Open Up!
The Rev. Richard L. Schaper, CFP
St. Paul's Episcopal Church, San Rafael
September 7, 2003

The Readings:
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 1:17-27
Mark 7:31-37

Holy God,
In the silence that dwells in the depths of our hearts
You speak to us, a word that needs an answer.
Do not let us be deaf to you,
You who have done all things well,
You who make even us when we have been deaf
To hear again,
And when we have been speechless, to find our voice.
Amen.

I remember when, growing up, the family next door learned that their new baby girl--at whose birth they had greatly rejoiced--was deaf and did not have the faculty of hearing. At first, it was not apparent that Janice was deaf. Even in the second half-year of her life, it just seemed that she was slower than her sister had been to begin to make sounds like "mama" and "dada." Something seemed a little off but nothing that a mother could put her finger on.

Then one day, when Janice was about 9 months, Ann walked into her daughter's rooma and called to her as Janice lay on the floor facing the other direction. And her daughter made no response whatsoever. That's when it hit her: Janice was deaf, Janice could not hear anything.

The discovery that their daughter and sister was deaf had a tremendous impact on this family. In time, they began to education themselves about the silent world in which deaf people live. They realized that Janet had been slow to vocalize words because she had never ever heard a word.

As time went on each family member learned a new language, the language of signing, so that they could teach this silent language to little Janice--to give her words to communicate with.

How do you get the attention of someone who cannot hear and is not looking at you when you call? I remember the yellow road side traffic sign I saw on a 2-lane road that wound its way past a group of houses in rural New Hampshire. "DEAF CHILD AT PLAY" the sign warned. Be extra careful; the child will not hear you honk your horn nor will she hear your vehicle approaching.

A person who if deaf lives, to a certain extent, more alone than the rest of us. It's not just foregoing Mozart. Unhearing, we are cut off from the realm of alarm clocks or singing birds or the sound of the bath tub filling or of overheard conversation in another room. The person who is deaf exists in an island of silence. Surrounding the island is a ocean of sounds and of hearing, speaking people.

Just such a person as this--a grown person isolated in a bubble of silence--was brought to Jesus in today's gospel lesson.

Can you imagine what it might be like for this man's silence to be broken--for the bubble of stillness and isolation to be shattered?

They brought the man to Jesus and begged Jesus to lay his hands upon him. They trusted in Jesus' power to heal, and in Jesus' willingness to heal.

Jesus took the man aside from the crowd where they could be more private. They Jesus did two things that were very physical to communicate with the man. He put his fingers in the man's ears, then he spit and with the spittle (which was felt to have healing powers) he touched the man's tongue. These gestures are as physical as a sacrament.

Then Jesus turned his face upward towards heaven and, sighing, said: "Ephphata!"--"Be opened!" Jesus did not actually say, "Be opened!", for Jesus did not speak English. Nor did Jesus speak the Greek language in which the New Testament came to be written. Rather, Jesus spoke a language called Aramaic which is about as close to Hebrew as Yiddish is. "Ephphata" is Aramaic. "Ephphata" is not a translation of the word that Jesus spoke. "Ephphata" IS the word that Jesus spoke.

People never forgot that this was the word that Jesus spoke, because when he spoke it, the man's ears were opened and the world of sound flooded in upon him, and his tongue and was loosed and he began to speak plainly. By Jesus' word, this man's deafness and isolation was broken, and he was released into a world of audible communication and relationship.

There are two signs of God's power and presence in this story--and then there is a third. The first manifestation of God's presence is evident: the deaf hear and the mute speak-- just as the prophet Isaiah had said that they would at the time of our deliverance. A person imprisoned in silence is by the power of God in Jesus Christ liberated from his deafness and is given to find his own voice.

For the second sign of God's power and presence in this story we shall have to dig a little deeper. For us, who are so far removed from the world of First Century Palestine in which this action took place and this story was first told, we fail to recognize that the geography of this story is electric. The place names "Tyre" and "Sidon" and "Decapolis" with which St. Mark introduces this story mean nothing to us. But to Mark's first hearers, the naming of these places put them on edge--for they indicated that Jesus was in forbidden territory, in the lands of pagans and uncircumsized and pork-eaters. It was among THESE-- social and religious outsiders and outcasts that the Jewish rabbi Jesus went and healed, and forgave, and bestowed God's sweet mercy.

The second sign of God's power is that this healing of a gentile smashes through our preconceptions of who is worthy of God's love and healing, and who is not.

But what is the third sign of God's presence in the story? To uncover this we shall only need to recognize how the narrative of the healing of the deaf man is framed by repeated reference to a "they:"

"They" brought to Jesus a deaf man, the story begins, and
they begged Jesus to lay his hand upon him. And immediately after the healing takes place,
they proclaimed the healing,
they were astounded,
they proclaimed of Jesus that "he does all things well; he even makes the dead to hear and the mute to speak."

This mysterious "they" shows up time after time in St. Mark's telling of the gospel. "They" are always bringing people--blind people, or paralyzed people, or little children, or youth with terrible afflictions. Ever and again, all these broken and incomplete people are being brought to Jesus by "they."

Who is this "they"?

"They" is you and me. Or at least it is meant to be.

This is our task in enacting the gospel: bringing incomplete and wounded people to Jesus. Beginning with ourselves.

This is the third sign of God's power and presence: that God works through people--ordinary people like you and like me--to bring people to Jesus.

How else are some people to encounter Jesus unless someone like you or me brings them to Jesus, or brings Jesus to them?

Who brought you to Jesus? How did you and Jesus happen to meet? I mean, it is no accident that you are here this morning. Sometime, way back before you had an experience of Jesus, somebody had a hand in introducing you. Perhaps, as in my case, it was your parents, or grandparents, or a friend.

It is time now for us to do the same. WE are to be the "they" who bring fragile, hungry people to Jesus to be fed and to be healed, and to experience God's transforming forgiveness--as "they" in the gospel brought to Jesus a man who was deaf.

Isn't this why we have come here this morning--Don't we expect our souls here to be fed by God's hand? Don't we expect that in the laying on of hands and anointing that we will be touched by Jesus and know his power to heal us?

Why else would we come here EXCEPT that we trust that God WILL break through our deafness and hardness of hearing, and set us free once again?

"Ephphata!" Jesus speaks the liberating word to us again today.

"Ephphata!" "Be opened!"

Be opened to the freeing word, to Jesus healing touch.

I think back to Janice, the little deaf girl who lived next door when I was growing up, and how she could not speak words to others because he had never heard words spoken to her.

We, too, cannot speak until we hear. But once we begin to be able to HEAR the message of God's love, then we also can begin to SPEAK of this love to others.

Today the Gospel asks us to bring this caring Word, this healing presence, to other people who are in as great a need of it as we are. Bring them to Jesus, and bring Jesus to them.

Only YOU can do this in the places where only YOU go, where only YOU work, where only YOU live.

Be the mysterious "they" who reach out to bring to Jesus and beg Jesus, who are astounded at what Jesus can do, and who proclaim the mercy and justice Jesus gives.

So that those who are deaf to God's love for them… may hear, and the voiceless may speak.

Ephphata! Be opened! That all the world may know God's love.

Return to Top                                                       Return to Sermons Page