16 Pentecost

May my words and my thoughts be acceptable to you, O Lord, my refuge and my redeemer. (Psalm 19:14)

SEASON: 16 Pentecost
PROPER: 18B
PLACE: ST. JOHN’S PARISH
DATE: September 7, 1997

TEXT: Mark 7:31-37 - The Healing of the Deaf and Mute Man - “They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged hom to lay his hands on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

ISSUE: The passage tells of the presence of Christ among the people. The prophecies of Isaiah 35:4-7a are being fulfilled: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” People are becoming aware of the spiritual power of Christ beyond Jewish territory. They bring folk to him for healing. In this case they bring one who is deaf and mute who is healed. We, too, need to bring ourselves and others (especially the children) to receive healing for ears that become deafened by the world’s noise so that we can together as the community of Christ proclaim the love, forgiveness, and hope of God.
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Mark tells of the healing of man who is deaf and has a speech impediment. As the story unravels we learn that Jesus is moving beyond a ministry in Jewish territory and his ministry which had centered in synagogues. He now moves to areas with a larger Gentile population. Mark also wants us to know that Jesus’ popularity is growing significantly. People are aware of the uniqueness of his teaching and message and perceive him to be a kind of folk healer. They bring to him a man who is deaf, and who as a result has a speech impediment. Interestingly they “beg” Jesus to lay his hand upon the man who is deaf and mute. That begging may imply a feeling of unworthiness since these are Gentile folk, scorned by the Jewish leadership.
Jesus does, infact, approach the man, and takes him off away from the crowd to a private place. This taking the man away may have some meaning that Mark is intending to convey. Very little in the Mediterranean culture was private. People stayed very close and few things were done privately, and if they were met with suspicion. It was a peculiarity of the culture. But Jesus, who would often go off alone with his disciples, removes the man from the cumberson crowd.
Once away from the crowd, Jesus touches the man, placing his fingers in his ears. Touching , or laying on of hands, was a common method of healing used by folk healers. Jesus then spits on his own hands and touches the man’s tongue with the spittle. This method of healing is hardly considered hygienic to us, but spittle was considered to have curative powers. What’s more, spittle was at the time believed to have the power to deflect evil spirits. Jesus then speaks the curative word of power: “Ephphatha” which means “be opened.” Mark gives us the actual Aramaic word “Ephphatha.” The word itself looses power in translation. So you have Jesus, touch, spitting, and saying the word of power, and the man is healed of this evil spirit or disability that has diminished his place and standing in the community.
Once Jesus returns to the crowd he asks them to tell no one what has happened. The reason for the the silence is that Jesus’ honorable status is increasing. In that day and time it was inappropriate to assume honor beyond that to which you were born. As Jesus’s notoriety and popularity increased so did the opposition. If he were to continue to do his work of healing and teaching among the people of the time, he had to keep a low profile. But, of course, Jesus’ request to keep quiet went unheeded and the astounded crowds proclaim: “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
What you also have here in this passage from Mark is one of fulfillment of Hebrew Scripture. What Jesus does is fulfill in this passage the ancient longing of the Prophet Isaiah (35:4-7): “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.” This passage from Isaiah was written at a time when the Israelite nation was in a deep spiritual decline. Isaiah yearned for the time when God would forgive the sin and separation of his people and restore them like a desert that would be watered and come into bloom. They would be a healed people who would both hear and proclaim the glory of God. in the national life. In this passage, we find that hope and expectation being fulfilled.
Now as we try to appreciate what this particular passage means for us today, I think that it is important to be aware that the people who had some contact with Jesus brought this deaf and mute man to him. Out of their own faith, they trusted that being in the proximity of Christ, the alienated man, alienate by his cursed deafness (Lev.21:16-24), could know restoration and hope though the new messianic age. And is this not the mission of the church today to bring the alienated into the community of a loving God with a sense of hope for the healing of broken people. As we begin Sunday School again today, I hope the parents who have had some upbringing and faith in the God through Christ will bring their own childen to appreciate the profound healing and love of God in Christ to touch their children on a regular and ongoing basis. That regularity assures a deeper and broader appreciation of the life and ministry of Christ that effects our lives.
Jesus accepts that man and takes him away from the noise and the commotion of the world and embraces him intimately with the touching and the spitting ritual that his ears may be opened and his tongue unleashed. Notice that Jesus himself, along with his disciples, frequently withdrew to be with God, to pray, and be rejuvenated, restored, and recharged spiritually. They returned with renewed energies to be the channels of grace through which God’s love could continually flow. For this reason our sabbath, or Christian Sunday, is important to our faithfulness. We are here, and in the case of our children, or people we may recruit, to be removed from the noise, clammer, and commotion of the world to be touched intimately by the power of God that is the “still small voice” (I Kings 19:12) that reassures us that we are loved and forgiven, and that calls upon us to be a living faith in the world in what we do. It is a very noisy world, a deafening world. It is a world constantly calling out to us to get our attention. The newspapers, magazines, TV, telephones, boom boxes, extraordinaily loud concerts. advertisements, charities, business, e-mail, and variable popular philosophies, along with family demands, community, even church activity expectations. Getting beyond the noise is not easy. But all of us need the quiet of being able to listen and truly discern what God is saying and calling us really to be and to do. Out of our renewed hearing and listening our lives become meaningful expressions of the power of God speaking through us, so that what we say and do is more than just an additional commotion for the world.
It seems to me appropriate that those of us who claim to be faithful members of the church would regularly observe the sabbath in some meaningful and regular way. We need also to remember to begin all of our meetings and gathers with prayer, scripture, quiet time so that we call listen and have ears that are deafened by the noisyness of the world healed with the words of God and the healing touch of the Savior. And we do believe that Jesus Christ is the Word of God as much as the ancient scriptures are the words of God.
People who cannot hear well cannot speak well. You have to have heard words before you can imitate them. We adopt the very accents of the communities in which we were raised though hearing. We cannot speak the words of God to our children if we ourselves have not heard them. We cannot expect our children to hear them either unless they are brought within the hearing range. None of us can make a presentation of the love and forgiveness of God unless we ourselves have studied, known, and felt it.
We might describe in some ways that our own age is in something of a spiritual decline. Infatuated with materialism and success, struggling with the issues of violence and drugs, and sense that God is not foremost in the human heart, we hear once again this passage from Mark. One who is deaf and mute, unable to hear and to be a messenger is brought to Jesus. In the story, he is embraced and initmately touched by Christ. He is made to hear and whole community cannot be contained. They see this healing as a sign that a new age of hope has dawned. God has come among his people to redeem and heal them. Even the unworthy, the cursed, are restored in the healing of the man who was deaf and mute. May God open the spiritual ears of each one of us that we may discern his Word and speak clearly in a confusing world. Indeed, Christ Jesus was indeed compassionate in his acceptance of the deaf man. Can we expect anything less than the compassionate understanding of Christ in our own lives, who shall heal our indifference and deafness, and send us forth with the ability to be expressive of our Christian faith?

In the 1940 Hymnal (Hymn574), there is a hymn, unfortunately not carried over into the new 1982 Hymnal that went like this:
Lord, speak to me, that I may speak
In living echoes of thy tone;
As thou has sought, so let me seek
Thy erring children lost and lone.
It is a song of being the people of God, who having had its own deafness healed and hearing the Lord speak are seeking to address the world with his same compassion, love, and hope.