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Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
September 5, 2021
Isaiah 35:4-7
Thus says the LORD:
Say to those whose hearts are frightened:
Be strong, fear not!
Here is your God,
he comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.
Then will the eyes of the blind be opened,
the ears of the deaf be cleared;
then will the lame leap like a stag,
then the tongue of the mute will sing.
Streams will burst forth in the desert,
and rivers in the steppe.
The burning sands will become pools,
and the thirsty ground, springs of water.
Psalm 146
Ps 146:6-7, 8-9, 9-10
The God of Jacob keeps faith forever,
secures justice for the oppressed,
gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets captives free.
The Lord gives sight to the blind;
the Lord raises up those who were bowed down.
The Lord loves the just;
the Lord protects strangers.
The fatherless and the widow the Lord sustains,
but the way of the wicked he thwarts.
The Lord shall reign forever;
your God, O Zion, through all generations. Alleluia.
James 2:1-5
My brothers and sisters, show no partiality
as you adhere to the faith in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ.
For if a man with gold rings and fine clothes
comes into your assembly,
and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in,
and you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes
and say, “Sit here, please, ”
while you say to the poor one, “Stand there, ” or “Sit at my feet, ”
have you not made distinctions among yourselves
and become judges with evil designs?
Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters.
Did not God choose those who are poor in the world
to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom
that he promised to those who love him?
Mark 7:31-33
Again Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!”— that is, “Be opened!” —
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
I can only manage some sketchy notes for reflection this time. Sue [my partner/wife] is confined to a recliner chair at the moment. Caring for all those little things she can't do for herself is easy enough but leaves no time for reading let alone writing. I'm learning something many women have experienced throughout their lives - that the needs of the other take precedence every time.
There's a lot to learn about listening too, and responding. Work to be done in keeping an edge of annoyance out of my tone when some request seems too demanding or the timing is wrong because I'm busy with something else. There's an awakening/healing going on in areas I'd not even been aware of.
This gospel episode of Jesus healing a deaf man with a speech defect may be just another miracle to some, but as a metaphor there's a lot to explore. In the real we note that hearing comes before speech. A totally deaf person cannot know the sounds we use in speaking, nor even the sounds he makes except for the sensation in his voice box. I was in my 80s when hearing aids gave me access to a range of sounds I'd not been aware of up to that point. Singing became a totally new experience. I'm sure that faulty hearing had something to do with the lack of tone and correct pitch when I tried to sing. I wonder how common this is.
The scriptures make a lot of the connection between hearing and speaking. It hardly does it justice to reduce those references to a theological observation about first hearing "God's word" before preaching it. Hearing God's word entails more than being able to quote passages from the bible. One day I made a list of channels we need to listen to:
People with more experience/wisdom than us;
The community at large and trends/directions constantly changing;
Inspired prophets - commentators, philosophers, impartial observers;
Educational sources - church, public and private institutions, family and friends;
Plants and animals around us;
The earth and sea and sky - ecology and climate;
Our own bodies;
All sacred writings as offering interpretations of all these;
Especially Jewish and Christian writings in the bible and many other places.
The list goes on and on.
Much of the faulty teaching in the church could be put down to faulty hearing, listening that is too narrow, too selective, and sometimes limited to an inadequate source. Priests and teaching nuns and brothers fed on a restricted diet of approved authors, who were themselves formed in the same narrow process, could be excused for being incapable to speak clearly of spiritual things, for the Divine speaks to us in every dimension of life. When the "lay" Christian speaks of God it will be in a language attuned to the hearer's life experience.
Christ the saviour is Christ the healer. And the first healing is of our hearing. We take pride in the great progress of recent centuries but do we hear the cry of the poor any better than before? Our governments hear the cry of the rich - "Climate change must be denied: measures to mitigate rising temperatures would destroy our profitability." "The pandemic lockdown must end: it is sending Companies to the wall." "Better a few people die..." Many people have said the pandemic shows us we have to do things differently. Will we be outspoken in pressing for systemic reviews or will feeble voices fall on ears made deaf by short-term selfish concerns?
These are a few of the ways we are deaf and not necessarily the most serious. If as a community we are going to have our deafness healed we will need to examine seriously and methodically - and frankly - those issues which have the greatest impact on others. And then to pray for the divine grace which says: "Ephphetha! Be opened!"
To wind up, we can go back to the first reading and the reflective psalm - beautiful encouraging writings. The accent is on the trust/hope dimension of faith - fides, fidelity. The promise is that our Parent God will make all things right in the end. In the meantime we come to realise that our healing is an evolutionary process; 'Evolution Time' is measured in 'Ages' and each advance is another 'small step', often very small.