Vain Repetition?
Yes, Jesus Is Lord
Matthew 9:32-34; Matthew 12:22-32
Pastoral Prayer: Holy Father, there are Forces at work in the world that seek to manipulate us by questioning what we see and hear, so that we will not speak a word. These demons hope to convince us we are descending into insanity, “who would believe that”, they say to us. Open our blind eyes, unstop our clogged ears, and let loose our tongues so that seeing and hearing we may speak the Good News - Yes, Jesus is Lord. Holy Spirit, remind us anew that the strong man has been bound and we are free. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of all our hearts be pleasing in Your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. And all God’s people say, Amen.
By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
Hit up the Google machine, the same one that is alleged to have taken money, $45 million, to paint an entirely different picture of the food situation in Gaza. Rather than provide images and news stories that paint the picture of children starving, we are given AI images so that we cannot see what is really being experienced.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
Look up 'Gaslight,' and the same Google machine returns an article about the 1944 American remake of a 1940 British film, based on a 1938 play by the same name. The plot line is of a husband who manipulates his wife into believing she is descending into insanity. Instead of telling her to believe what she sees and hears, her husband tells her that what she sees is not really the way it is.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
In April of this year, journalist Jeffrey Goldberg was inadvertently included in a Signal app chat that included Pete Hegseth. When Goldberg reported the details and the messages in the chat thread, rather than admitting the mistake, Hegseth said,
“You’re talking about a deceitful and highly discredited so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
Gaslighting may have entered our American vocabulary and our psychological assessments in the 1940s, but the practice has a much longer history.
After God raised Jesus from the dead, having first raised Israel out of Egypt, the Apostles could not keep quiet. Talk, talk, talk, talk about Jesus. The religious leaders, still bent on enforcing the Mosaic system, met and decided the Apostles talked too much about Jesus.
So they called them and ordered them not to speak or teach at all in the name of Jesus.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
By the time we reach our passage for today, in Matthew 9 alone, we read and hear Jesus reviving and restoring through the forgiveness of sins and his words of restoration. In the midst of these Good News stories, we find a group always questioning what is seen and heard. They show up when friends bring a paralyzed man to Jesus. Jesus forgives his sins and then, to emphasize his authority, he makes the man walk. Against that backdrop, the crowds glorified God.
Jesus raises Jairus’s daughter and stops the bleeding of the ostracized woman. Matthew tells us the news spread. Just before our reading for this morning, Jesus restores the sight of two blind men. Once able to see, they spread the news of Jesus throughout the Ten Cities, the Decapolis.
In these stories, Jesus speaks. Lives are changed. Word spreads.
And, still, the religious powerful gaslit the crowds,
By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
In Matthew, Jesus is presented with two men. The man brought to Jesus, a demoniac who was mute, here in our reading at verse 32, and another man described as a demoniac who was blind and mute in chapter twelve, verse 22.
Mute.
Kōphos.
Warren Carter, in his 2001 commentary on Matthew, pointed to habits and patterns of empires that left people oppressed. It is not that Carter was dismissing the idea of demons as real. Instead, he aimed to show how evil works. Evil looks for bodies, and when it inhabits bodies and systems, others are hurt in the process.
Some become mute.
Kōphos.
When applied to groups that take power, the possibility that some will be forced into silence is very real.
Oppressed.
Evil does this.
Systems that seek to protect the powerful by insisting victims remain silent are evil, oppressive. People become passive in the face of this sort of oppression. This is not just a flaw in ancient cultures. It is seen all around us.
Empires take many forms.
Stifling dissent, that is, silencing those who see and hear what is really going on, is now being met with a new technology. That is, Evil will utilize whatever is available.
By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
Context Magazine describes a growing means to silence those who see and hear.
The burgeoning global obsession with artificial intelligence (AI) is apparent in how governments have deployed AI as a tool for unprecedented control.
With each data point, the machine learns, relearns and eventually empowers governments to ensnare citizens in a web of surveillance and manipulation. Thailand epitomises this scenario, wherein the integration of AI into surveillance practices has created a formidable lever to stifle dissent and reinforce state power.
Governments as small as Andra Pradesh in southern India, and many in Africa, are reported to use their preferred means to manipulate and control their respective populations.
Empires come in all sizes. And like frogs in the kettle, we are all susceptible to those forces that eventually rob us of our sight and our voices.
Demoniacs do not all look alike.
Not all who are oppressed are like the man from Gergesa, the one who lived among the tombs, the one possessed by Legion. Some are made unable to see, hear, or speak.
Silencing takes many forms: victim blaming, DARVO - deny, attack, reverse victim offending, NDAs, lack of support, and changing social and cultural norms. Evil in search of a body may find those who are willing to continue the evil in these ways.
The impact of these forms of manipulation and control: psychological harm, perpetuation of abuse, hindrance to healing, and increased public safety risks.
After repeatedly telling someone not to believe what they see or hear, silence becomes a response to that form of gaslighting. When the silence takes over, when a person becomes oppressed to the point of not speaking, they become blind - we see without seeing.
By the ruler of demons he casts out the demons.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
The Powers of Sin and Death are all too ready to give people the gods they want. Persuaded by the people’s impatience after Moses delayed his return from Sinai, Aaron took their gold, melted it down, and shaped it into a golden calf. He gathered the people, despite what they had seen and heard in their journey from Egypt to that point, Aaron exclaimed,
These are your gods, O Israel, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt!
The people want different gods, and so rather than insist the people remain faithful, Aaron participates in the self-deception that has overtaken the people. He tells them,
These are your gods.
Do you hear the resonance?
The Pharisees refused to see and hear Jesus. Their response to the crowds who found it amazing that the mute spoke,
By the ruler of the demons he casts out demons.
Don’t believe what you hear or what you see.
Sometimes, empires that take different forms will oppress. Other times, people who refuse what they see and hear will give themselves over to gods that are no gods at all.
John, in The Revelation of Jesus Christ, sees the first beast, which may well be an empire, any empire, or the Roman Empire. In chapter 13, he sees another beast that is given power by the dragon, the representative of the enemy of God and all people. The second beast, also considered a false prophet,
It [the second beast] exercises all authority of the first beast on its behalf, and it makes the earth and its inhabitants worship the first beast.
In the short three-verse episode in Matthew 9, the counter to manipulation and control - the mute spoke.
. . . the one who had become mute spoke.
Repetition is a tool. The Pharisees use the same line in Matthew 12 that they used here in Matthew 9. Two blind men are healed before the mute is made to speak. Here the man brought to Jesus is both blind and mute - kōphos.
Again, the crowd is amazed. Again, the Pharisees repeat their gaslighting line.
Every point is a counter to what Jesus is doing all over Galilee and the Ten Cities. In other words, the Pharisees are busy attempting to counter that Jesus,
. . . went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and sickness.
Yes, Jesus is Lord.
Listen to those who have seen and heard.
Jesus points out how the failed logic of the Pharisees discredits their persistence. No matter how often they tell those they encounter not to believe what they hear and see, what the people hear and see amazes them, and the Good News gets broadcast.
Yes, Jesus is Lord!
If Satan casts out Satan, he is divided against himself; how then will his kingdom stand? If I cast out demons by Beelzebub, by who do your exorcists cast them out?
Matthew makes clear that those who see and hear, those who are made to walk again, and live again, become the voices that spread the news, Yes! Jesus is Lord.
By God’s Spirit who makes the dead alive, God forms the Body of Christ, one that is comprised of the once blind, mute, deaf, paralyzed, sick, and dead. This Body, the only one Christ has on earth today, wherever it may be found, is given the Good News to spread - Yes! Jesus is Lord.
When the Apostles were scolded by the religious powerful and told to become kōphos, mute, not to say a word, their response was,
But Peter and John answered them, “Whether it is right in God’s sight to listen to you rather than to God, you must judge; for we cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard.”
Yes, Jesus Is Lord.
Great sermon Todd.