Thought for the week - 8 September 2024

Usually, telling somebody not to tell other people about what you are about to do to them or with them is a bit of a worry, to say the least, and we might well want to pass over such a story, leaving the clearing up to others better equipped to do so. Today we have a Gospel reading which seems quite familiar – a healing, yes, remarkable for being so, but one of a number we encounter over the long summer months and not as dramatic as the raising of Lazarus or that son of the widow of Nain, and this coupled with the exhortation from Jesus to ‘tell nobody about this’ may make us think that, maybe it was not very worthy of our attention. Conversely, the fact that we are still hearing it two thousand years later suggests that, at the least, the man did not take the request to tell nobody about it very seriously.

We are struck immediately by the visceral, life changing healing taking place here – it gives the man a capacity for speech which is altogether new for him, and so could Jesus really expect the man not to speak about it? Can a man who has spent his entire life silent, now suddenly having the capacity for speech, not talk about it? Even in a basic way, what would he say when people asked him how this came to be? And surely, like those who have been touched in some way by God, we want to tell of it, that’s what disciples do, surely. No wonder, as those who wrote the Gospel today say, ‘The more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it.’

So did Jesus misjudge the situation or ask the man to do something he knew he would be physically incapable of, or is there some other dynamic going on here, because certainly, nobody takes his command to the man who was unable to speak and now can, to be silent very seriously, and I suggest that we are not supposed to either. He knows beforehand that they are not going to keep quiet about the miracles he works - he understands that sometimes the best way to get people to do something is to tell them not to do it. We can be disobedient to Jesus, it seems, when it’s a matter of proclaiming his mighty deeds of salvation.

The miracle we hear today is a little like our own baptism in which we are healed so that we may hear God’s word and thus proclaim God’s deeds. We have been given, as for the first time, a voice, which we are to raise to the praise and glory of God the Father. We are not told to keep silent about it and to tell nobody, although you might think that we had sometimes and the sad thing is that too many of the baptised seem to have taken seriously Jesus’s command not to proclaim it. Too many seem to spend their Christian lives as if they would remain voluntarily unable to hear and speak, at least when it comes to being disciples and witnesses, and if we are anything, its witnesses to God’s love, which is not silent, and to be agents of God’s love, which suggests that we must be able to hear the voices of those who suffer.

And how does he get to where he is? He travels from Tyre to Sidon to the Sea of Galilee to the region of the Decapolis, a place of ten cities. Jesus has been here before. In Mark 5:1-20, Jesus enters the Decapolis and meets a man possessed by multiple demons named “Legion.” He casts out the demons and sets the man free.

But here, in this story, when Jesus returns to the Decapolis, he meets a man who suffers not from a spiritual disability, but a physical one. He carries out different actions with this man. Jesus takes him aside away from the crowd, He plans to give him his undivided attention. Jesus puts his fingers in the man’s ears. This man is deaf. He can’t hear Jesus’ words, so Jesus uses a form of sign-language. He spits. Interestingly, this isn’t the only time Jesus spits. In Mark 8:23, a blind man is brought to Jesus, and we’re told that Jesus spits on the man’s eyes and at that time, spittle was thought to have healing properties.

Jesus is entering this man’s world, his beliefs, his customs—to communicate “I’m going to heal you.” He touches the man’s tongue. Jesus once again uses non-verbal communication so the man can understand. He looks up to Heaven. This is a gesture of prayer. Jesus is revealing the source of his power—His Father in Heaven who has the ability to make all things new. He sighs. This is the only place in the Bible where Jesus is said to sigh. Jesus is expressing grief for the way this man’s body has been ravaged by the fall. He empathizes and identifies with his pain. Jesus says to the man, Ephphatha. What’s about to happen is so astounding that Mark decides to leave the original Aramaic word here: Ephphatha. It means “Be opened.”

To reach him and rescue him. Jesus had to become human—take on a physical body. A body with saliva glands, speech and eardrums. He entered his world. Jesus pursues us by embodying our world. This is a parable that shows what will be accomplished on the Cross, that to heal us, He has to become human and become like us, and that is why we should never be ashamed of our faith and should speak about it, because He did, at the cost of His own life and body, which united our lives and bodies with His.