I had a boss once who didn’t like me much, at all.  

I would tell you why but still don’t know—it’s not as if something happened. 

When I was first hired, she had been all for it: I was the first assistant she’d ever had.  

But somehow, things cooled soon afterward. 

A month or so into it, I began to notice things: a murmured comment to someone else with a look in my direction, then a smile; lunch in the conference room with the door closed, as if it was a meeting and not just people having lunch; once, she used the specific words of an innocuous complaint I’d made to a colleague, working them into a totally different conversation about something else, just to show me that she’d heard about it.  That she knew.  

That was just the fall.  

So by February, I should have known.  

But one February Friday, there was a sleet storm in the middle of the day. 

All the same, I went out to get lunch, running across the street to the nearest lunch place through the cold glop falling from the sky. 

But as I was standing on line to order, it occurred to me that I should go ahead and get her something, too, because who wants to go out in a sleet storm, and I was already there, so why not? 

I knew what she always got at that place, anyway.

I ran back through the glop with my little brown bags and went up to her office.  

I knocked on the door, looking a little like I’d run under a sprinkler.  

You know when those brown bags get sort of shiny, just before they disintegrate? I remember the bags looked like that. 

Anyway, in I went.  

I smiled, “Who’s your favorite assistant of all time?” I asked with a big smile.  I might have even brandished the brown bag with her lunch in it ever-so-slightly, just so the stakes were clear.  

I hadn’t meant for this to be hard question. 

She looked at me silently and thoughtfully for a long moment, as if I’d asked a very good question, which, to review, I had not.  

While we are reviewing, let us also remember that I was the first assistant she’d ever had.  

Finally, she nodded her head and said, “Pam. She was an intern before you got here. Yeah. Definitely, Pam.” 

She looked at me silently for another moment. 

Finally, she asked, “Was there something else you wanted?”   

Now, it would make a much better story if right at that exact moment, the soggy paper bag with her lunch in it had broken and the diet coke summarily exploded and got all over everything.  

It did not.  

Inside, though, I broke a little bit. 

What I felt was the full force of my own embarrassment—the sudden revelation of just how much I actually cared and had all along…how much I wanted to be liked, to be included, to elicit her appreciation with thoughtful gesture, to prove my value and good humor – all those things. 

I don’t remember anything else, although I did give her the lunch.  

Mostly, I remember just wanting to get out of her office as quickly as possible. 

However it all got to that point—whatever that was really about—it was awful to feel so clear about what that particular relationship had become.  

II.

In Mark’s Gospel this morning, Jesus calls a man with a withered hand to come forward in front of his neighbors and friends – maybe even his own family.  

The story appears in three different gospels, and all of them mention how Jesus questions the congregation about doing good on the Sabbath, which is an important thing to ask, but Mark is the only one who specifically mentions the congregation’s powerful, even stubborn silence.  

That strikes me as a very important detail.  

Because when Jesus asks if it’s lawful to do good on the Sabbath – to save a life on the Sabbath – that may sound like an abstract question.  

It is unless you’re the one whose life needs saving.  

But even more to the point, Jesus isn’t asking just anybody. 

When he asks about doing good, he’s not conducting some random survey. 

Remember how the phone always used to ring right during dinner with someone from somewhere wanting to know how you felt about breakfast cereal, or what have you?

That’s not what this is.    

Jesus is asking the people who are closest to the man with the withered hand how they feel about doing good to him…how they feel about saving him without delay.  

This guy they know.  

Their response, sad to say, is to look back at Jesus silently and thoughtfully for a long moment, as if he had suddenly asked them a very good question.  

Except that it’s not a good question – at least, if you’re the man with the hand, it isn’t.   

Apparently, it’s also not a good question if you’re Jesus. 

The poet Maya Angelou once said, “When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.” 

Maybe even more than believing their words, we need to believe the horrible clarity of their silences. 

III.

And yet, don’t you feel like, for all the people in the first couple of rows, sitting there with “their stubborn hearts,” determined to say nothing, to get this whole thing over with, there have to be some others who are also there.

There have to be people in the crowd who are trying to find it in them…or who are already even fighting the urge to speak.  

When Jesus calls for a show of hands, you know someone wants to put theirs up at least half-mast.  

“Group think” is a thing.  We know that.   We’re in the middle of a group think renaissance right now.  

But empathy is a thing, too.  So is experience.  So are perspective and honesty and humility and curiosity.  And so is courage. 

They are never very far away. They lurk in any crowd. 

Because life is too stern a teacher to leave at least some of us unmoved by what people go through.  

It’s come far too close and we know it far too well. 

Some of us know things that we would not wish on our worst enemy, much less somebody else’s child.  

Things that have changed us.  Broken us open.  Taught us to see.  

We so badly need those people to speak right now. 

When someone makes it a point to interrupt silence, there is often something tremendously holy at work for everyone in the room. 

To speak, especially into the silence, is a way of stretching out to meet someone—often enough, someone standing right there. 

If you think about it, Scripture hastens to remind us of something that silence tries to make us forget: that there’s always someone standing right there…someone who needs to be seen, loved, and perhaps healed.  

We need to speak that seeing, loving, and healing back into the world in all the ways we can.   

IV.

So: Mark doesn’t tell us what happened to the man after his hand is restored.  

Did he run home, throw a few things in a knapsack, and run after Jesus? 

It’s possible. 

Personally, I think it would be sort of wonderful if he actually decided to stay, right? 

 You know: Jesus heals a hand and creates a monster, at least for that gathering. Or, really, more like an angel.   

Because if he stayed: think of him at the next Annual Meeting.  

Think of him on the subject of Coffee Hour.  

Think of him at Joys and Concerns.  

Think of him whenever bad things happened to good people in that community, or whenever bad things happened even to bad people in that community.  

Think of him on the subject of God and the kind of world God wants to see.  

Think of every widow, every orphan, every stranger in that town, and how he’d walk by, always waving two hands to say hello. 

…Always testifying to the love of God, who greets us with open arms and who wants so much to hear our voice.  

Amen.