I am going to share a number of stories with you this morning. I don’t want you to tell anyone about it. Not the stories from my life, and not the stories from Jesus’s life either. It’s really important you don’t share what I am going to say this morning with anyone. So when you are chatting with your mate down the pub and you tell them what you heard in the sermon - make sure you tell them to tell no one! You got that?
I am going to start with a story from 2012
It’s August. We were just about to head down on holiday at Katie’s parents in Sussex. We were vaguely aware that two elderly members of our church were also down on holiday in a different part of sussex. Then on 23rd August we picked up a message that Wynn had had the most terrible heart attack. We circulated the message to get as many people as possible in the church praying for her. Lots of people prayed. Then we headed off on our holiday, but as soon as I got to Worthing I drove over to Chichester to the hospital Wynn was in to visit and pray for her. Wynn began to get better.
That might not sound like a miracle to you. People have heart attacks and many of them do recover. However in Holy Trinity we had a doctor in the congregation called Liz Webster and Liz was telling me …
...sorry excuse me a second…
[going up to a member of the congregation at the back]
It’s so good to have you with us today. Having an important person like you here - well it is such a privilege to have you with us. You can’t sit back there in the cheap seats, come and sit up in the best seats at the front. And may I just say how fine the clothes are you are wearing today.
Anyway back to Dr Liz. Liz told me that the type of heart attack that Wynn had had wasn’t a mild one - it was the sort where if you don’t have the attack in a hospital, your chances of surviving are just one in ten thousand. We prayed and Wynn survived.
A bit like our Gospel reading. And again I remind you as I tell you about this Gospel: you must not tell anyone about what I am saying.
So just like I was on holiday in Worthing, Jesus was on holiday in Lebanon getting some well earned rest, when this Syrian woman comes up to him. This woman is a mother and she is desperately worried about her little girl. “My daughter - she is possessed by a demon”. We have all seen how harrowing pictures of little Syrian children can rend people’s hearts - and Jesus to is moved. “For saying that you may go: the demon has left your daughter” And the woman goes and finds her daughter miraculously healed.
Which remind me of another little girl Adanama. I’ve never met Adanama, but I heard about her because her cousin Cheryl was a member of my home group. And once in homegroup as we were looking at some bible passages on answered prayer, Cheryl told me about little Adanama (don’t tell anyone else by the way…)
… err sorry excuse me one second
[going to another person towards the back of church]
Can I just say how lovely it is to have you here [as an aside] (do you know who this is? do you know how important they are) It’s such a privilege to have you here. Come and sit up in the best seats. I am sure we can move someone out the way to make space for you
….Anyway I was telling you this story about little Adanama Cheryl’s cousin. And when Adanama was less than a year old, she developed Meningitis.
Her parents were told that Adanama wouldn’t survive. They got people in lot’s and lots of churches (including my church) praying. Adanama survived. Her parents were told that even if she did survive she would be severely brain damaged and would never hear or talk at all. Her parents got people in lots and lots of churches praying ….
and apart from a small hearing aid, Adanama is like any other normal child. She has most of her hearing, speaks perfectly and is not at all developmentally challenged.
It’s like Archbishop William Temple
{turning to the 2 important people} Your families must have known Archbishop William Temple - he was an important person like you….
...So Temple said “Some people say that answered prayer is just coincidence. But what I find is that when I pray coincidences happen and when I don’t they don’t.
Adanama’s Meningitis threatened to make her deaf and unable to speak properly, a bit like the man in the second half of the Gospel. Perhaps he had had Meningitis as a child too.
Jesus was travelling home from his holiday in Lebanon and he passes through an area called Decapolis, the Ten Towns. I am not being racist or anything but it was not a nice neighbourhood. A generation earlier … well to use one public figure’s language…. a swarm of immigrants had flooded in their. They didn’t share our faith, they weren’t our sort of people. They keep pigs for God’ sake.
Anyway these immigrants - they bring this deaf man forward and they beg Jesus to lay his hands on him.
And Jesus takes him away from the crowd, puts his fingers in his ears, spat and touched his tongue, looked up to heaven and said “Ephphatha” “be opened” and a coincidence happens. The man is healed and and can hear and speak.
“Make sure you tell no one about it” says Jesus - just like you must not tell anyone about that woman who got healed at Walsingham this year. Remember, I told you about it in a sermon a few weeks back. Perhaps you saw about it on Facebook, and Perhaps you have heard about it from other people too. Anyway, you mustn’t tell anyone, but this woman called Mandy who I have seen bring groups of teenagers to the Youth Pilgrimage for many years was diagnosed around 8 months ago with Macular degeneration. That’s a condition where you start getting blurry spots in the centre of your vision and progressively they spread until you gradually lose all your sight. There is no cure for it. Mandy was really fraught and anxious about the fact that she was going to lose her sight. so at the beginning of the year her friend arranged a surprise trip for her to Walsingham. Mandy was prayed for, and the moment she was prayed for, a deep peace came over her and all her anxieties left her….
…. [seeing someone at the back] Another important person, and wearing such fine clothes. Do come to the front! [to someone else] Perhaps you could stand or sit on the floor or something to make room for her, because she is so important [hears Paddington Bear talking to me] eh what did you say? [to congregation] I think Paddington Bear is trying to say something to me…
He says I am not allowed to say to people in fine clothes “have a seat here” while I say to the poor people “stand” or “sit at my feet”. [listens again]..... Paddington says I am not allowed to make distinctions among people or to dishonour the poor because according to the letter of James, that is … [listen again] ….blasphemy.
[listens again to Paddington] He says Jesus didn’t just heal rich people. He healed a Syrian mother’s little daughter, and a deaf immigrant in the Ten Towns from another faith community…..[listens again] and Paddington says these stories are very important to him because he is a refugee from darkest Peru, and they tell him God loves even bears like him. [listen again] oh yes, and would anyone like a marmalade sandwich?
So [turning to person I was about to displace] I guess I had better not be treating you as any less important than these other people.
So, continuing the story, Mandy was prayed for, and instantly all her sense of anxiety went away and she felt a deep sense of peace. And sometimes when we are prayed for, that is what happens, and that in itself is a miracle. If someone prays for you and that happens to you, you mustn’t tell anyone… apart from your mates at work, and maybe a few members of your family, and the folk who live next door to you and their mates and the folks who live next door to them…. but apart from that: Don’t tell anyone!
But for Mandy that was not the end of the story. A few days after she got back from Walsingham she went for a check-up at the hospital. she had a scan done, and afterwards it was the doctor who’s eyes were wide with astonishment. “I don’t know what’s happened” says the doctor “but when we did the scan last time, you definitely had macular degeneration. But on the new scan there is no sign of it. Apart from a little bit of shortsightedness there is nothing wrong with your eyes at all” Mandy was completely cured.
In the Gospel reading after Jesus has healed the deaf immigrant from Decapolis, he tells them not to tell anyone about it. But the thing is when Jesus does something wonderful in your life, it's impossible not to tell other people about it. If you have experienced amazing answered prayer, it's impossible not to tell the person on the desk next to you at work. If you come into God's church and experience a love where people whether they are poor or rich, important in the world's eyes or people who are unimportant in the world's eyes, it's hard not to tell your friend when you are down the pub with them. And when you encounter a Jesus who treats Syrian mothers and deaf immigrants not as statistics but as human beings in need of help and love, it's hard not to tell people about it.
“Jesus ordered them to tell no one. But the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure saying, “He has done thing well. he even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak”
As you will know from your own life: when something is this good, you can’t shut up about it, can you Paddington?
Amen
