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.
6th August Trinity
Mark 7:31-37
Deep inside the ear is a fluid filled chamber. In it, little
hairs stand up like reeds, swaying to the motion of the water as sound waves
enter. This movement under water is translated to us as sound.
In today’s reading, water is the hidden background element
in this healing— the paradisal Sea of Galilee, the sea where the healing takes
place; the fluid-filled chambers of the deaf man’s ears, the moisture from
Christ’s own mouth. The watery element in the man’s ears, in his soul, had
grown stagnant, flat. Christ recharges it with the fiery sound of His word—Be opened!
Christ’s fire-word brings the waters into movement, opens hearing, frees
speech.
We too have become deaf, deaf to the speaking of the spirit.
Everywhere, noise drowns out spirit-word. In defense, we close our ears.
In the Act of Consecration of Man, the communion service, we
hear Christ ask that we take, along with the bread and watered wine, His body
and His blood. This is an awesome, and even terrifying thought. Yet hidden in
communion resounds His eternal healing, strengthening Word—Be opened!
For, in the words of David Whyte,
It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in
secret.
...You must go to the place
where everything waits;
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word....
And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.
