6th August Trinity 2013, Creative Words

Mark 7, 31-37

6th Trinity August

As he was again leaving the region around Tyre, he went through the country around Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the middle of the region of the ten cities of the Decapolis. They brought to him one who was deaf and who spoke with difficulty, and asked him to lay his hands on him. And he led him apart from the crowds by himself, laid his finger in his ears, and moistening his finger with saliva, touched his tongue, and looking up to the heavens, sighed deeply and said to him, “Ephphata, be opened.” His hearing was opened and the impediment of his tongue was removed and he could speak properly. And he commanded them not to say anything to anyone. But the more he forbade it, the more they widely they proclaimed it. And the people were deeply moved by this event, and said, “He has changed all to the good: the deaf he makes to hear and the speechless to speak.

6^th August/September Trinity

Sept 1, 2013

Mark 7, 31 – 37

As we get older our hearing often declines. It is as though our ears close a bit. We fail to accurately pick up what was spoken to us. And so we get a false message. And to others our response is inappropriate. 

In a sense we are all deaf. Even if our hearing is perfect, it can be that our hearts are closed, so that we don’t pick up what is really being said.  Our hearts are closed, often in self-defense, against the overwhelming voices of pain and suffering around us. We may rarely hear the inspirations our angels are whispering to us.

It is difficult for us to speak in truth. Our words wield an enormous creative power, for good or for ill. The poet makes us aware of their power; he says,

When I pronounce the word Future,

the first syllable already belongs to the past.

When I pronounce the word Silence,

I destroy it.

When I pronounce the word Nothing,

I make something no nonbeing can hold.[1]

Christ came to open our hearing, to open our hearts, so that our words have the power to create. ‘Be opened’, he says.  ‘Hear my voice in your heart’.  When you break your silence with love, you create a future which no non-being can destroy.

www.thechristiancommunity.org

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[1] Wislawa Szymborska, “ Three Oddest Words”.