Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, cycle B

Mark 7:31 - 37

Most bible scholars think the Gospel of Mark was written about sixty to seventy years after the birth of Jesus. Matthew and Luke came ten to twenty years later. Both Matthew and Luke follow the general outline of Mark, and sixty percent of the gospel of Mark is found in Matthew; its appears that whole sections of Matthew were copied from Mark. For a long time Matthew was the gospel we used most in the liturgical cycle; we hardly heard from Mark.

To me, though, Mark is one of the most interesting writings in the New Testament. People who know Greek say that his style is very unusual. They used to think he might not have known Greek too well, but now it seems as though he deliberately wrote in this way, to give a sense of movement, of haste. Mark also is always having Jesus tell those who observe his miracles not to tell anyone about them, but they do anyway. We still don't know why this is – it doesn't happen in the other gospels – if Jesus doesn't want the news of his miracles to be spread far and wide, and it happens anyway, why does Mark keep emphasizing the so called “Messianic Secret?” Some people think Mark is writing for a community, probably in and around Rome, who are under persecution, and he's reminding them that they know something their persecutors don't.

There are many other things in Mark that are puzzling. The miracle stories are often worth thinking about. Today, we hear a story that is not in the other gospels – and that in itself is interesting. If Matthew and Luke were reading Mark, surely this story would have seemed worth copying down, but Matthew skips over this and the previous miracle story and kind of sums it up with the sentence “Jesus healed many people”. But Mark really elaborates on this one story, so I suspect he wants his readers to think about it and perhaps see something about themselves in the story.

Think for a minute how isolated this man must have been. Not only could he not hear, but he couldn't speak very well either. People who are deaf from birth don't have the feedback necessary to pronounce words well and some never learn to speak. In our day, the deaf can learn a very sophisticated sign language and can communicate well with each other. In those days, though, this man was probably the only one in the village who had the problem and must have had a terrible time communicating more than basic thoughts.

Think about how he must have felt as his fellow villagers brought him to Jesus and asked that Jesus lay his hands upon him. Did the deaf man know what was expected? Probably not – but the point is that he trusted his friends.

Then notice the Jesus does not lay his hands on the man. Instead, he takes him off privately and puts his fingers in the man's ears and groans, saying “Be opened” and then spits on his tongue. Healing miracles in the other gospels most of the time have Jesus simply commanding something to happen. Only in Mark do we find Jesus doing these kinds of miracles, which have overtones of magic about them. Some people think that Jesus did work his miracles like this but later writers left out all these details because they were trying to emphasize His divinity. But I like another theory, which seems more consistent with Mark's point of view. In another part of Mark's gospel he writes that Jesus could not work many miracles because of their lack of faith. For Mark, faith on the part of the person being healed is a very important part of the miracle. So Jesus uses sign language to indicate what he intends to do, and that allows the deaf man to understand and believe.

So where does that leave you and I? I don't know about you, but I think I have a sort of spiritual deafness. My faith tells me that God is always communicating with me, but I don't hear much of it. I'm distracted, I'm selfish, I don't want my orderly life to be shaken up. If I want to hear God, I've got to train myself to listen better. He speaks through the scriptures so I better read them. He speaks through the events in my life, so I need to ask what he is saying. All of this means that I need quiet and freedom from distraction if I'm going to hear God.

I'm also deaf to the people around me. When I ask “how are you”, do I really want to know? If I say “do you need anything,” am I hoping you will not? And that of course is if I ask at all. And yet Jesus told us that if we wanted to be great in the kingdom of heaven we had to serve each other. The only way to get into the habit of service is to find some way to serve on a regular basis, and once we take up a life of service, we will eventually hear the cries of the poor.

The second thing I think the story tells us is that if we want Christ to make us whole, we have to increase our faith. I'm reminded of the man who said to Jesus, “Lord, I believe, help my unbelief.” We all have room to increase our faith and part of that requires prayer. The stronger our faith, the more we will be able to accomplish in our mission as Christians to bring about the kingdom of heaven. We associate strong faith with miracles like healing, and of course that seems to be the case. But there are other kinds of miracles – and we think perhaps of Mother Angelica who founded EWTN depending all the while on God and God alone. We think of so many other remarkable things the saints did, and we realize that like the deaf man, God will multiply our weak human efforts if we have strong faith.

And perhaps the third thing is that in this story Jesus is there, not like some genie in a bottle granting a wish, but being very human, touching, groaning, giving his all to make us whole. And that, of course, is the whole point of the Eucharist, which is the ultimate sacrifice on Calvary played out in sacramental form.

So Mark is writing to persecuted Christians. He is telling them through this story that Jesus is there in the midst of their struggles, and this is no time to give up. Because he will open our ears and give us the words we need to say, and ultimately make us whole if we but trust him, if we let him do so.