Today’s Gospel invites us all to make two decisions. Each of these decisions threatens to overturn our whole life and our whole normal way of thinking. Each will demand absolutely everything from us, up to our life itself. We could say that the purpose of St. Mark, in writing his Gospel, is to help us face these decisions, and, by God’s grace, make them our own.First of all, Jesus himself asks: who do you say I am? Just before that, the disciples told Jesus what other people say. By and large, people could agree that Jesus is a great and authentic religious teacher. Clearly, he fits within the tradition of the Old Testament Saints. But who do you say I am? And as if with the force of an electric shock, Peter makes his declaration. Compared to the parallel account in St Matthew’s Gospel, particularly, this declaration according to St. Mark is stark; stripped to the bone. Simply: You are the Christ. That is: you’re not just one more in the line of prophets. All of them, by definition, pointed beyond themselves, pointed forward. All of them prepared God’s people for a definitive intervention to come. But no. You are yourself the object of their prophecy. You are the one towards whom all sacred history has been moving. In fact, you’re the central reference point for all human history, and even for the whole history of the universe. Through you, God will accomplish all he has promised to Israel. In you, God has made his definitive saving intervention. Beyond you, nothing further is to be expected. You are the reason that the Word was first spoken.We are here now because we also have reached St. Peter’s conclusion and taken his decision. But we’re also here because we know we have to keep taking it; we have constantly to refresh and renew it.Everything around us these days seems to conspire to make us let this decision about the identity of Jesus grow gradually cold, and even wither gently away. Modern secularism will tolerate religious belief, to an extent, so long as everyone understands it’s all strictly private, and purely relative. If Jesus is one religious teacher among others; if his preaching is all really just about benevolence and brotherhood; if he offers some people a certain inspiration or personal consolation: fine. But if he is presented as the single and unique mediator between God and man; if we say there is no salvation apart from him; if his demands become inconvenient or painful or sharply counter-cultural: then that cannot be tolerated.Just before this episode, St. Mark tells how Jesus gave sight to a blind man in Bethsaida. He did it gradually, in stages (Mk 8:22-26). So with the revelation about who Jesus is. By divine inspiration, Peter now sees the truth and declares it. But he doesn’t yet see the implications of this truth, and he quite radically misunderstands what it must involve for Jesus. For complete understanding he will need new grace, new light. He will receive that in its fullness at Pentecost.But now, Jesus immediately rebukes Peter and begins to teach how he must suffer and die, in order to rise victorious from the dead. And here we are confronted by our second decision. Having accepted who Jesus is, we have to be ready to follow his way. In principle, this will cost us everything.If anyone wants to be a follower of mine, says Jesus, let him renounce himself, and take up his cross, and follow me (8:34).Allow me to point again to the pressure exerted on us these days to evade these demands of the Gospel. It seems to me that a great temptation faces the whole Church these days. We want to soften out all the hard and difficult sayings of Jesus, in order to be accepted, liked, even honoured, or at least left alone, by those who hold power and influence in our society. These are no longer the elders and chief Priests and Scribes. They are the media, and those who dictate what is currently politically correct, and those who control big tech., and big finance. Submitting to their dominating will, we can land up keeping the name of Christian, doubtless, but in quite radically secularised form. In St. Paul’s words, we become conformed to this world (Rm 12:2). So we accept Jesus as one who offers us therapy; but not as one who invites us to take up his Cross.Here then is the paradox of the Gospel. We win our life by giving it away. Denying ourselves, we find ourselves. To decide to follow Jesus, even to the point of martyrdom, is supreme wisdom. Because this is actually what is supremely desirable, beyond all other things whatever. To follow Jesus, to be one with him, wherever he leads, is the greatest grace and blessing anyone could ever attain. Even in this life it brings rewards beyond measure. Beyond that: by this way we come to God, and to eternal life with God in heaven.
Usually, telling somebody not to tell other people about what you are about to do to them or with them is a bit of a worry, to say the least, and we might well want to pass over such a story, leaving the clearing up to others better equipped to do so. Today we have a Gospel reading which seems quite familiar – a healing, yes, remarkable for being so, but one of a number we encounter over the long summer months and not as dramatic as the raising of Lazarus or that son of the widow of Nain, and this coupled with the exhortation from Jesus to ‘tell nobody about this’ may make us think that, maybe it was not very worthy of our attention. Conversely, the fact that we are still hearing it two thousand years later suggests that, at the least, the man did not take the request to tell nobody about it very seriously.We are struck immediately by the visceral, life changing healing taking place here – it gives the man a capacity for speech which is altogether new for him, and so could Jesus really expect the man not to speak about it? Can a man who has spent his entire life silent, now suddenly having the capacity for speech, not talk about it? Even in a basic way, what would he say when people asked him how this came to be? And surely, like those who have been touched in some way by God, we want to tell of it, that’s what disciples do, surely. No wonder, as those who wrote the Gospel today say, ‘The more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.’So did Jesus misjudge the situation or ask the man to do something he knew he would be physically incapable of, or is there some other dynamic going on here, because certainly, nobody takes his command to the man who was unable to speak and now can, to be silent very seriously, and I suggest that we are not supposed to either. He knows beforehand that they are not going to keep quiet about the miracles he works - he understands that sometimes the best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to do it. We can be disobedient to Jesus, it seems, when it’s a matter of proclaiming his mighty deeds of salvation.The miracle we hear today is a little like our own baptism in which we are healed so that we may hear God’s word and thus proclaim God’s deeds. We have been given, as for the first time, a voice, which we are to raise to the praise and glory of God the Father. We are not told to keep silent about it and to tell nobody, although you might think that we had sometimes and the sad thing is that too many of the baptised seem to have taken seriously Jesus’s command not to proclaim it. Too many seem to spend their Christian lives as if they would remain voluntarily unable to hear and speak, at least when it comes to being disciples and witnesses, and if we are anything, its witnesses to God’s love, which is not silent, and to be agents of God’s love, which suggests that we must be able to hear the voices of those who suffer.And how does he get to where he is? He travels from Tyre to Sidon to the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Decapolis, a place of ten cities. Jesus has been here before. In Mark 5:1-20, Jesus enters the Decapolis and meets a man possessed by multiple demons named “Legion.” He casts out the demons and sets the man free.But here, in this story, when Jesus returns to the Decapolis, he meets a man who suffers not from a spiritual disability, but a physical one. He carries out different actions with this man. Jesus takes him aside away from the crowd, He plans to give him his undivided attention. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears. This man is deaf. He can’t hear Jesus’ words, so Jesus uses a form of sign-language. He spits. Interestingly, this isn’t the only time Jesus spits. In Mark 8:23, a blind man is brought to Jesus, and we’re told that Jesus spits on the man’s eyes and at that time, spittle was thought to have healing properties.Jesus is entering this man’s world, his beliefs, his customs—to communicate “I’m going to heal you.” He touches the man’s tongue. Jesus once again uses non-verbal communication so the man can understand. He looks up to Heaven. This is a gesture of prayer. Jesus is revealing the source of his power—His Father in Heaven who has the ability to make all things new. He sighs. This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus is said to sigh. Jesus is expressing grief for the way this man’s body has been ravaged by the fall. He empathizes and identifies with his pain. Jesus says to the man, Ephphatha. What’s about to happen is so astounding that Mark decides to leave the original Aramaic word here: Ephphatha. It means “Be opened.”To reach him and rescue him. Jesus had to become human—take on a physical body. A body with saliva glands, speech and eardrums. He entered his world. Jesus pursues us by embodying our world. This is a parable that shows what will be accomplished on the Cross, that to heal us, He has to become human and become like us, and that is why we should never be ashamed of our faith and should speak about it, because He did, at the cost of His own life and body, which united our lives and bodies with His.
Dear friends,As summer begins briskly folding itself away and autumn establishes itself with its leaves and familiar smell of expectation and the occasional blast of chill air reminding us of the jumpers and fires yet to come, I thought I might share some of the thoughts on my mind with you, as Christmas planning begins.1. A change to the weekly pattern. It is gratifying that numbers for the Thursday and Friday masses are buoyant – long may this continue! Tuesday and Wednesday are less so, and so I have decided to discontinue the Wednesday evening Mass. Tuesdays do fine, particularly when we have a discussion group after the Mass, but as the nights draw in, people comment that 7.30pm is quite late. However, beginning in November, we will have a Walsingham Cell Mass on the First Wednesday of each month, with exposition and rosary from 7pm to 7.20 and Mass at 7.30pm.2. Talking of Tuesday discussion groups, we have a new one beginning soon looking at Meditation and Contemplation in the Christian tradition. This begins on Tuesday 15th October for four weeks, and it is my hope that it might establish a regular meditation session in Church after that.3. Altar Frontals. You will have seen the new and beautiful frontal in the Lady Chapel in memory of Pam Bryant and her many years of service to our parish. I have also ordered one in black for the Columbarium Chapel, which will help to unify the painting to the altar visually. This costs seven hundred pounds and will be blessed on All Souls Day. It would be splendid if we were able to raise this through donations in memory of a loved one. Please write ‘Altar Frontal’ on the front of a yellow envelope with your donation in. Thank you.4. We are currently gathering quotes for the repointing of the Narthex and westward prevailing walls, which have been badly damaged from years of wind, rain and salt water lashing them. The work should begin in Spring next year and is likely to cost up to ninety thousand pounds. This, so soon after the quarter of a million pound roof rescue works we had done last year is not ideal, to say the least, and we will have to launch a fundraising drive as well as increase our parish share payments, which were very small over the course of last year as we had the roof done.All these things will hopefully aid our community here, and we also launch our new ‘St Stephen’s Fridays’ with activities at 2pm (eventually) every week. For now, we have the North Blackpool Film Club launching soon, the Recorded Music Society and our established Tea and Chat on alternate weeks throughout the year. We are also hoping to begin Street Dance classes with House of Wingz shortly in the large hall on Saturdays. As ever, we need to increase the numbers attending our church and campus throughout the week in order to remain viable.We have a few other events coming up:13 to 15 September – Heritage Open Weekend, including at 6pm on the Sunday Choral Evensong, wine and nibbles reception and a talk from BBC Comedy Producer Gill Isles.20 September – Brass Band Concert – see posters.23 to 26 September – Walsingham Pilgrimage.15 October – Meditation/Contemplation sessions begin.25 October – Greek Night in the small hall. Tickets available soon.22 November – Wine Tasting in the hall.24 November – Choral Evensong and Benediction with Cantantes Domino.And then, of course, we have Christmas Fairs and much else to arrange, but we do so joyfully, and with hearts full of love, because we are able to operate this beautiful campus here in Blackpool to the greater glory of God and for the benefit of the people here, those we do know and those we do not yet know. It has not been the easiest Summer, God knows this, but we continue in our mission which we have been given, confident in our faith and rejoicing in the many, many blessings which we receive and will continue to receive as we serve our God and our community.Fr Andrew
Take one thing away, and the total effect can often be spoiled for many of us. It doesn’t need to be a big thing even, but its removal is sufficient to make us wonder why we ever bothered. Being given a bowl of whitebait but learning there is no accompanying shaker of cayenne pepper for example or driving a vehicle that won’t go over seventy miles an hour or watching a horror film without the scary music – it’s all there, but something is missing which somehow makes it all work. Many people feel the same way about Church I think – whether they want the music, or incense or stained-glass windows, or whatever it might be that makes it all work for us – there is nothing wrong with those things not being there, but it might make the experience somehow lacking for us. This would, generally, be wrong of course, although perfectly natural, for we can get hooked on the externals of a thing rather than the thing itself. Does anyone actually like neat gin, or do we need the tonic and ice and lime to make it the way we like it? Well, today let yourself feel sorry for the Pharisees and scribes. Jesus tells us they are interested in externals and have set aside the commandments of God to cling to human traditions, but it would have been hard for them to see things from his perspective, and not only because they are fixated on one aspect of the package of faith alone.We may decry some of the details of the traditions described in the Gospel as merely human additions – and to tut inwardly at Kosher dietary law, or to think it a human external, but we too might count our calories, cut off the fat, look for natural cooking oil, choose only perfect vegetables and want our fish to be organic, so food choices are hardly a thing alien to us. But the general pattern, the idea that certain foods make you unclean, that food must be prepared in certain ways and not others, and even that it must be eaten in certain ways, are part of the Jewish Law, as well as our own preferences.That Law, the Jews were fiercely proud to have received from God Himself. We get a piece of Scripture teaching adherence to the Law, and even pride in it, in our first reading. It is by keeping this Law which embodies the wisdom and understanding of God that the Jews will come to hear the nations round about exclaim, ‘No other people is as wise and prudent as this great nation.’ This Law forms the Jews as the great nation that they are and makes them visibly the people of God. They are defined as themselves and as people of God by adherence to the law. So, when the disciples do not keep to the traditions, and when Jesus does not chastise them for it, but rather criticises these Jews who expect the disciples to wash their hands, and even more when he goes further and categorically states that nothing which goes into a person can make them unclean, this is all very shocking. It must have seemed that he was rejecting his very Jewishness, and to be praising careless, unreligious people over those who keep the law of His Father. It’s a problem, and as I said last week, must have made Jesus seem disappointing and hard to follow for most people, including His own disciples.We, with the gift of hindsight so common in Biblical study, realise that we are living in a clearly defined New Covenant, when these rules have been replaced, but at the time of the Gospel, when they were actually being rewritten and replaced, things were not at all clear cut, and this must have seemed a very challenging teaching.Well, what is wrong here? What externals are being removed and why? Is it the Gin or the Ice, the Whitebait or the Cayenne? The Pharisees think, with good cause, that they know the will and plan of God, partly (and convincingly) because he seems to have given it to them, as we read in the first reading, but on the other hand they certainly have held and begun traditions that are stricter than required – well, nothing particularly bad in that yet, we all do as much from time to time. But they criticise and look down on others who do differently, and in doing that forget the love they ought to have for their neighbour, one of the central points of the Law – and more importantly, their love for neighbour extends only to other Jews (other people like us, we might say), and that is notably about to change.We need to learn to love the law of God. Because within it is found the will and heart of the Father and the revelation of the Son and the ongoing gift of the Spirit, but the law of God is itself to love, and so like the Pharisees, we need to keep alert to the extraordinary discovery of the disciples which is that the Law is, at the heart, a way of revealing God to us, that it holds at its heart a mystery, a mystery which is further revealed in the ongoing and ever new work of the Church. The Pharisees looked to a fulfilment of the Law but they could not grasp that the fulfilment would be in the person of this unlikely man who would bring so much challenge and change – that is the lesson they had to learn, that no matter how sure we may be of what we practice in our faith life, He may ask us to sweep it all away if the love is not visible.
