“See that you say nothing to anyone, but go, show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what Moses commanded, for a proof to them.”
Matthew 8:1-4, Mark 1:40-45 and Luke 5:12-16 have the synoptic passage about a leper who comes to Jesus humbly asking for healing of leprosy. In that age and culture, lepers were not only shunned but were also isolated from society. It was a contagious disease which also carried the stigma of dis-forming the features of a person.
There is an unexpected undercurrent in the three accounts—in each retelling, Jesus tells the man who is healed to ‘say nothing to anyone’ and go to the priest and fulfill the Law regarding leprosy as a witness to them. The backstory is that it was already becoming difficult for Jesus to spend time with God the Father in prayer. Immediately before this encounter, Jesus had been up on a mountain to get away from the crowds to spend time in prayer with the LORD. That was Jesus’s first priority for all ministry flowed out of that relationship.
It wasn’t that Jesus didn’t want to speak to the masses but the crowds often got in the way of what was paramount. We may have trouble with that for many think mass events are better than smaller groups but Jesus was also trying not only to spend time with the Father but also to disciple His true followers who were committed to his teachings about the Kingdom of God. In this case, the healed leper,
See how what we think of as beneficial publicity made it more difficult for Jesus to move about and minister. This is not conjecture for if you ignore the chapter break, the very next instance is another healing made more difficult because of the ‘talking freely’ of the previous one.
Yes, this is the four friends bringing their paralyzed friend to Jesus for healing and having to resort to making a hole in the roof to get him before Jesus! Imagine being Jesus and continually having the demands of the masses intruding upon your time with the LORD, your ministry of discipling your committed followers and touching the needs of those the LORD placed before you.
While it is our privilege to tell others about Jesus in our lives, few would want the ‘owning’ that came with being such a public figure, having the constant, incessant demands made of us for ‘other’ things beyond what was timely in the LORD. Sometimes we miss the humanity of Jesus and how much time He was willing to give to the masses and what the personal cost would have been even before death on the Cross. That leaves us with the question, “Is what we speak about Jesus of benefit to the purposes and timing of God in the lives we speak it into through our lives?” Who do we want to receive the attention and what is the price of saying what we want?