The centre of attention in today’s gospel is the man who was deaf and unable to speak. It is quite likely that his inability to speak was linked to his deafness. He would not have had the freedom and independence that were normal in human living and human relationships. Communications with others would have been very limited. We can also assume that there were probably many people just like him in almost every village. This has always been a bit puzzling for me, because I ask myself why didn’t Jesus just heal everyone. What happened to all those other people who were sick? I think we can find an answer if we recognise that often the people Jesus healed were also a symbol of a profound illness among the people who seemed to be healthy. The man in today’s gospel is deaf, but so too were the crowds who didn’t listen to Jesus when he asked them not to talk about him to everyone. The deaf man mightn’t have been able to speak, but when the crowds did speak they weren’t really speaking the truth about Jesus. Their communication problem seems almost more devastating than the deaf man’s. So, Jesus’ miracle seems to be more for the benefit of the crowd than just for the deaf man. When we hear the story we need also to recognise that Jesus is not just healing a deaf man, but that he is interested in a world that seems to be unsure of itself, that has trouble communicating, and that is like a stammering man unsure how to speak and to live.
Jesus came to heal the man in the gospel, but he has also come to heal the world. The ritual he used to heal the man was complex, and involved touching his ears and mouth. Jesus then raised his eyes to heaven to call on God. It had all the characteristics of an exorcism. It is interesting that the gospel story does not tell us much about the man after his cure. The focus is more on the crowd. They marvel at what they have seen – not so much at what had happened to the deaf man, but more at Jesus and his power. The focus of the story is now on Jesus and what he has done. In the midst of a world and a people that can find itself weak and fearful, Jesus has brought transformation. Jesus has done what only God can do.
There seems no doubt from the way that St Mark tells the story, that the crowd recognised Jesus’ actions as fulfilling the Old Testament prophecy. We heard it in our first reading. God was coming to renew and re-create the earth, and the great sign of this would be that the ears of the deaf would be opened and the tongues of the dumb would sing for joy. Jesus’ miracle is a sign that God is fulfilling the promise to renew the face of the earth. It was a sign of the love of God that knows no limits.
The challenge for the crowd and for all generations after them has been to hear this story both as a story of Jesus’ power and strength, and a story of their own transformation. The risk was that they would not hear this word of God. If they don’t hear correctly, then they will not be able to speak correctly – they will not speak the truth. Speaking is linked to hearing, just as it was for the man who was cured.
What about us? The gospel invites us to think of ourselves as like the man who is deaf and unable to speak, and to recognise the healing that Jesus offers us. It is much easier to make the connection with Jesus’ ritual actions in this gospel than it is with many of the other healing miracles of Jesus. The church’s rite of baptism includes this same ritual that Jesus performed. Towards the end of the baptism, after the water has been poured, the priest touches the ears and the mouth of the newly baptised person and prays that their ears may be opened so that they will always hear the word of God, and that their lips may be unsealed or untwisted so that they will proclaim the word that they hear. So, for those of us who have been baptised we have already been touched by the healing hand of Jesus, we have already experienced the infinite love of God.
But that is not the end of the story. While the rituals of baptism are important and they speak loud and clear about what God has done for us, we are all faced with the task of becoming what we have received. This means that each day we need to listen to the word of God with ears that have been opened by Jesus, so that we might hear his message of freedom, love, peace and reconciliation. The point of hearing this word is that we might be strengthened to live each day the life that we have been given. This means having confidence that the life God has given us will help us to face the difficulties, challenges, confusion and fear that may sometimes mark life in a modern society like ours. Often the most difficult thing in living this sort of life is that there are so many things going on around us that we become deaf to God’s word. It seems rather ironic that in a world like ours, where we place such high value on good communication and we prize the technologies that aid communication, the noise around us can make us deaf to the word of God.
Fr. Gerard Kelly
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