The Deaf-Mute
Preaching
Preaching The Miracles
Series II, Cycle B
1. Text
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.31 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him.32 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.33 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."34 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.35 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.36 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."37
2. What's Happening?
First Point Of Action
Jesus travels into the region of Decapolis by the Sea of Galilee.
Second Point Of Action
They bring a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus and beg him to lay his hand on the man.
Third Point Of Action
Jesus takes the man aside privately, administers the ritual of healing, looks heavenward, pronounces the opening word, and the man is healed.
Fourth Point Of Action
Jesus orders them to tell no one.
Fifth Point Of Action
They continue to tell everyone.
3. Connecting Points -- Conversations
Interviewing One Who Brought Jesus The Person With Hearing And Speaking Impairments
Asker: Why did you bring this person to Jesus? Was he a friend? A relative? Had you tried everything else before to heal him? Why did you feel this man counted enough that he was worth the effort?
Bringer: I know you live in a time where you can fly from one medical center to another. Your physicians can scan the Internet medical data base in search of answers. In my time, health was a divine gift and expected by the faithful in Israel. When disease occurred, the sufferer could only look to God for deliverance. Only the exceptional person consulted a physician. Even so, medical science was in its infancy then.
Never did Jesus support disease as a punishment sent by God. I cannot explain it, but Jesus understands the whole person. When Jesus knows someone is suffering, he does not need a battery of clinical tests or long questioning. He has the capacity to size up the situation immediately from the inside. He can restore health to the whole person -- body, mind, and spirit. That is why I would bring any person -- a friend, relative, total stranger -- to this unusual person.
Asker: The story says you begged Jesus to lay his hand on the man. You did not just bring him and leave him there. You interceded for him. You spoke the words the man could not speak for himself. To beg Jesus means you are in earnest, you come to Jesus humbly. Yours was not a command but an entreaty.
Bringer: Sometimes the best we can do for a friend is to stand with her. Your modern term for this, I believe, is advocacy. When people cannot defend or speak for themselves, we must speak for them. We must be their voice. Some call it social support. I call it human compassion.
When the brain of a woman with Alzheimer's deteriorates, she has no past and no future. We must stand with her in her present. We must defend and recognize elements of joy in her present. When trouble fills children with too much silence for a child, we must help children give words to their secrets. Friends and advocates keep an ear open for appropriate times to speak for them. By choosing to relate to people in this way, I am more deeply involved with what is most important in the lives of those I meet.
You spoke of the manner in which I interceded for the person with hearing and speaking impairment. Commands do very little other than to ignore the essence of a personality. Commands speak to our mechanical dimensions rather than to the heart. If I am to be a mediator who draws two persons together, then I must speak to the heart of each. I knew about Jesus' healing work. I knew and trusted what must be done to heal the man. Jesus must touch him.
Asker: Jesus asked you to be quiet about this healing, but you could not do anything but talk about it. Why? Mark said you were astounded.
Bringer: "Astound" is too mild a word for the wonder and awe I felt as I witnessed the healing of my friend. It is one thing to hear about the miracle of healing. It is entirely different to observe it. One moment my friend suffers, in the next he is free of that suffering. How could I possibly be silent when I know of my friend's hopelessness as surely as I know of my inability to change his condition? All I want to do is say, "Look! Look! See what has happened."
Asker: You said that Jesus has done everything well, even making the deaf hear and the mute speak. That suggests you had doubts. Bringer: No suffering person must withhold or be restrained from coming to Jesus for healing. In a way, I was echoing an old saying. Do you know it? "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all" (Proverbs 22:1-2). Jesus illustrated this saying well. Jesus was not only a talker. He acted on his faith. This miracle helped build his reputation as a doer.
You said I doubted. It is not that I doubted. I had not considered the possibility of healing or changing something that appeared given from the start of a person's life. We think the present reality is forever. Does this healing suggest that even what appears as a permanent hindrance in our lives is only temporary?
Interviewing The Hearing/Speech Impaired Man
Asker: Until Jesus healed you, you played a completely passive, silent role in the event. Had you given up? Were you totally unable to communicate, even with the yearning of your eyes? Was it the yearning in your eyes that drew Jesus to you in the first place?
Sufferer: Maybe what appears to the observer as passive is a role of waiting. I wonder if something within us must be willing to be involved in healing if we are to heal or be open to receive healing. Was it a moving beyond the anger, the frustration and the grieving over my condition that let me become ready to heal? I gave up. I came to the reality that I could do nothing myself to change my circumstances. Did that make me ready to receive healing? Did Jesus speak to my whole person? Did he address what specifically caused my hearing and speaking impairments? What if that suffering part of me that Jesus confronted and commanded had refused to open?
Asker: How did you come to the attention of the others? Something about you must have impressed someone, somewhere, to intercede for you.
Sufferer: When we know another person well, subtle things talk beyond speaking or hearing. A listening of the heart, an observing of body posture or facial expression tells us a lot about someone. Compassion propels some people into action.
Asker: You must have been bursting to speak and to be understood. The opening of your ears was done to you. The releasing of your tongue happened to you. As soon as you were out of this silent, soundless prison, you acted. You spoke. You had something to say. I wonder what your first words were. Whatever they were, you spoke without an impediment. You were frank and candid.
Were you aware of the double meaning of your silence? Others kept what you said as private as Jesus' taking you away from the crowd to heal you privately. We can only imagine the words that burst from you: "And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly."
Sufferer: I completely turned around. My ears opened. My tongue loosened. I always had asked the why's of my imprisonment. Now, I entertain this new mystery of my release. Could this be the meaning of the miracle of conversion -- a complete turning around of one's life?
Interviewing Jesus
When Mark reports this miracle, he is terse and to the point. Jesus reminds us of the busy medical specialist who wastes neither her time nor that of her patient.
Asker: Jesus, why did you take this suffering person away from the crowd? You seemed to know just what to do, as a doctor who sizes up a malady immediately and administers the cure.
Jesus: God does not flaunt healing. God is not a showoff. My task here was to act for the sake of this suffering person. I took him away to heal him in private because I respect his privacy. I healed him privately so as not to draw attention to myself.
Nevertheless, my actions did not go unnoticed in this important geographical area of the Decapolis. Even the outcast and even the foreigner or different person among us is worthy of concern.
Asker: You healed with a combination of touch and words. Jesus, how do you trust the healing power entrusted to you? How can we trust the special abilities we have been given?
Jesus: God is not fake. I am no impostor. I would say to you the same words I spoke to the person with the hearing and speaking impairments. Ephphatha, that is, be opened to the gifts and possibilities God has given you. Gifts are given. Gifts are to be used. Trust them as entrusted to you, as empowerment.
This person was among the poorest of the poor because he could not express himself let alone support himself. God does not discriminate between the poor and the rich. God pleads for the cause of both. (Refer to the Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23.) We must do similarly if our faith is to be alive and is to make a difference.
One after my time understands what I was about here. He reminds us that God has chosen the poor "to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom." The writer of the letter of James recognized that if, without showing partiality, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves then we must act and talk. (See James, Chapter 2, which is the epistle for Proper 18.)
It would not have done for me only to tell this person so impaired in hearing and speaking to have faith. I had to act and speak to help this person. James said it clearly, "So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:17).
Asker: Jesus, you do not have time to respond to everything I ask. If I may, let me speak some things I have been pondering about the specific steps of this healing. All this ritual suggests that God is as systematic and painstaking in healing as God was in creating. For me, to follow a ritual means to have a plan or a design. I see five definite steps in your action.
First, you took this person aside, away from the crowd. When we are in need of healing and when we ourselves are to help someone, perhaps it is best to remove ourselves from the mainstream of activity so no distractions disturb us. Perhaps you are showing us here how to have complete focus and concentration on the present problem.
Second, you touched the person by placing your fingers in his ears. I could play with the meaning of specific formulae. Fingers in the ears might be your telling us to block out all other sounds of a hearing person to eliminate distractions. However, this man could not hear. Then there is the expression of putting one's finger on the problem. Another idiom suggests that God have a hand in this healing. A person is not just healed by another person.
More likely, you meant to remind us that human touch is as close as we can come to another. Yours was not a distant, hands-off approach. Touch is particularly important when one cannot hear you speak or tell to you something with speech. Your touch is the mark of compassion. This is a story about compassion.
I remember the story of the hemorrhaging woman. You said that you felt the healing energy flow from your fingers. Is that what happened this time? Is this method of healing to remind us to put our finger directly on the problem, to get at the source?
Third, you spat. Germs aside, beyond touching the man, you gave him some of your inner juice, a source of life-giving water. You are the water of life. You are the wellspring of life. Which is more important, the risk of more harm to the man or the chance of healing? This risk is like those of modern healing. We must balance the side effects and the potential benefits of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Fourth, you touched the person's tongue. Again, you touched. You made physical contact with the second source of his trouble. You chose to risk your own contamination.
Fifth, you spoke. You used words of invocation. What did you say to God, Jesus? What was your prayer? Your connection with God happened in a look up to heaven before you spoke, "Ephphatha." Is that method of connecting with God further evidence of your empathy with the suffering? You spoke in body language, common to you and the suffering man. You let him know that you were including God in this healing. Communication is far more than words alone. When we search for some kind of healing, we do not know what is going to happen, if perhaps we will come out worse rather than better.
What was your connecting with God, Jesus? You sighed. A sigh can be the action of letting go. Somehow, I think it was more than saying, "Okay, God, make it work now." Did your sigh say, "Not my will be done, Father, but yours"? Was it, "Now I turn his healing over to you, God"? Was it, "I've done all I know to do"?
As far as we know, you only spoke one word, "Ephphatha." The recording of this one word in the Gospel called Mark points to its importance. Mark did not say you commanded this to happen. I can imagine you looking the sufferer straight in the eye and quietly, but directly and with authority, saying, "Ephphatha." You knew what you were doing. You trusted God's intervention.
Asker: Finally, you must have told these people more than once to keep quiet about this. Why was this silence so important to you, not just in this healing but in other healings, too?
Jesus: Asker, you have given much thought to the specific steps of this healing. Before I go, let me respond to your final question. Some say I used reverse psychology. The more I suggested witnesses keep quiet, the more I meant for them to spread the word. Others say I feared misinterpretation or was exhausted and feared swarms of crowds as the word spread. Concentrate on being doers, not only hearers of God's word.
4. Words
Locale
"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" (Mark 7:31).
They called him Jesus, the Galilean. This was of broad significance for his whole career. Surrounded by foreign nations, Galilee was the circle of the Gentiles. Jesus would have reached a variety of people in his Galilean ministry. Decapolis encompassed ten communities south of the Sea of Galilee and extending eastward. Many travelers came from east and west. In later times, foreigners surrounded Jewish people. This was not always Jewish territory. This prosperous region was agricultural with wide diversification from fertile farms and vineyards to fig trees.
The Sea of Galilee lies straight north of and is joined to the Dead Sea by the Jordan River. Galilee was mostly north and west of the Sea of Galilee. There was an upper and lower Galilee with a rough central mountainous region. Lower Galilee comprised the fertile part of Palestine with gentle slopes covered with olive and fig trees.
At the north shore of the Sea of Galilee was Capernaum. Nazareth stood in the southwest corner of Galilee. It was near the border of Samaria to the south and the border of Phoenicia to the west. Sidon and Tyre, Phoenician towns northernmost on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, were considerably north and west of Capernaum.
"Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened"
Ephphatha is attributed to Jesus' healing of the man with hearing and speaking impairments. Depending on the version, "ephphatha" translates as "be open" or "be opened." The passive, to be opened, implies an opening beyond the control or initiation of the sufferer. The active, be open, suggests Jesus elicited the cooperation or the agreement of the suffering person. In some way, the sufferer played a role in the healing.
Did the impaired man recognize that he was or had become deaf and mute? We know only that someone cared enough about him to bring him to Jesus. Must something within us be willing to be actively involved in healing if we are to heal or be open to receive healing? Did Jesus speak to the whole person or specifically to what was causing the hearing and speaking impairments? What if that suffering part of the man that Jesus addressed and commanded had refused to open?
The opening is twofold: The man's ears are opened and the bond of his tongue is loosened. Jesus did not command the man to hear or to speak but to be open to these changes, to be open so that he might hear and speak.
What do our disabilities say metaphorically, symbolically, about us? How do they color who we are? What are those things that tie our tongues into knots? Are our ears to be opened to hear something in particular? To what do we close our ears? What do we not want to hear? What must we become ready to hear before we are to heal? What would Jesus or God have us hear?
Speech Impediment
If someone is mute, the impediment may be either voluntary or not at all by choice. Consider the bondage of a closed tongue. Have you known times when you could not find the words to express yourself? Have you ever been so conflicted that you could not hear what anyone else was saying, particularly or generally? Have you ever been in such turmoil that you could speak nothing with a clear mind?
If you had a lifetime, or even three months, of being unable to communicate, what would be the first words from your lips? To rest and heal her ailing vocal chords, Rhea Zakitch's physician prescribed three months of silence. Because of that silence, she said questions and queries of communication with her family took on new importance. It led to her creation of the communication skills tool UNGAME.1
Gayle Holtz said of her bright eight-year-old daughter, Nebraska's 1992 Cerebral Palsy Poster Child, "More than anything, I wish Katie could talk. There is someone inside there, a curious child wanting to communicate. I wish she could speak verbally with us because there has to be a lot she wants to say."2
While Katie cannot speak, she is learning to express herself by focusing onto a word board a laser beam from an apparatus she wears on her forehead.
Spat
Jesus' means of healing the man with hearing and speech impediments suggests a ritualistic formula that returns us to elaborate priestly cleansing rituals found in the book of Leviticus. Jesus placed his fingers in the man's ears, spat, and touched his tongue.
As part of this healing ritual, Jesus spat onto his hand, then touched the spittle to the suffering man's tongue, restoring his speech. Was this anointing a cosmetic technique with spittle of a symbolic nature and not strictly a therapeutic procedure?
This simple act holds a puzzle of meanings. One piece is the Old Testament superstition that believed human spittle contains the mysterious essence of the person herself. The act of spitting, a sign of strongest rejection and contempt, was as repulsive in Old Testament times as it is today. (See Numbers 12:14 and Deu-teronomy 25:9.) Figuratively or literally, to spit in someone's face is a disgrace.
Jesus gives new meaning to what potentially causes harm, the spread of more disease or injury. He makes the superstition reality by sharing of the essence of himself. Might one stretch metaphor, living water, to say he gives the energy of his life juice to cause the healing of another? Carefully and purposefully directing the saliva, Jesus uses it to heal.
What formulae do we concoct to free ourselves -- a walk in the woods or by a stream or in the park? We make space for ourselves in the cocoon of our own houses or apartments. What rituals for freedom have you come up with?
5. Gospel Parallels
Setting
While both Matthew and Mark locate the geographical area of these healings, Mark 7:31 traces the specific route Jesus traveled, that is, "region of Tyre," "Sidon," towards the "Sea of Galilee," in the region of the "Decapolis." Mark's naming of the places reminds people living in the area who might become the gathering crowd that surrounded Jesus.
With the words, "left that place," Matthew links this healing miracle to the story of the mother and the healing of her daughter (Matthew 15:29). Matthew is more general, as if speaking to people who were familiar with the area, that is, "left that place," "along the Sea of Galilee," "up the mountain."
The Crowd
Beginning verse 30 with "Great crowds," Matthew emphasizes the number of people gathered to watch the healing event. Again, in verse 31, he refers to the response of the audience to the healing. The crowds are an active part of the entire story. It is they who bring those needing healing. They put the suffering folk at Jesus' feet (Matthew 15:30). They see the results of the healing. The crowds praise God (Matthew 15:31).
Although the crowd is secondary for Mark, Mark credits them for bringing the man with hearing and speaking impairments to Jesus. The crowd begs Jesus to touch him. However, for Mark, Jesus is the primary actor who takes the suffering away from the crowd to heal in private.
The Gospel called Matthew spells out the variety of sufferings of the people brought for healing. He relates their healing as a group. With half the number of verses, Matthew tells this story in summary fashion. Mark lifts up the healing of one person, the man who is hearing- and speaking-impaired. Mark describes the ritual of the healing. He focuses on the action of Jesus.
Crediting God with praise, the crowd, according to Matthew, connects Jesus and the healings with God (Matthew 15:31). In Mark, only Jesus does the connecting when he looks heavenward during the healing (Mark 7:34).
The crowd may have witnessed other healings. Mark's story suggests the crowd was observing its first healings by Jesus. Mark reports each detail of the healing. Crowd response focuses on Jesus and the unspoken dawning that Jesus is no usual person. Matthew reports no direct interaction between Jesus and the crowd. In Mark, Jesus orders the crowd repeatedly to keep still about the healing (Mark 7:36).
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1. This resource is available through Cokesbury outlets.
2. From an article by Brauninger titled, "Creative Teachers, Technology, Family Have Katie Holtz 'Beaming' " in West Point News December 19, 1991.
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.31 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him.32 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue.33 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, "Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened."34 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.35 Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.36 They were astounded beyond measure, saying, "He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."37
2. What's Happening?
First Point Of Action
Jesus travels into the region of Decapolis by the Sea of Galilee.
Second Point Of Action
They bring a deaf man with a speech impediment to Jesus and beg him to lay his hand on the man.
Third Point Of Action
Jesus takes the man aside privately, administers the ritual of healing, looks heavenward, pronounces the opening word, and the man is healed.
Fourth Point Of Action
Jesus orders them to tell no one.
Fifth Point Of Action
They continue to tell everyone.
3. Connecting Points -- Conversations
Interviewing One Who Brought Jesus The Person With Hearing And Speaking Impairments
Asker: Why did you bring this person to Jesus? Was he a friend? A relative? Had you tried everything else before to heal him? Why did you feel this man counted enough that he was worth the effort?
Bringer: I know you live in a time where you can fly from one medical center to another. Your physicians can scan the Internet medical data base in search of answers. In my time, health was a divine gift and expected by the faithful in Israel. When disease occurred, the sufferer could only look to God for deliverance. Only the exceptional person consulted a physician. Even so, medical science was in its infancy then.
Never did Jesus support disease as a punishment sent by God. I cannot explain it, but Jesus understands the whole person. When Jesus knows someone is suffering, he does not need a battery of clinical tests or long questioning. He has the capacity to size up the situation immediately from the inside. He can restore health to the whole person -- body, mind, and spirit. That is why I would bring any person -- a friend, relative, total stranger -- to this unusual person.
Asker: The story says you begged Jesus to lay his hand on the man. You did not just bring him and leave him there. You interceded for him. You spoke the words the man could not speak for himself. To beg Jesus means you are in earnest, you come to Jesus humbly. Yours was not a command but an entreaty.
Bringer: Sometimes the best we can do for a friend is to stand with her. Your modern term for this, I believe, is advocacy. When people cannot defend or speak for themselves, we must speak for them. We must be their voice. Some call it social support. I call it human compassion.
When the brain of a woman with Alzheimer's deteriorates, she has no past and no future. We must stand with her in her present. We must defend and recognize elements of joy in her present. When trouble fills children with too much silence for a child, we must help children give words to their secrets. Friends and advocates keep an ear open for appropriate times to speak for them. By choosing to relate to people in this way, I am more deeply involved with what is most important in the lives of those I meet.
You spoke of the manner in which I interceded for the person with hearing and speaking impairment. Commands do very little other than to ignore the essence of a personality. Commands speak to our mechanical dimensions rather than to the heart. If I am to be a mediator who draws two persons together, then I must speak to the heart of each. I knew about Jesus' healing work. I knew and trusted what must be done to heal the man. Jesus must touch him.
Asker: Jesus asked you to be quiet about this healing, but you could not do anything but talk about it. Why? Mark said you were astounded.
Bringer: "Astound" is too mild a word for the wonder and awe I felt as I witnessed the healing of my friend. It is one thing to hear about the miracle of healing. It is entirely different to observe it. One moment my friend suffers, in the next he is free of that suffering. How could I possibly be silent when I know of my friend's hopelessness as surely as I know of my inability to change his condition? All I want to do is say, "Look! Look! See what has happened."
Asker: You said that Jesus has done everything well, even making the deaf hear and the mute speak. That suggests you had doubts. Bringer: No suffering person must withhold or be restrained from coming to Jesus for healing. In a way, I was echoing an old saying. Do you know it? "A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold. The rich and the poor have this in common: the Lord is the maker of them all" (Proverbs 22:1-2). Jesus illustrated this saying well. Jesus was not only a talker. He acted on his faith. This miracle helped build his reputation as a doer.
You said I doubted. It is not that I doubted. I had not considered the possibility of healing or changing something that appeared given from the start of a person's life. We think the present reality is forever. Does this healing suggest that even what appears as a permanent hindrance in our lives is only temporary?
Interviewing The Hearing/Speech Impaired Man
Asker: Until Jesus healed you, you played a completely passive, silent role in the event. Had you given up? Were you totally unable to communicate, even with the yearning of your eyes? Was it the yearning in your eyes that drew Jesus to you in the first place?
Sufferer: Maybe what appears to the observer as passive is a role of waiting. I wonder if something within us must be willing to be involved in healing if we are to heal or be open to receive healing. Was it a moving beyond the anger, the frustration and the grieving over my condition that let me become ready to heal? I gave up. I came to the reality that I could do nothing myself to change my circumstances. Did that make me ready to receive healing? Did Jesus speak to my whole person? Did he address what specifically caused my hearing and speaking impairments? What if that suffering part of me that Jesus confronted and commanded had refused to open?
Asker: How did you come to the attention of the others? Something about you must have impressed someone, somewhere, to intercede for you.
Sufferer: When we know another person well, subtle things talk beyond speaking or hearing. A listening of the heart, an observing of body posture or facial expression tells us a lot about someone. Compassion propels some people into action.
Asker: You must have been bursting to speak and to be understood. The opening of your ears was done to you. The releasing of your tongue happened to you. As soon as you were out of this silent, soundless prison, you acted. You spoke. You had something to say. I wonder what your first words were. Whatever they were, you spoke without an impediment. You were frank and candid.
Were you aware of the double meaning of your silence? Others kept what you said as private as Jesus' taking you away from the crowd to heal you privately. We can only imagine the words that burst from you: "And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly."
Sufferer: I completely turned around. My ears opened. My tongue loosened. I always had asked the why's of my imprisonment. Now, I entertain this new mystery of my release. Could this be the meaning of the miracle of conversion -- a complete turning around of one's life?
Interviewing Jesus
When Mark reports this miracle, he is terse and to the point. Jesus reminds us of the busy medical specialist who wastes neither her time nor that of her patient.
Asker: Jesus, why did you take this suffering person away from the crowd? You seemed to know just what to do, as a doctor who sizes up a malady immediately and administers the cure.
Jesus: God does not flaunt healing. God is not a showoff. My task here was to act for the sake of this suffering person. I took him away to heal him in private because I respect his privacy. I healed him privately so as not to draw attention to myself.
Nevertheless, my actions did not go unnoticed in this important geographical area of the Decapolis. Even the outcast and even the foreigner or different person among us is worthy of concern.
Asker: You healed with a combination of touch and words. Jesus, how do you trust the healing power entrusted to you? How can we trust the special abilities we have been given?
Jesus: God is not fake. I am no impostor. I would say to you the same words I spoke to the person with the hearing and speaking impairments. Ephphatha, that is, be opened to the gifts and possibilities God has given you. Gifts are given. Gifts are to be used. Trust them as entrusted to you, as empowerment.
This person was among the poorest of the poor because he could not express himself let alone support himself. God does not discriminate between the poor and the rich. God pleads for the cause of both. (Refer to the Old Testament lesson for this Sunday, Proverbs 22:1-2, 8-9, 22-23.) We must do similarly if our faith is to be alive and is to make a difference.
One after my time understands what I was about here. He reminds us that God has chosen the poor "to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom." The writer of the letter of James recognized that if, without showing partiality, we are to love our neighbors as ourselves then we must act and talk. (See James, Chapter 2, which is the epistle for Proper 18.)
It would not have done for me only to tell this person so impaired in hearing and speaking to have faith. I had to act and speak to help this person. James said it clearly, "So faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead" (James 2:17).
Asker: Jesus, you do not have time to respond to everything I ask. If I may, let me speak some things I have been pondering about the specific steps of this healing. All this ritual suggests that God is as systematic and painstaking in healing as God was in creating. For me, to follow a ritual means to have a plan or a design. I see five definite steps in your action.
First, you took this person aside, away from the crowd. When we are in need of healing and when we ourselves are to help someone, perhaps it is best to remove ourselves from the mainstream of activity so no distractions disturb us. Perhaps you are showing us here how to have complete focus and concentration on the present problem.
Second, you touched the person by placing your fingers in his ears. I could play with the meaning of specific formulae. Fingers in the ears might be your telling us to block out all other sounds of a hearing person to eliminate distractions. However, this man could not hear. Then there is the expression of putting one's finger on the problem. Another idiom suggests that God have a hand in this healing. A person is not just healed by another person.
More likely, you meant to remind us that human touch is as close as we can come to another. Yours was not a distant, hands-off approach. Touch is particularly important when one cannot hear you speak or tell to you something with speech. Your touch is the mark of compassion. This is a story about compassion.
I remember the story of the hemorrhaging woman. You said that you felt the healing energy flow from your fingers. Is that what happened this time? Is this method of healing to remind us to put our finger directly on the problem, to get at the source?
Third, you spat. Germs aside, beyond touching the man, you gave him some of your inner juice, a source of life-giving water. You are the water of life. You are the wellspring of life. Which is more important, the risk of more harm to the man or the chance of healing? This risk is like those of modern healing. We must balance the side effects and the potential benefits of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.
Fourth, you touched the person's tongue. Again, you touched. You made physical contact with the second source of his trouble. You chose to risk your own contamination.
Fifth, you spoke. You used words of invocation. What did you say to God, Jesus? What was your prayer? Your connection with God happened in a look up to heaven before you spoke, "Ephphatha." Is that method of connecting with God further evidence of your empathy with the suffering? You spoke in body language, common to you and the suffering man. You let him know that you were including God in this healing. Communication is far more than words alone. When we search for some kind of healing, we do not know what is going to happen, if perhaps we will come out worse rather than better.
What was your connecting with God, Jesus? You sighed. A sigh can be the action of letting go. Somehow, I think it was more than saying, "Okay, God, make it work now." Did your sigh say, "Not my will be done, Father, but yours"? Was it, "Now I turn his healing over to you, God"? Was it, "I've done all I know to do"?
As far as we know, you only spoke one word, "Ephphatha." The recording of this one word in the Gospel called Mark points to its importance. Mark did not say you commanded this to happen. I can imagine you looking the sufferer straight in the eye and quietly, but directly and with authority, saying, "Ephphatha." You knew what you were doing. You trusted God's intervention.
Asker: Finally, you must have told these people more than once to keep quiet about this. Why was this silence so important to you, not just in this healing but in other healings, too?
Jesus: Asker, you have given much thought to the specific steps of this healing. Before I go, let me respond to your final question. Some say I used reverse psychology. The more I suggested witnesses keep quiet, the more I meant for them to spread the word. Others say I feared misinterpretation or was exhausted and feared swarms of crowds as the word spread. Concentrate on being doers, not only hearers of God's word.
4. Words
Locale
"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" (Mark 7:31).
They called him Jesus, the Galilean. This was of broad significance for his whole career. Surrounded by foreign nations, Galilee was the circle of the Gentiles. Jesus would have reached a variety of people in his Galilean ministry. Decapolis encompassed ten communities south of the Sea of Galilee and extending eastward. Many travelers came from east and west. In later times, foreigners surrounded Jewish people. This was not always Jewish territory. This prosperous region was agricultural with wide diversification from fertile farms and vineyards to fig trees.
The Sea of Galilee lies straight north of and is joined to the Dead Sea by the Jordan River. Galilee was mostly north and west of the Sea of Galilee. There was an upper and lower Galilee with a rough central mountainous region. Lower Galilee comprised the fertile part of Palestine with gentle slopes covered with olive and fig trees.
At the north shore of the Sea of Galilee was Capernaum. Nazareth stood in the southwest corner of Galilee. It was near the border of Samaria to the south and the border of Phoenicia to the west. Sidon and Tyre, Phoenician towns northernmost on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean Sea, were considerably north and west of Capernaum.
"Ephphatha," that is, "Be opened"
Ephphatha is attributed to Jesus' healing of the man with hearing and speaking impairments. Depending on the version, "ephphatha" translates as "be open" or "be opened." The passive, to be opened, implies an opening beyond the control or initiation of the sufferer. The active, be open, suggests Jesus elicited the cooperation or the agreement of the suffering person. In some way, the sufferer played a role in the healing.
Did the impaired man recognize that he was or had become deaf and mute? We know only that someone cared enough about him to bring him to Jesus. Must something within us be willing to be actively involved in healing if we are to heal or be open to receive healing? Did Jesus speak to the whole person or specifically to what was causing the hearing and speaking impairments? What if that suffering part of the man that Jesus addressed and commanded had refused to open?
The opening is twofold: The man's ears are opened and the bond of his tongue is loosened. Jesus did not command the man to hear or to speak but to be open to these changes, to be open so that he might hear and speak.
What do our disabilities say metaphorically, symbolically, about us? How do they color who we are? What are those things that tie our tongues into knots? Are our ears to be opened to hear something in particular? To what do we close our ears? What do we not want to hear? What must we become ready to hear before we are to heal? What would Jesus or God have us hear?
Speech Impediment
If someone is mute, the impediment may be either voluntary or not at all by choice. Consider the bondage of a closed tongue. Have you known times when you could not find the words to express yourself? Have you ever been so conflicted that you could not hear what anyone else was saying, particularly or generally? Have you ever been in such turmoil that you could speak nothing with a clear mind?
If you had a lifetime, or even three months, of being unable to communicate, what would be the first words from your lips? To rest and heal her ailing vocal chords, Rhea Zakitch's physician prescribed three months of silence. Because of that silence, she said questions and queries of communication with her family took on new importance. It led to her creation of the communication skills tool UNGAME.1
Gayle Holtz said of her bright eight-year-old daughter, Nebraska's 1992 Cerebral Palsy Poster Child, "More than anything, I wish Katie could talk. There is someone inside there, a curious child wanting to communicate. I wish she could speak verbally with us because there has to be a lot she wants to say."2
While Katie cannot speak, she is learning to express herself by focusing onto a word board a laser beam from an apparatus she wears on her forehead.
Spat
Jesus' means of healing the man with hearing and speech impediments suggests a ritualistic formula that returns us to elaborate priestly cleansing rituals found in the book of Leviticus. Jesus placed his fingers in the man's ears, spat, and touched his tongue.
As part of this healing ritual, Jesus spat onto his hand, then touched the spittle to the suffering man's tongue, restoring his speech. Was this anointing a cosmetic technique with spittle of a symbolic nature and not strictly a therapeutic procedure?
This simple act holds a puzzle of meanings. One piece is the Old Testament superstition that believed human spittle contains the mysterious essence of the person herself. The act of spitting, a sign of strongest rejection and contempt, was as repulsive in Old Testament times as it is today. (See Numbers 12:14 and Deu-teronomy 25:9.) Figuratively or literally, to spit in someone's face is a disgrace.
Jesus gives new meaning to what potentially causes harm, the spread of more disease or injury. He makes the superstition reality by sharing of the essence of himself. Might one stretch metaphor, living water, to say he gives the energy of his life juice to cause the healing of another? Carefully and purposefully directing the saliva, Jesus uses it to heal.
What formulae do we concoct to free ourselves -- a walk in the woods or by a stream or in the park? We make space for ourselves in the cocoon of our own houses or apartments. What rituals for freedom have you come up with?
5. Gospel Parallels
Setting
While both Matthew and Mark locate the geographical area of these healings, Mark 7:31 traces the specific route Jesus traveled, that is, "region of Tyre," "Sidon," towards the "Sea of Galilee," in the region of the "Decapolis." Mark's naming of the places reminds people living in the area who might become the gathering crowd that surrounded Jesus.
With the words, "left that place," Matthew links this healing miracle to the story of the mother and the healing of her daughter (Matthew 15:29). Matthew is more general, as if speaking to people who were familiar with the area, that is, "left that place," "along the Sea of Galilee," "up the mountain."
The Crowd
Beginning verse 30 with "Great crowds," Matthew emphasizes the number of people gathered to watch the healing event. Again, in verse 31, he refers to the response of the audience to the healing. The crowds are an active part of the entire story. It is they who bring those needing healing. They put the suffering folk at Jesus' feet (Matthew 15:30). They see the results of the healing. The crowds praise God (Matthew 15:31).
Although the crowd is secondary for Mark, Mark credits them for bringing the man with hearing and speaking impairments to Jesus. The crowd begs Jesus to touch him. However, for Mark, Jesus is the primary actor who takes the suffering away from the crowd to heal in private.
The Gospel called Matthew spells out the variety of sufferings of the people brought for healing. He relates their healing as a group. With half the number of verses, Matthew tells this story in summary fashion. Mark lifts up the healing of one person, the man who is hearing- and speaking-impaired. Mark describes the ritual of the healing. He focuses on the action of Jesus.
Crediting God with praise, the crowd, according to Matthew, connects Jesus and the healings with God (Matthew 15:31). In Mark, only Jesus does the connecting when he looks heavenward during the healing (Mark 7:34).
The crowd may have witnessed other healings. Mark's story suggests the crowd was observing its first healings by Jesus. Mark reports each detail of the healing. Crowd response focuses on Jesus and the unspoken dawning that Jesus is no usual person. Matthew reports no direct interaction between Jesus and the crowd. In Mark, Jesus orders the crowd repeatedly to keep still about the healing (Mark 7:36).
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1. This resource is available through Cokesbury outlets.
2. From an article by Brauninger titled, "Creative Teachers, Technology, Family Have Katie Holtz 'Beaming' " in West Point News December 19, 1991.
