23^rd Sunday in O.T. (B); September 9, 2018

Is 35:4-7a   Ps 146   Jas 2:1-5   Mk 7:31-37

Deacon Jim McFadden; (New) Folsom Prison

 

            In this week’s Gospel, taken from Mark, we have Jesus healing a deaf man who also has a speech impediment. As always, we have to look at the surface, literal description of what’s happening and the deeper spiritual meaning of the account. Jesus is, indeed, performing a physical miracle. He was a physical healer, a miracle worker, which was one of the reasons that people paid attention to him. So, this story undoubtedly reflects a real event in the ministry of Jesus.

At the same time, Jesus’ actions should also be read symbolically as to uncover a deeper spiritual meaning. What do we see when we try to decipher the spiritual significance of the story?

They bring to him a man who is deaf and dumb. Both are physical ailments, but we read them spiritually as well. ‘Deafness’ is a spiritual issue. All throughout the Bible we hear this great metaphor of God’s speech: e.g., God says, “Let there be light and there is light.” The Psalmist says that “We can hear the word of God” as we look around creation.” We can “hear” the word of God in the orderliness of the universe. Then God speaks in a very direct way to the prophets who are his spokespersons, to the Patriarchs, and to the great liberator, Moses. His word shapes us.

            The question is: do we allow the Word to shape us? For that to happen, we need to be hearers of the Word. We need to be listeners of God’s Word. What’s our problem spiritually? WE DON’T LISTEN! We are deaf!

So, who does this deaf man stand for? All of us up and down the centuries, all of us today who do not “hear” the word of God, who’ve grown deaf to it, oblivious to it, who’ve lost the capacity to discern it.

Think of it this way: hearing the word of God is like hearing a pitch at a certain frequency. If you’re not attuned to it, you’ll never take it in. The saint is one who is attuned to the frequency of God’s word.

Why don’t we hear it?  One reason is that there are so many voices, so many sounds competing for our attention. Just think of TV, commercials, and the Internet.   Think of the literal sounds that compete for our attention. We just get used to that wall of “white noise” that comes at us 24/7. In fact, we become dependent upon that noise, even addicted to it.

Under these circumstances, how do we hear God? In 1 Kings 19 we hear that the prophet Elijah encountered God not “in the strong or heavy winds,” not in the earthquake, not in the fire, but in a “tiny whispering sound” (vs. 11-12). How do we hear it if its drowned by so much competition?

Deafness to the word of God, infrequent participation at Mass, ignorance of Scripture result in the voice of God being drowned out by the culture. For all these reasons we are like this man, deaf.

What’s the result of deafness? At the physical level a speech impediment obtains. When you can’t hear sounds of articulate speech, how can you be expected to reproduce them? So, someone who’s deaf, can’t speak clearly.

Now, read the passage spiritually. If you don’t hear the word of God clearly, you don’t regularly attend to it, then you can’t speak it clearly, either. Spiritually, you’ll have a speech impediment. Maybe you can make some religious sounds, but they won’t be clear, articulate. It’s like the Bob Dylan song from his John Wesley Harding album, “I’ll know my song well before I start singing.” How can you sing in the Lord, if you don’t know his song? As St. Jerome said, “Not to know Scripture is not to know Christ.”

            How many Catholics can speak the word of God with clarity and confidence? Let that question sink in because I think it’s a challenge to all of us. How many of us become tongue-tied when people ask us about our faith? ? Are we tongue-tied as though we have a spiritual impediment.

So, what does Jesus do to the man with the impediment.   Listen: “He took him off by himself away from the crowd” (Mk 8:33a). How important is that move and read it spiritually. One reason we can’t hear is that we spend too much time in the crowd—the noisy, busy voices of so many, the received conventional wisdom of any society, such as prison culture.   All of it makes us deaf to God’s word and so we have to be moved away. We have to be introduced to a new environment, a new milieu where we’re able to hear the word of God clearly.   I knew an inmate in C-facility a few years ago, who would get up at 4:00 a.m. to pray in the Quiet—he needed a place of silence, contemplation, and communion with God. As the Psalmist says, “Be still and know that I am God” (Ps 46:11). Jesus is leading him and us away from the crowd and into the Church. Jesus leads us away from the crowd and into the life of the Church which has a new way of thinking, seeing, imaging, and hearing.

And, then we hear: “He put his fingers into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue” (Mk 7:33b).   “Then,” the Gospel tells us, “he looked up to heaven and groaned” (v. 34a) with his fingers in the man’s ears. What’s Jesus doing? He’s setting up a kind of spiritual, electrical current. Linking himself to the Father, he plugs himself into the deaf man thereby running power from the Father through the Son to the deaf man. This is the picture of the Church, isn’t it? The Father speaks to us through his Son, and, then Jesus says in his original Aramaic “Ephphatha,” that is, “be opened” (cf. v. 34b). “Be opened” to the word, who is Jesus.

You’ve spent your life closed, caved in on yourself, listening to your own voice or the voice of the crowd. Now the time has come in Christ to be opened to the word of God. How do we do that? We do so through the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, the proclamation of the Word, prayer.

When we hear Jesus say Ephphatha , we learn that the man’s speech impediment was immediately over come and so it goes.   We don’t speak clearly because we can’t hear. And, therefore, when we do hear clearly, we begin to speak clearly. What’s the key to becoming a disciple of Christ, which means to be an evangelist? It’s to listen. It’s to become plugged into Jesus Christ and through him to the Father. Through the Bible, through the proclamation of the Word through the Eucharist, you begin to hear God’s speech and then you can speak it clearly, articulately, and confidently.

            Stay with these readings, brothers.   Stay plugged into Jesus and then you will speak.

Amen.