puts “gossips” in the same list with “slanderers [and] God-haters” (vv. 29-30).  In today’s epistle reading, he says to “not be foolish, but understand what the will of the Lord is” (Ep 5:17).

Secrecy is more than refraining from gossip.  As Calhoun says, it means “practicing the spirit of Christ.”

Our gospel reading in Mark 8 contains two examples of what’s been called the “messianic secret.”  This is a term applied by scholars to those cases in which Jesus tells others to keep quiet about him.  It’s his way of saying, “You have the right to remain silent.”  We see a lot of this in Mark’s gospel.

The so-called “messianic secret” has produced plenty of theories.  Some believe Jesus wanted his identity as Messiah kept quiet so that it could be revealed after his resurrection.  Some say he did this because people had a wrong idea about what the Messiah should be.  Others say a hasty revelation of him would invite trouble from the Romans.  Still others claim that for Jesus not to impose silence would have been, in their culture, dishonorable—he would have been bragging.  And there are yet other theories.

Far be it from me to discourage scholarly debate.  I’m sure there’s a degree of truth in all of these proposals, but I’m also sure that some people like to get overly technical when they analyze stuff.  I’ve been guilty of that myself, from time to time!

In our gospel text, Jesus and his disciples are entering Bethsaida, which is on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee.  A blind man is brought to Jesus, and after he restores his sight, Jesus tells the man, “Do not even go into the village” (v. 26).  He is to go straight home.  He has the right to remain silent!

Afterwards, in Caesarea Philippi, he poses to his disciples the famous question, “Who do people say that I am?” (v. 27).  After various responses, he then asks, “But who do you say that I am?”  And Peter answers, “You are the Messiah” (v. 29).  Verse 30 gives us the second example of the messianic secret.  “And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.”  Jesus lets them know, “You have the right to remain silent.”

I don’t think we need an overly complicated explanation for this.  I think it’s just how Jesus is.  If you recall last week, I spoke about Jesus being “gentle and humble in heart.”  He doesn’t need to impress anyone.  In fact, he consistently refuses to do miracles on demand.  Whenever he does do something we might consider miraculous, it’s for the benefit of someone—usually for those at the margins of society.

In Matthew 6, in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus reminds his audience, “Beware of practicing your piety before others in order to be seen by them; for then you have no reward from your Father in heaven” (v. 1).  He gives similar warnings about certain spiritual practices, such as giving to the poor, praying, and fasting.

The Rule of Saint Benedict, which I mentioned two weeks ago, also has something along these lines.  “We must know that God regards our purity of heart,” Benedict says, “not our many words.  Prayer should therefore be short and pure, unless perhaps it is prolonged under the inspiration of divine grace.  In community, however, prayer should always be brief” (ch. 20).[2]  Some people tend to needlessly extend their prayers.  It’s something I’ve tried to avoid, though not always successfully!

“Jesus was totally free.”[3]  That’s how Calhoun describes him.  I wonder:  how does that fit in with the discipline of secrecy?  I’ve suggested that Jesus doesn’t feel the need to impress anyone.  If that’s true (and I really do believe it is), then he displays the quality of transparency—the characteristic of transparency.  Jesus doesn’t change his personality, depending on the circumstances.  To put it simply, he isn’t two-faced.

It may sound counter-intuitive, but the better we learn the art of secrecy, the more transparent we become.  When we establish boundaries between what is proper and improper to share, we encourage relationships that are safe and trusting.  Safe and trusting relationships are ones in which anxiety and suspicion—in which fear—fades away.  There is immense freedom in that.

And speaking of relationship, that brings us to a dimension of secrecy we haven’t yet considered.  I’m thinking of secrecy in our relationship with God.

You know, it is possible to betray our sense of hiddenness—to betray confidence with the Lord.  It can be something rather obvious, like what I’ve already mentioned:  we’ll make sure others know how spiritual we are.  Maybe we’ll “accidentally” let it slip that we’re depriving ourselves of something during Lent.  Perhaps we’ll see to it that some good deed we’ve done gets reported.

Understand, I’m not saying that these things are bad in themselves.  We just have to be in touch with our motives.  The more we love God, the less we’ll feel the need to impress others.

Here are some questions to which I do not want answers.  How often do we do things just to please God?  How often do we embrace the quality of secrecy that is anonymity?  How many of us love God enough to do what makes God happy—without letting anyone else know?  To be able to do that is true freedom.

Here’s the amazing thing about the gospel, the good news:  God doesn’t sit around, waiting for us to do all that stuff.  God makes the first move.  Before we can break the awkward silence—before we give up our right to remain silent—God says, “I love you.”