Proper 19B 2006 Mark 8:27-38

If you are like me, when you hear the Gospel stories about a lot of things Jesus does do you wonder about the aftermath? Or the unintended consequences of the miracles? What was it like for the people involved after Jesus did some of his miracles? What do these stories tell us?
What happened after Lazarus was raised from the dead? What about when the crowds left and Lazarus and Mary and Martha were sitting around in the house in Bethany with Lazarus, just the three of them. How did they feel about each other then. Better yet, how did Lazarus feel, hurled from the quiet of his tomb back into an unkind and uncertain world? The film, “The Last Temptation of Christ” suggests that he was not. But the Gospels are silent. Lazarus exits stage left, no longer part of the Gospel story once raised from the dead. We have no idea how he felt. Or what he did with himself.

How about the crippled man at the pool of Bethsaida near the Temple? "Rise, take up your pallet and walk," Jesus said, and he was healed after thirty-eight years of disability. The story of the crippled man ends there. Again a stage left exit. I wonder what he did the next morning? Did he run and jump and laugh and cry with joy? Did he ever visit the pool again and perhaps help somebody else into the water.

And then Peter and his crew caught all those fish. Jesus told them to cast their nets again on the other side of the boat and they hit the jackpot! Two boats full, so full they almost sank. And the next day what happened to those fish? Peter "left everything and followed him." So he didn’t carry any of those fish home to his wife and mother in law. He became a disciple with all the cost and joy that brought him. But what happened to the crews he left behind. Did they follow, too? In the gospels, they, too, exit stage left

Now these miracle stories are "signs of the kingdom," "mighty works" that signal the in breaking of God's power. They point to Jesus' messiahship but also to what kind of messiah. They point to his divine power.

Last Sunday we heard about a deaf and dumb man who is dramatically healed. When the man was brought to Jesus he couldn't hear Jesus speaking. He couldn't cry out like the blind man, "Have mercy on me, Son of David." Jesus takes him away from the others where Jesus opens his ears to hear and his mouth to speak. Does he now live happily ever after? Could it be that he heard so many sounds and voices he was confused – that he heard things he didn't understand, was overwhelmed, and grew unhappy and withdrawn? He, too, exits stage left, having served his purpose in the story of the good news of the mighty acts of Jesus Christ. (1)

Or does he? Does the healing, by implication, point to something beyond? What then, is it?

One of the consequences of Jesus life and actions was this business of taking up one’s Cross and following him. Here is an excerpt from a letter of one Cyprian who learned all about the consequences of following Jesus. He wrote to his friend Donatus:

“This is a cheerful world as I see it from my garden under the shadows of my vines. But If I were to ascend some high mountain and look over the wide lands, you know very well what I would see: brigands on the highways, pirates on the sea, armies fighting, cities burning; in the amphitheaters men murdered to please the applauding crowds; selfishness and cruelty and misery and despair under all roofs. It is a bad world, Donatus, an incredibly bad world. But I have discovered in the midst of it a quiet and holy people who have learned a great secret. They are despised and persecuted, but they care not. They are masters of their souls. They have overcome the world. These people, Donatus, are the Christians--and I am one of them. (2)

This was Saint Cyprian of Carthage, writing to his friend in the first half of the 3d Century A.D. When a plague broke out in Carthage in 252 AD, the Roman authorities and pagan public opinion blamed the disaster on the “impious Christians”. Unlike many Christians, Cyprian, now a bishop, refused to leave the city. He was consequently arrested and exiled, but later tried and executed in 258. We note the day of commemoration of Saint Cyprian, Bishop and Martyr, on September 13th in our own Calendar of Saints. (3)

The great Christian apologist of the Twentieth Century, C. S. Lewis answered the other question these gospel stories, particularly the one for today, this way in an answer that Saint Peter might have liked. In his book , “Mere Christianity,” Lewis wrote:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to." (4)

What do you say? Whom do you say that he is? Whom do you tell who he is?

AMEN


1. Adapted from Robert S. Busey, The Day After The Miracle, SermonMall for 17 September 2006)
2. as quoted in eSermons Illustrations for 17 September 2006.
3. “Saints Galore”, 3d. ed., Forward Movement, 1886
4. C.S. Lewis, ”Mere Christianity”, as quoted in eSermons Illustrations for 17 September 2006.

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