Sometimes Jesus works a miracle by simply commanding something to be done. Other times, the miracle is accomplished through touch -- like the lady with 12 years of bleeding who touched his clothing. And there are times, according to Mark, when Jesus was unable to work many miracles because of the lack of faith. For Mark, Jesus seems to be able to heal you if you have faith. In the Gospel of John, on the other hand, Jesus demonstrates his godhead by working miracles even when no faith is apparent, like calling Lazarus from the tomb, or surprising a young couple by turning water into wine. I like all the gospels, and all the different portrayals of Jesus. But let’s go back to Mark. The story we heard is very consistent with Mark’s emphasis on faith.
We have a deaf man who can’t speak coherently. People who are deaf, even when they learn to speak, can’t hear what they say so they rely on the sense of vibration and on how people around them react. But they never get things quite right. With great training they can be understood, but our deaf man can probably make his meaning clear only with great difficulty. He grunts and gestures. Maybe he could hear when he was a child and lost his hearing then. Maybe he still can make sounds that resemble words that he knew when he was four or five. But over time, he can’t hear himself and can’t correct what he says, so his speech becomes less and less intelligible.
Now Jesus’ groupies have seen him heal people by laying on his hands and commanding them to be healed. Blind people, lepers, people possessed by demons, so naturally they want Jesus to work a miracle here, like he always does. But today things are different. He takes the man to a place away from the crowds. He puts his fingers in his ears and spits on his tongue. He looks up to heaven and groans, and then says “Ephphatha” And the man is healed. Look at what Jesus is doing.
The man can’t hear, but Jesus wants his faith. The man probably has no idea who Jesus is. He never hears what’s going on. So Jesus inserts his fingers into his ears and spits on his tongue -- as if to say “I am coming in to you to heal your hearing and your speech”. And then Jesus looks up to heaven. That’s where your healing will come from -- the Father, not me.” And Jesus groans. The deaf man can groan, he doesn’t need to hear to groan. Jesus groans to join himself to the man. And then he commands “Ephphaththa”. Mark tells us that this word means “Be opened” in Aramaic. But read it in your missalettes and try to pronounce it. I’m not sure I’m doing it right and you probably aren’t either. But when Jesus says this word, the miracle occurs, because the man in the story has faith. The gestures that Jesus used up till then were meant to be a kind of catechism to elicit the faith of the man, who responded with faith and was thus cured.
So Mark tells this elaborate story for a reason, not just to show Jesus’ power, but to show that the person who wishes to be healed has to believe in Jesus, has to have faith, and Jesus himself will find a way to ask this man, “Do you have faith in me?”
Our first reading and responsory psalm tell us that our God is a god who heals. Even today we hear about healing miracles. Carlos Acutis, soon to be officially recognized as a saint, had the necessary two miracles recognized by the church. The first was of a child with an abnormality of the pancreas incompatible with life -- but healed when the parents prayed to him for a miracle. The second was the cure of a student who had suffered a bleed into his brain and had no brain activity -- but recovered completely when his family prayed for a miracle.
So miracles of healing continue.
But you’ve prayed for them and so have I and I guess I can’t say I’ve seen one as obvious as the two I’ve described. Does this mean my faith is weak or non-existent? Or that I don’t have the right kind of faith? Again if we look at Mark’s gospel, or for that matter the other gospels, it seems as though miracles happen not primarily because God wants to heal someone, but because God wants to reveal something, maybe just on a personal level, maybe for the whole church. Mark is always talking about the reactions people have to Jesus’ miracles -- “he has done all things well, he makes the deaf hear and the mute speak”. And God wants to raise up a new saint perhaps as a model for today’s young people, a saint who knew his way around computers and the internet, and who nevertheless kept his eyes fixed on Jesus.
