Proverbs 22:1-2,8-9,22-23 (version: The Message)
"A sterling reputation is better than striking it rich; a gracious spirit is better than money in the bank. 2 The rich and the poor shake hands as equals— God made them both! 8 Whoever sows sin reaps weeds, and bullying anger sputters into nothing. 9 Generous hands are blessed hands because they give bread to the poor. 22-23 Don’t walk on the poor just because they’re poor, and don’t use your position to crush the weak, because God will come to their defense; the life you took, he’ll take from you and give back to them.”
Mark 7:24-37
“24 From there he set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, 25 but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. 26 Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenician origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter. 27 He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” 28 But she answered him, “Sir even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” 29 Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.” 30 So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone. 31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
As we begin yet another school and program year, we find ourselves in a place where we probably hoped we'd be better off than where we are. That said, it is far better than where we were a year ago when we were still worshiping separately and remotely schooling, with no vaccination in the offing. As Paul says in Romans 8, “all of creation is groaning in labor pains”. And we, my friends, are still groaning about not being where we were before Covid and not where we want to be now because of Covid. And I want to say that whether we say it out loud or we say it internally, let's face it we are “so done” with this! We are so done, because we want to be freed up from the chains that bind us from doing and living and experiencing all the things that we want, when we want and the way we want.
We may not identify exactly with the deaf man, who also has a speech impediment, but there's still plenty that we can learn from this exchange that he has with Jesus. The first is to imagine what it must have been like to not only not be able to hear, but unable to speak clearly. I wonder, because it doesn't really say how he was even noticed, or why. Generally, people who had speech impediments and/or were deaf or blind, were pushed to the edges of society. They weren't cared for. They weren't fed. They were judged as being sinful and sinners. And yet, he was picked by them, (presumably the disciples), but maybe not. Maybe it was just a handful of people who saw this thing that Jesus was doing and thought maybe there's hope even for this man.
But in Mark, Chapters 1 through 6, Jesus has basically been on a tear. He has calmed the seas. He's walked on water. He's fed the five thousand. And so the healing of a single deaf and mute man seems like a no-brainer. And it was. But it's this healing and this miracle story. There's a line in there that's easily overlooked. It says, “After putting His finger in his ears and applying saliva (yuck!) on his tongue.” But then Jesus, he looks up to heaven. Then he sighs. Just like the sigh in Romans 8, where the sigh is beyond deeper, too deep even for words. And Jesus says, “Ephphatha” (ef-fatha) which means “be heard, be healed”.
Eugene Boring who is a wonderful scholar on Mark (and, by the way, he's anything but boring), says that the ancient reader knew that the word Ephphatha was not something like “Abracadabra or Open Sesame” like it was a great magic trick. Jesus meant business. And this word, which is Aramaic, is actually an ordinary word that would have been rolling off of Jesus’ tongue and anybody else's tongue. It's not magic, but it means with authority or a direct command. Ephphatha means “to be opened”. He's commanding the ears to become unclogged, the canals to be rid of all that blocks sound and speech.
Perhaps you've seen some of the touching videos when people are healed from hearing impairment. There's one especially with a toddler who has been restored from deafness through surgery and technology and hears his father's voice for the first time. If you haven't had a chance to see it, Google it. It's quite remarkable. There's also a commercial where, through technology, a profoundly deaf father has a conversation with his young adult son and they hear each other for the first time because of technology. Beautiful. But what I want to focus on is the part about “Be opened”.
As I get older I'm noticing, especially with masks on, that I have a harder time hearing what people are saying. I also recognize that as I age, I'm starting to lose some of my hearing and I'm not too happy about that. This is beyond the healing of someone who was deaf. Jesus was talking to not only the deaf person but to all the disciples and all the onlookers who had one foot in to say, “Be opened.” I think that is something that we, as individuals and as Christians, should and could pray each and every day, each and every hour, especially when we have to do the things we just don't want to do; places where God is inviting us that, where we don’t want to, calling us to do what we don't want to do; because we don't feel like it; we don't trust the call. But “being opened” is exactly what Jesus is inviting all of us to do. We can stay deaf or ignore Jesus’ call for as long as we want but it won’t change a thing.
I remember a parishioner, who at the time was still able to worship in person, who is now homebound, saying that his wife was sure that he had a hearing deficit. So he went to see his doctor and the doctor said, “You don't have a hearing deficit except when your wife yells at you!” We want to be opened in the places we want to be opened. We don't want to be opened in the places that are foisted on us, or that we end up unwittingly. But yet it's the listening, it's the “being open” and the listening to God's word is what gives us strength and courage and vision, especially in these days where we're champing at the bit to get back to normalcy. I know that we're all worried about school, because when those kids go back to school, we're going to see some more difficulty - that's fact. And so what happens with that is that our anxiety comes up. Our frustration comes up. Our frustration at others who don't believe the same things that we do rises and rises and rises. And so, instead of being opened and listening, what are we doing? We're complaining. We're yammering. We're judging. Not if even if we say it out loud or even having debates with our spouse about the one sixth of what we believe about masks and vaccines, there's probably 12 different opinions that run the gamut. And we spend too much of our time debating those things. Yet God is saying, “be opened, friends, this too shall pass.”
As I said in my newsletter, one of the things I learned on my study leave, again, is that especially in these difficult times, focus on what we CAN control, not what we can’t. There’s a lot we can’t control. We want our churches to be full. We want our Sunday Schools to be open. We want to sing without masks. We want to have the things the way we want them to be. But to “be opened” by God is to relearn to focus on what we can control, not what we can't.
I don't know if you had a chance to see this, but August 8th, 15th, something like that, the Chicago White Sox played the Yankees in a very special event where they went to Iowa and re-enacted (I'm getting chills) the movie “Field of Dreams”. The plot slowly unpacks what it’s like to ‘be opened’. Kevin Costner’s character Ray spent more and more time being open to what he wasn’t quite sure that he was hearing. His wife Annie tried to be patient and understanding but slowly began to think he was a nut, his brother-in-law wanted to shut him down financially. Terence Mann, played by James Earl Jones thought Ray was out of his gourd too, but he kept listening, because somewhere inside he knew Ray was hearing the truth beyond all recognition.
Friends, what you hear from God's voice may not agree with what others hear, but it's God's truth to you. God wants you and me to be opened. Not necessarily to listen to ad nauseam to complaints, but to be open to where God is taking us next, because we're going to have to stick together to get through this. I'm not concerned about the future of our church, although I am concerned about the future of the church. We have to be opened. Allow God to open us. Allow God in and our complaints shut out. We have to stop all of our comments, our complaints, our judgments, our frustrations, because that's just a waste of energy and none of us are getting any younger. But if we are opened to God's healing of our dark places, of the deaf places, of the blind places in our lives and
even the ways in which we say things that are unkind or judgmental and not true, then God has more healing for us to do.
So before we approach this table of throne and grace, which sometimes we take for granted, I want us to sit and be opened. Let God put God's hands, Jesus’ hands on our ears, on our mouths, on our hearts to be open to God's voice and get rid of all the other junk that's in the way of receiving grace through bread and cup this day. Amen.