What Are We Missing?
Twenty-Third Sunday Scripture Readings
I had a thought as I read over today’s gospel where Jesus opens the ears of a deaf man and frees his tongue from a speech impediment. In what ways are we like that man? What voices calling out for help do we not hear because our ears are closed, and what words of comfort and support do we not speak because of our impediments? And, at last, who will bring us to Jesus to open our ears and free our tongues?
This gospel passage is interesting particularly because of the demands it does not put on us. First of all, the gospel story takes place in Gentile territory—the district of the Decapolis, or the Ten Cities. The man who was brought to Jesus was most likely not Jewish, nor were the people who brought him. We don’t need to belong to any race or creed or people or nation to receive God’s love. Nothing at all about our personal identities—including our beliefs, surprisingly enough—can interfere with our access to God’s grace. There are no prerequisites for asking for God’s help, nor are there any for receiving it.
The next interesting feature of this gospel is what it doesn’t say about the condition of the deaf man. In fact, we know nothing at all about him other than that he was deaf and had a speech impediment. Was he a good man? Was he an honest man? Was he a kind and generous man? In other words, was he a man worthy of Jesus’s attention? We don’t know. The gospel gives us no hint. All we can deduce from the silence of the gospel is that, for Jesus, it didn’t matter. The fact that this man in need was Jesus’s neighbor was all the qualifications he needed to be healed.
Finally, it’s interesting to note why the crowd approached Jesus. They brought the man to Jesus so that he might lay his hands on him. They believed—they trusted—that Jesus would at least do that. Who did they think Jesus was? Did they believe he was the eternal Word of the Father, the second person of the Blessed Trinity, become flesh among us? Certainly not. Did they believe that he was the Christ, the Messiah, the one who was to come into the world? Hardly likely. What they believed about Jesus was that he could help the man. It doesn’t even say that they sought a physical healing. They believed only that if Jesus laid his hands on the man, something wonderful would happen. That tells us that nothing beyond a simple, naïve trust in God is required to receive the power of his love.
I spoke recently about the artificial fortresses of fear that we Christians erect in a futile attempt to control access to God. None of the barriers we’ve erected matter—not our prayers in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, or Arabic; not our velvet ropes of segregation; not our dress codes; not our belief in the Trinity or Transubstantiation; not our abstinence from pork, fish on Fridays, or alcohol; not our sexualities, straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered, or anything else. In short, not any of the usual criteria we set up to determine if someone else is worthy of God’s love … or ours … matter at all. God is not bound by our prejudices.
So, what voices are we then deaf to? Those are the voices who’ve been locked out of our fortresses of fear, been judged, found wanting, and condemned to suffer our indifference. Our ears are closed to them because they don’t look like us, talk like us, behave like us, or think like us. They’re foreigners—they’re foreign to our values and all we hold dear. Is it any wonder that we turn a deaf ear to their cries? They’re not like us. They don’t feel like we do. They haven’t lived the way we’ve lived. They’re not worthy.
And now, we come down to the proclamation of the Gospel, our spreading of the Good News, our evangelization. Are we at all surprised that our message is garbled and unintelligible when our ears are deaf to the cries of God’s poor—God’s anawim? We’re not only deaf, we have a speech impediment. As a community, our beliefs and actions show the rest of the world a partisan Christ, an elite God, a god whose love is conditional, a god who welcomes some and despises others, who rewards some and punishes others.
Perhaps it’s time for someone to lead us to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, begging the healer to lay his hands on us as a Church, praying that he might open the ears of us all to the cries of the physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually poor. Only then might our speech impediment be removed that we might have the clarity to proclaim the Gospel, the Good News that the love of God which shows no favoritism is available to all … available to all in and through us.
It’s our choice whether we remain within our fortresses of fear, deaf and unable to speak clearly, or not. If we choose to have life and have it to the full, all that’s required of us is to ask the Lord to lay his healing hands gently upon us. Then we wait … we wait to hear the word that can transform our lives: Ephphatha! Be opened!
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