So often we are identified by what we do. When I am meeting someone for the first time, the first question I get is often: what do you do? In other words, what's your job? That's trickier to answer now, since being retired isn't really a job, so I usually say something about being a retired lawyer. If I were just to say that I'm retired, the next question would be well, what did you do before that, so I just answer that one at the same time. Perhaps there is a gendered piece there as well. I hear women talk about being a mom much more often than I hear guys talk about being a dad. But for men, at least, our identity is very-much wrapped up in what we do. In today's Gospel (MK 7: 31-37) we see Jesus do something that He does several times-- He heals someone, and then tells that person not to tell anyone that he has just been healed by Jesus. Of course, that's an impossible demand, and Jesus must have known that. What's the guy who couldn't hear or speak but now can supposed to say? That he doesn't know what happened? So why does Jesus make this seemingly-impossible request? Maybe one reason is that Jesus very-much wants not to be identified by what He does. He doesn't want people to think of Him as a miracle-worker. Sure, He works lots and lots of miracles, including raising people from the dead, but He does them not for the show of it, and not to prove anything, but because He is moved by pity or love or the desire to solve a problem like the fact that there is a starving crowd. Often, as is the case in the miracle worked today, Jesus takes the person away to a private place, or limits the people who are with Him, to try to cut down on the publicity of what's going on. It seems certain that He's not doing the miracles to prove to everyone that He's the Son of God, although as we look back at the story of His life that is one of the take-aways we now find. And, if we think about it, Jesus never mentions what He did before He started His public ministry. We guess that He was a carpenter, because that's what Joseph did, but that's only a guess. Maybe He was a fisherman, like at least 4 of the apostles-- who knows? We don't know because Jesus wants us not to think about Him in the terms we so often use-- what He did-- but in the sense of who He was (and is). God is a relational God-- a God who loves and receives love, the love of the Father and the Son. Theologians speculate that the Holy Spirit is in fact the personification of the love of Father and Son, that love being so intense that it assumes its own personhood. So when Jesus became human, it was natural for Him not to want to be identified with actions, with what He did, but to seek to be understood as the seond Person of the Trinity, a Person of relationship more than actions. Perhaps Jesus wants us to think of the loving relationship behind the miracles, rather than the miracles themselves. After all, other people can do and have done miracles-- the Acts of the Apostles has a bunch of them. But only one Person can love as Jesus does.