23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37

Though we might think of Jesus’s healing
of the deaf man with a speech impediment
as simply one more of his miracles,
Christian have traditionally found a deeper,
more universal significance to this story,
seeing in the man’s deafness
a symbol of our human resistance
to receiving the good news of Jesus,
seeing in the man’s muteness
a symbol of all that holds us back
from proclaiming that good news to others.
We are the ones who are deaf and mute:
our ears shut to the Gospel that promises life,
our lips sealed to the truth we are called to profess.
We are the ones to whom Jesus speaks the word,
Ephphatha—be opened.

This is true of each us in our individual lives.
Why are we so deaf to the voice of God,
particularly when God’s calls
from unexpected quarters,
asking of us unexpected things?
We might be deaf to the voice of God
because the ears of our hearts
have grown dull to the subtle tones
with which God often speaks to us,
the quite whisper that is the breath of the Spirit.
We might be deaf to the voice of God
because we fear that if we hear and answer
we may have to change,
we may have to turn our lives
around and upside down
in order to follow Jesus
on the path of cross and resurrection.
We might be deaf to the voice of God
because our ears are so full of other voices,
voices that tell us that our main job
is to “look out for number one,”
voices that tell us that we should curry favor
with the rich and the powerful,
voices that tell us to be realistic
and that it is not true
that God can make a way
out of no way.

Why are we so mute when it comes
to speaking the truth of God?
Even if our ears have been opened
to hear the good news,
and it has taken root in our hearts,
when it comes to sharing that good news
we often censor ourselves out of fear:
fear of offending others,
or perhaps fear of losing their approval.
Why are we so mute when it comes
to speaking the truth about ourselves,
admitting our fears and failings?
I feel this muteness in myself
when I find myself avoiding
the sacrament of reconciliation,
knowing that confessing my sins
before another human being
will not simply be embarrassing
(mainly because my sins
are so mediocre and petty),
but also that it will force me
to face my true self
and open me to the radical possibilities
of God’s love.

To our deafness and muteness
Jesus says, Ephphatha—be opened.
Open your heart to receive the Gospel,
even if it will turn your life upside down;
open your lips to proclaim the truth,
even if you find it embarrassing,
open the very depths of your being
to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit.

This deafness and muteness is found
not simply in our individual lives as Christians,
but in our life together as a Church.
As we have again been reminded,
the Church can be resistant
to hearing the good news,
to welcoming the truth when it appears
in unexpected quarters:
in newspapers and grand jury reports,
on the lips of the abused and their families.
We as a Church can close our ears,
make ourselves deaf,
fearfully refusing the truth,
as if Jesus had not told us
that he himself is truth,
and that truth is the path to life.

We as a Church can also make ourselves mute.
We can refuse to speak the truth about the past,
locking it away in secret archives
and non-disclosure agreements.
And in doing so, we make ourselves
incapable of speaking the truth of the Gospel,
because, while we might loudly proclaim “Lord, Lord,”
the words we speak are mute in their hypocrisy.
Even Pope Francis,
who has been such an eloquent witness to Jesus,
has now muzzled his proclamation of the Gospel
by his refusal to address the accusation
that he overlooked the past abuses of Cardinal McCarrick.
There are certainly times to be silent in the face of accusation.
This is not one of those times.
In these times, a refusal to speak
cannot help but arouse the suspicion
that something is being hidden.

And to the deafness and muteness
of bishops and cardinals and Popes,
to the deafness and muteness
of the whole People of God,
Jesus says Ephphatha—be opened.
To hearts closed
to the transforming grace of the Spirit,
Jesus says, be opened!
To ears closed
to the voices of victims,
Jesus says, be opened!
To minds closed
to new ways of envisioning our life together,
Jesus says, be opened!
To sealed archives
and hidden histories,
to buried stories
and secret sins,
Jesus says, be opened!
Be opened, and let the light of Christ
come streaming in.
Be opened, and let the word of God
go streaming forth.
Be opened, for your God,
comes with vindication;
with divine recompense
he comes to save you.

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2: 1-5; Mark 7:31-37

Through my son Denis, the percussionist,

I have recently been introduced to the work

of the Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie.

She is a remarkable musician in a number of ways:

sustaining a career as a solo classical percussionist,

receiving over fifteen honorary doctorates,

winning a Grammy,

and being one of the featured performers

at the opening ceremonies of this past summer’s Olympics.

She also happens to be deaf.

Because she would much rather be known as a musician

than as a “deaf musician,”

she generally does not talk much about her deafness.

But when pressed she will say that while she is deaf,

in the sense that her ears do not work properly,

this does not mean that she cannot hear.

Hearing is simply being able to interpret vibrations,

to experience them as meaningful.

And while most of us do this most of the time 

with our ears,

we can also do it with other parts of the body,

as when we feel the rumble of a passing truck 

in our torsos

or see the reverberation of a guitar string or a drum head 

with our eyes.

If one does not have use of his or her ears,

then one must find other ways to connect 

to the vibrations that we call music,

which is what Evelyn Glennie has learned how to do.

Hearing, Glennie says, is in some ways 

just a specialized form of the sense of touch,

and what she has learned to do is to interpret pitch and tone

with the whole of her body,

building up in her brain what she calls a “sound picture”

by opening up her whole self and letting the music inhabit her

so that she can in turn let music flow out of her

through the medium of her instrument.

Evelyn Glennie shows us the power of human beings

to adapt to seeming limitations and to overcome obstacles

in pursuit of the things they love.

But she also shows us that hearing

is about far more than what we do with our ears.

In some ways, “hearing” is about our whole self

opening up to the reality around it.

This can help shed light on today’s Gospel reading.

This story involves much more than simply the healing

of one whose ears do not work properly.

The man’s deafness here is a symbol of spiritual deafness –

of the way in which we close ourselves off

to the vibrations produced by what God is doing in the world.

In the context of Mark’s Gospel,

the deafness of the man whom Jesus heals

is a symbol of the inability of the people of Jesus’s day,

of even his own disciples,

to recognize the presence of God’s messiah in their midst.

Their expectations of what God’s anointed would be like –

a powerful warrior and ruler like King David –

made them incapable of hearing God’s voice 

in Jesus, God’s Word.

In our second reading, from the letter of James,

we encounter another sort of spiritual deafness:

an inability to recognize 

in the poor person with shabby clothes

one whom God has chosen to be rich in faith

and heir of the kingdom that God promised 

to those who love him.

The people in Mark’s Gospel,

the Christians to whom James writes,

and even we ourselves,

depend perhaps too much 

on our normal way of perceiving things

and so are deaf 

to the presence and activity of God around us.

The example of Evelyn Glennie

learning to hear music with more than her ears

indicates to us that in order for us to overcome

our own spiritual deafness to the Word of God in all its forms

we need to open ourselves up to new ways of knowing,

new ways of sensing the presence of God.

When Jesus heals the deaf man, 

he touches his mouth and ears

and says, “Ephphatha – be opened!”

Today he says to us as well, “Be opened!”

We need to be opened by Christ,

so that we can hear with our whole self,

hear the voice of God that sounds all around us:

in the sometimes comforting 

and sometimes discomfiting words of Scripture,

in the cries of those who beg for food,

in the voices of those who cry out for justice,

in the words even of those who might disagree with us.

If Jesus touches our ears and opens our senses

our deafness can be overcome;

the music of God’s Word can inhabit us and transform us.

And as with the man in today’s Gospel,

the touch of Jesus opens not only our ears, 

but also our mouths,

so that the music of God’s Word that fills us

can also flow forth from us

to bring hope and comfort and challenge and good news

to all whom we encounter.

Ephphata – be opened!

Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time

Readings: Isaiah 35:4-7a; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37In today’s Gospel we hear of Jesus
engaging in what might seem to us unusual behavior.
Confronted with a man who cannot hear or speak,
he touches the body part to be healed,
sticking his fingers in the man’s ears.
He puts his spit on the man’s tongue,
as if it were possessed of magical properties.
He groans, perhaps in effort or for dramatic effect?
And he speaks a magical word — Ephphatha! —
which our Gospel writer Mark
is careful to keep in its original, Aramaic form.
In short, he acts very much like a typical magical healer
in the ancient Mediterranean world.

Such a depiction of Jesus as a “magician” makes Christians nervous.
Indeed, it made the Gospel writers Matthew and Luke nervous enough
that this is one of the few incidents recounted in Mark’s Gospel
that they do not include it in their own Gospels.
The idea that Jesus might have behaved in such a way
that people would have seen him as a magician
seems to trivialize what he was about;
it seems to reduce Christianity to a superstitious cult
that is about manipulation of occult forces
rather than the worship of God in spirit and in truth.
We Catholics might be particularly sensitive to this,
since the sacramental nature of our worship
sometimes strikes other Christians as indistinguishable
from various forms of religious magic
that can be found in many so-called “primitive” cultures.
We want to say that our sacraments are radically different
from the ritualistic magic of tribal peoples.

But perhaps we protest too much.
Maybe these so-called “primitive” cultures recognize something
that we modernized,
industrialized,
urbanized,
individualized,
rationalized people have forgotten.
We human beings are ritual animals;
we make meaning with bodily gestures.
Symbolic action is the DNA of human cultures,
the means by which tradition is transmitted and imbibed,
an effective means of communicating
that which is distinctively human.
Even more, our rituals are signs of a deep mystery
that lies at the heart of the world’s existence,
and they are the means by which that mystery gives itself to us.
So there is really no reason for us Catholics to apologize
for believing that our ritual actions actually make something happen,
that they are, for lack of a better word, magical.
After all, if Mark’s Gospel is to be trusted,
Jesus did not hesitate to engage in “magical” behavior.

But perhaps we do need to make some distinctions
between different sorts of “magic.”
The kind that is probably most familiar to us,
the sort traditionally performed by men on stages
wearing tuxedos and top hats and waving magic wands,
the kind you see at a “magic show,”
is really a matter of illusion, clever and entertaining,
but not really magic at all.
I think it is safe to say that this is not the sort of magic
that is going on
either in today’s Gospel or in the sacraments.

Then there is the “magic” that is associated with incantations and spells —
potions, crystals, amulets, curses, voodoo dolls, the evil eye, and so forth.
This crops up in a variety of places:
from ancient folk beliefs to new age religions to the Harry Potter books.
This magic seeks to control unseen forces in the universe
in order to attain a desired result --
asort of primitive technology
by which people have sought some measure of control
over cosmic forces.
At its best, it expresses our human desire to live in an enchanted world
with hidden possibilities.
But in any case, I think it is safe to say that this is not the sort of magic
that is going on
either in today’s Gospel or in the sacraments.
Jesus is not manipulating hidden forces in order to heal the man;
rather, the healing power of God is manifesting itself
through his symbolic actions.
Likewise, the sacraments are not about our power to control,
but about God’s power to act through our human rituals.

This is a third form of magic.
At least, I cannot think of a better word than “magic”
to convey the idea
of that which makes possible
what we normally consider impossible.
This is the real magic
that will satisfy the desire for an enchanted world.
In literary terms, the world of Christian faith
is a world of “magical realism” —
the magic of God’s hidden power manifesting itself in our reality,
transforming our symbols and rituals
so that they become effective signs of God’s grace.
Jesus’ actions —
involving touch and spit and groaning and ritual phrases —
show us that there is real magic in the world:
there is hope for the hopeless,
there is forgiveness for sinners,
there is release for captives,
there is a home for the outcast.
The world of dead ends and limited possibilities
is not the final truth about the world.
To believe in real magic, the magic of God,
is to believe that when you are in a situation
in which you can see no way forward —
whether depression or addiction
or a broken relationship or professional failure —
that is not the end of the story:
when you cannot hear, cannot speak, cannot see a future,
God can touch you,
God can release you,
God can show you a way forward.
And in the sacraments, the real magic of God touches us
just like Jesus touched the man in today’s Gospel.

So perhaps we shouldn’t be embarrassed by Jesus acting like a magician.
The world is hungry for magic, for real magic.
The world is hungry for the hope that what appears possible to us
is not in fact the limit of the possible.
Let us have confidence that in our sacramental celebration
Jesus will touch us and say to us ephphatha — be opened:
be opened to hear the silent music that sustains the world;
be opened to speak a word of hope to the hopeless,
be opened to embrace
the impossible possibility of the kingdom of God.