[Jesus] returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. 37They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
›
Breaking News ... "Nazarene Spits, Deaf Man Hears."
Jesus
wasn't looking for tabloid headlines but there it was. It wasn’t the first time,
nor the last, that he suggests that people not tell anyone what he has just
done which had to be hard for the people that brought the man to be healed, but
how incredibly difficult it must have been for the man himself. Suddenly this
man could hear and his speech impairment was gone. How could he not tell anyone about it? How could he possibly remain silent when he
was finally able to speak clearly for the first time in his life?
There is a temptation to assume that this secrecy component of Mark's Gospel was some kind of
marketing tool for Jesus—a psychological ploy that would force people to talk
it up. Pan a film, people will line up for tickets. Ban a book, it becomes a
best seller. Order them not to tell, they'll tell the world.
In fact,
this existence of this story makes it clear that once Jesus told them not to
spread the word, that's exactly what everyone did. Yet despite the temptation,
I think there was more to it than publicity. Jesus feared that human nature
would do exactly what the tabloids count on to sell their papers, he knew that
his healing would cause a sensation and he was certain that people would read only
the headlines without getting the whole story. Nothing could be worse than
having the good news about God's reign reduced to headlines.
Good news—the
reign of God has come near. Sometimes with Jesus that was headline
material: "Demons Cast Out";
"Lepers Cleansed"; "Paralyzed Man Walks" ("Paralyzed
Man … Forgiven" doesn't quite do
it, right? Not enough attraction in that to sell the story). There were many
miracle healings and they were newsworthy.
Most of
the "God’s reign" stuff, the less than glamorous stuff, the ordinary
and mundane stuff, was not front page material. But this tabloid headline was
hot off the Jerusalem Press wire service from the region of the Ten Cities (The
Decapolis): "Nazarene Spits, Deaf Man Hears." We don't usually pay attention to the details
of the story—don't want to get confused by the facts, right? But by ignoring
the details, we may have missed the message.
In
private, away from the crowd, Jesus physically touched a man and in a very
tangible way brought God near. For this particular individual, God’s reign coming
near meant having a stranger's fingers poked in his ears, having the stranger
spit, and having that poking, spitting, stranger touch his tongue, none of
which seems like a very pleasant sensory experience. The kin-dom of God comes
near this man and he was touched by it, figuratively and quite literally.
So carefully has this story been handed down through the ages
that an Aramaic word echoes from our reading even today. Ephphatha. Jesus and his disciples probably spoke and taught in
Greek, a universal language of trade, commerce and academy but their language
of origin was Hebrew or a dialect of it called Aramaic, which they would have
used in synagogue and in other private matters. In only three places in
Christian scripture does Jesus’ use of Aramaic words survive in the original
tongue, and this is one.[1] My
suspicion is that maintaining this word in Aramaic suggests that this is a very
significant piece of memory for the earliest Jesus followers and it became a
key piece of their early scripture.
Ephphatha.
It's not
that the word has any sort of magical mystical value on its own because it’s
use is more than just the specific, spoken word. What is critical to the story is
the way that it is placed into context, the way in which it is grammatically
used, the way in which it rolls off the tongue. It was said with a different
kind of emphasis. It wasn't just spoken, it was "sighed.”
[στενάζω / sten-ad'-zo / a sigh, to groan].
Sighed to heaven
[οὐρανός / oo-ran-os'
/ the vaulted expanse of the sky with all things visible in it; the universe,
the world], a
groan from earth to the great expanse above, an emotional plea between child
and parent. It is what John Bunyun had in mind when he penned that "the
best prayers have often more groans than words." It is a prayer groaned
for this particular person and a prayer groaned for all of humanity as well. Ephphatha— "be opened." In groaning this prayer for us, Jesus has challenged
each of us in the name of his God.
Ephphatha—"be opened."
It wasn't
just any ordinary groan. It wasn't like
the groan of a husband that discovered that his wife has tickets to the ballet
for Sunday afternoon when his favorite is to play in this year’s Super Bowl. No,
it wasn't that kind of "Nooo! Ah, do I hafta?" groan. Perhaps it was
more like the groaning prayer of Job as his life came crumbling down around
him. "Let the day perish in which I
was born, and the night that said 'A man-child is conceived'. Let that night
be darkness! ... Why did I not die at birth, come forth from the womb and
expire?" [Job 3:3] Maybe like the imagined cry of Isaac at the sudden
realization that his father, Abraham, was about to cut his throat at the altar
and that he was to be the day's burnt offering. [Genesis
22] A plea for mercy
and compassion, a groan from earth to heaven, from child to God. Or perhaps
like the groan of the Psalmist, "O Lord, why do you cast me off? Why do you hide your face from me?" [Psalm 88]
Or forever the groan of Israel, from Pharaoh's Egypt to Hitler's Death
Camps, "How long, O Lord, how long?".
But still,
that's not quite it.
Maybe it’s
like the guttural groan of a mom in a war-torn village who watches as her child
is gunned down by soldiers or like the groan of an American dad who has just learned
that his child was gunned down on the streets of his neighborhood. The groaning
prayer of Jesus for us is deeper than we might possibly ever know yet he continues
to cry out for us "with sighs too deep for words. [Romans 8:26]
Despite
all of that—the healing, the touching, the word, the groan—we still gravitate
toward just the headline. "Nazarene Spits, Deaf Man Hears.” But that is not the point of this story. What's important is that the prayer that Jesus
groans is as much for us as it is for the man in the headline and it calls us to
task. We are challenged by this groaning prayer from a first century
Mediterranean peasant turned rabbi.
›
I picked
up my telephone and dialed the office number listed for my colleague, Peter,
and as it rang I mentally prepared to speak with his wife, Jean. During his
adult years, Peter had been steadily losing his capacity for hearing so I
expected to speak with his wife who would relay my message to him since he
wouldn't be able to hear me over the phone.
The phone
rang; it connected but there was no voice on the other end. I heard a beeping tone
and a series of pings and twangs and rasps. My first thought was that there was
a fax machine connected to the line. I said "Hello," but there was no
response. “Hello?” I hung up and tried again. The same thing
happened, a series of pings and twangs. I said “Hello?” again; a silent pause
and then the tones again.
And then
it occurred to me. I had called a TDD line, a telecommunication device for the
deaf (TDD), a machine that allows you to see on a monitor the words spoken to
you by the caller on the other end of the line. I hung up and called back on
the other number listed as their home number. Jean answered the phone.
An awkward
moment, and the more I thought about it, how frustrated I felt. I realized that
I was the one with the disability, with the inability to communicate. A person
who is deaf—someone whom society considers to be "disabled"—was quite
willing and very able to communicate with me by telephone. I was the one unable
to hear the message, I was the one unable—dis-abled—to do what was ordinary for
someone else.
Jesus
prayed for the man unable to hear—"be opened" and he was. Jesus prayed
for me—"be opened"—and I wasn't.
I was very much closed off from one of God's children because of my own
ignorance and inability to recognize different ways of communication. The reign
of God had come near me—a miracle had occurred—a non-hearing friend could have
"heard" what I said and he could have spoken back to me. In the
dialing of a telephone, in an ordinary event, God had come near me but I didn't
hear.
›
The man in
the gospel story didn't hear the prayer either. Remember, he couldn't physically
hear so when Jesus groaned his prayer Ephphatha, the man never heard it. All he knew was the outcome. He saw Jesus' lips move
and he watched Jesus spit, with his own tongue he tasted the dirt on Jesus'
fingers, he felt the healing man poke at his ears, he experienced God through a
miracle of sensation, but he never heard it happen. The lips moved, no prayer
was heard. Is it possible that we don't have to "hear" the prayer to
experience God? Is it possible that God’s kin-dom coming near is the point of
the challenge to "be opened"?
What that
might mean for us is remarkable. It could mean that God’s reign comes near us
in very mundane, physical, tangible ways as well. The reign of God coming near
us might mean having to “be opened” to things like the sweat and blood and
groaning that accompanies the coming of new life into the world. It might mean
having to cradle in your arms a friend addicted to drugs and having the tears
of that friend mingle with your tears as she screams in pain and fear. The
challenging prayer “be opened” might mean being opened enough to march with
your LGBTQ siblings and endure the spit cast in your direction from the crowds
along the way.
The kin-dom
of God might just mean that your neighbors despise and ignore you because you
are physically and intellectually different than they are. It might mean that
to be healed you have to experience the spit and dirt and offensive touching
that the man in the gospel story had to endure. The coming of God into your life
does not mean that you have to hear the groaning prayer, ephphatha, but it does mean that you have to be touched by it and
live it.
›
When I was
in high school, the chorus would always perform at our annual winter
concert. There was one piece that was
always saved until the end when chorus alumni were invited to come out of the
audience and sing in the ensemble. "Do You Hear What I Hear?" is the
title of the song. "Said the night wind to the little lamb, do you hear
what I hear?" followed by the next verse, "Said the little lamb to
the shepherd boy, do you see what I see?"
Every
year, I would pray mischievously for someone to get confused and sing "Do
you see what I hear?" or "Do you hear what I see?". Even these many years later, strolling
through the mall at Christmas, I wait to hear the next verse blaring over the
speakers "Do you see what I hear?".
That's
what happened to me the day that I called my friend. "Do you see what I
hear?" No, Peter couldn't see what
I was saying. "Do you hear what I see?" I could hear what he said but
it made no sense, just pings and beeps. It would have helped if I had been able
to see what he said, but I couldn't. I was not open to the coming of God into
that moment.
Jesus
challenged me at that very moment, Jesus groaned his prayer into my life. Ephphatha! Did the prayer fail, did it fall on deaf
ears? Did I fail to meet the challenge? At first glance, one might say yes. "The
prayer failed and Jim didn't live up to the challenge." But on second
thought, I have realized that my life was suddenly opened to a better way of
communicating. I now know that I can call my friend Peter or anyone else using a
TDD which connects us by use of a telephone operator who has the job of
relaying messages between hearing persons and those using assistive devices.
"Do
you see what I hear?" is the primary point of this gospel story and also the
overarching theme of God's presence in this world. Jesus told the man to tell
no one what had happened after he had been healed. That’s all well and good, but
imagine him walking up to a neighbor saying clearly for the first time,
"Do you see what I hear? Can you
see that I hear?!" He didn't
have to explain how it happened, it just happened, and suddenly those with whom
he came in contact experienced the kin-dom come near.
Jesus
prayed for him "be opened." He was—his ears, yes; his tongue, yes;
but most importantly, his life. People would treat him differently now, not simply
because he could speak, but because he had suddenly been opened to the kin-dom
of God which had been there all along. If God’s reign coming near us means that
we will be touched in similar tangible ways, then we can each expect to be
treated differently once we accept the challenge and respond to the prayer
groaned on our behalf. Once opened, we can never be the same again because once
opened, the kin-dom of God has come upon us and once that is real we will not
be able to walk away keeping the secret. Others may see the headline, but we'll
know the details of the story.
"Be
opened" Jesus groans toward heaven.
"Be opened"—Ephphatha. If we are opened—our ears,
eyes, tongue, our lives—then we can see the kin-dom of God and we can feel how
close it really is, and we can hear how it speaks to us. We can, indeed, begin
to recognize just how very near it is and finally we can begin to live it in
very mundane and tangible ways.
Ephphatha, children of God,
"be opened."
©
Copyright 2019
James
F. McIntire
All
rights reserved.
[1]
The other two Aramaic phrases are in Mark 5:41 "[Jesus] took [Jairus' daughter] by the hand and said to her, 'Talitha cum,' which maena, 'Litttle girl, get up!'" and in Mark 15:34 as Jesus is on the cross "At three o'clock Jesus cried out with a loud voice, 'Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachtani' which means, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?'"
