Matthew 9:27-38 "Saying What We See" Scott Hoezee

Experts tell us that satellite technology has now advanced so far that from an orbit thousands of miles high, a sophisticated satellite could right this very moment snap a photo of our parking lot just off Franklin. What's more, that picture would be so sharp you could read the license plate numbers of the cars parked outside. But as is often true with this kind of technology, this information evokes from us both a sense of wonder and a sense of dread. Not a few people, sensing the Orwellian possibilities in this, have expressed the fear that this kind of invasive spying ability may ruin our sense of privacy. You can build a fence around your backyard so that no one can see if you take a quick dip in the hot tub with nothing on, but someone in a satellite center might print off the image of your naked form anyway.

It is amazing what power the visual has. How many courtroom dramas haven't we seen on TV in which the Perry Mason-like lawyer asks a witness over and over, "What did you see? Are you sure you saw that?" Often a witness's confidence in what he did or did not see can be shaken by a clever lawyer, with the once-confident witness finally having to admit that it was actually pretty dark, or he saw the suspect only from the back, and so can't definitively identify him after all. But the true eyewitness, the one who had an unblocked line of sight, is perhaps the strongest witness of all in courtroom trials.

On this Mission Emphasis morning I want us to spend a few minutes pondering Christian vision. What are we supposed to see and what we are supposed to do in response to this vision? If you were paying even moderate attention to the reading from Matthew 9 a minute ago, you will not be surprised that this is my focus. After all, the story begins with the healing of two blind men and concludes with Jesus lifting up his own eyes and seeing the harried, shepherdless crowds through eyes of compassion--a vision that leads Jesus to utter a famous invitation to missions. The concept of seeing is all over these verses, and Matthew has a reason for weaving in this motif. Let's discover what that reason is.

Let's begin by noting that no sooner does Jesus open the eyes of these men and he tells them not to say anything about it. It's an odd request, though a common one in the gospels. Especially in Mark Jesus is forever doing the kind of miracle that no one is very good at keeping quiet about and yet he tells them to keep it mum anyway. This so-called "Messianic Secret" seems to be an attempt on Jesus' part not to let his miracles overwhelm his message. It was more important that people listened to what Jesus had to say than merely watch him like some circus performer who attracts people because of what tricks he can do.

Interestingly, almost no one obeyed Jesus on this point!. Jesus would heal someone, sternly tell him to say nothing about this to anyone, only to have this person turn right around and say something about it to everyone! Ordinarily I suspect that most of us would deem disobedience of Jesus a bad thing. But I've never once heard anyone suggest that these healed people who blabbed about Jesus were rotten folks who should be scorned for their disobedience. Instead we tend to treat this with a wink and a grin. Of course they did not keep their mouths shut! Who can blame them? And really, did it do any harm? Isn't talking about Jesus always the right thing to do?

When you see the kingdom of God in action before your very eyes, it is only right that you would blurt out what you saw to every person you meet. That's always the way of it when you see something dramatic. Two years ago we saw the images of the attack on New York City. That visual image of the Twin Towers was seared onto our brains, and we could not stop talking about what we saw. Even to this day, a simple pencil sketch showing an outline of those smoking buildings is enough to bring it all back and re-ignite our talking about it all over again. We talk about what we see. We can't help it.

This motif of sight comes up again when Jesus opens, not the eyes, but this time the mouth of a man plagued by some kind of demon. But have you ever wondered why a demon would possess a person only to make him mute? When you think of demonic possession, you think of that movie The Exorcist and other films of that ilk that depict possession as resulting in a person spewing out invectives and curses against God, against the church, against all that is holy. If a demon wants to hurt the cause of God, you would think that speech would be a key weapon. So why would a demon go through the trouble of possessing a person only to keep him or her from speaking?

I'm not sure but I am willing to believe that the devil can work woe through silence every bit as much as through speech. But more on that in a moment. The point is that when Jesus opens this hapless man's mouth and he says something, the crowds react by saying, "We've never seen anything like this before!" So there it is again: when they see the power of God at work, they react by talking about it. It's natural. We understand.

Finally, as Jesus is said to go through all the towns and all the villages, healing every disease and every sickness, we are told that the weariness of ministry catches up with him. So he lifts his eyes, sees the crowds, and utters a cry for help. So much work to be done, so few people to do it. "Ask the Lord of the harvest to send out some more workers" Jesus says to his disciples. And in case it is not clear what Jesus meant by that, glance a moment at Matthew 10 to see that immediately Jesus sends out the very twelve people to whom he had just said that. When Jesus asks you to pray to God for more kingdom workers, it's a pretty good bet that among the workers he has in mind is you yourself.

As this morning we culminate this year's emphasis on missions, we properly bend our thoughts toward all those professional, full-time missionaries you heard me mention in the prayer a bit ago. But what about us? How readily do we speak about what we have seen? There are two kinds of vision in Matthew 9, and we need both. On the one hand there is the vision of what you see in terms of spying the kingdom of God in action. If we tend to talk about what we see, then we need to see the reality of God's kingdom first in order secondly to have a story to tell the world.

So do we see the kingdom at work? We do if we have faith. This morning we see bread and wine before us at this holy table. And through the spiritual vision given to us by God's Spirit, we see in this bread and drink something more than just some grocery items you could pick up at Meijers any day of the week. We see here nothing less than Jesus, chopped up, spilled out, sacrificed for our salvation.

We see in this meal the essence of all that makes us Christian, of every hope we have. If you have faith, this is what you see this morning. If you don't have faith, then I presume you won't eat this meal in the first place. It's difficult for most of us to take an outsider's view of the Lord's Supper. But to those without faith, eating a cube of bread, closing your eyes as you chew it, and sensing the presence of Jesus through that bread surely looks pretty weird and utterly superstitious. But we see something else here, and that's our faith at work.

The question is whether we respond to what we see by telling others. But for that to happen you need the second kind of vision in Matthew 9: the compassionate eyesight of Jesus. It's not enough to see in this Supper the presence of Jesus. Just staring at this table won't help you tell the world the good news. For that to happen you need to get out of this church, hit the streets, and then see the people around you as lost, harried, helpless, and rudderless. You need in compassion to see the pain, the tragedy, the loneliness out there and, in so seeing it, discover a yearning to say something hopeful, something joyful, something so bursting with good news that it may make a difference.

We need both the spiritual vision of God's kingdom at work and the compassionate vision of a world in need. If you see only the kingdom without being able to see a needy neighbor, you won't say a word about the kingdom because you won't see any need to do so. Then again, it is equally useless to see the world's needs but have nothing decent to say in response. There are lots of people who see hurts and needs all over the place but often they respond with very curious advice.

A few weeks ago I saw the actress Shirley MacClain on the Today show. She told Matt Lauer that she sees the loneliness, the pain of so many people in our society. So do you know what her advice is: to get a dog, look into his eyes, hear the inner voice of the dog speaking to you, and accept the dog's message that you are not alone in the universe. Sparky understands. Sparky vibrates to your spiritual frequency and so gives hope. At one point, perhaps groping for something to say, Matt Lauer said, "Well, they do say that 'dog' spelled backwards is 'god.'" "Exactly," Ms. MacClain cheerfully affirmed.

We need both the vision of God's kingdom and the vision of a lost society if we are going to have a message stronger than "Woof-Woof." But what if this morning you have to admit that actually you don't often provide any kind of witness. If so, which half of this double-vision are you missing? Is it that what you see on this table this morning just doesn't really make that much of an impression on you after all? Or is it that you don't much see, or don't much care, about the pain in society? Or is it a little of both? You're not that impressed with what goes on in church and when at work or school the rest of the week, you're frankly too self-absorbed to notice anyone's problems but your own. Either way or both ways, seeing ourselves as harvest workers for God won't happen. We won't have a message worth saying and/or we won't care enough to say it.

Earlier I suggested that from the looks of Matthew 9, the devil may be able to work as well through silence as through speech. The kingdom of God is hindered not only by those HBO comedians Neal Plantinga mentioned last Sunday--those reckless and profane belittlers of all that his holy--but God's kingdom can also be hindered through people like us who by all rights have something better to say to the world but who keep silent.

This morning, from the first note Jim played on the organ to the last note played later, from the opening greeting from God to the closing benediction, from the cross you see above my head to this table laden with the stuff of salvation, we have had ample opportunity to see with the eyes of faith the kind of thing we should tell to the world. And after you leave here, then tomorrow and the next day and next Thursday you can see something else: the lostness, loneliness, confusion, and tragedy out in the world. There is enough brokenness out there to stagger any moderately sensitive human being. So the question with which I close is this: given what you can now see in the Lord's Supper, and given what you can see in the world tomorrow, do you, for the love of God, have anything to say? Amen.