Sunday, August 31, 2014

6th August Trinity, Ears Awake

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
Quartz Geode
August 31, 2014
Mark 7: 31 – 37

Gem hunters look for a certain kind of rock formation, for certain round ball-shaped stones. These spheres are called thunder eggs. Cracked open, they have colored layers inside, and sometimes a hollow space filled with beautiful crystals. 

In today’s reading, a deaf man is brought to Christ by his friends. Being hard of hearing makes it difficult to both hear and to speak. One of the unfortunate results of being deaf is that one becomes closed off from interacting with others. Christ softens the rock-hardness of the man’s hearing , his tongue, with His own life-giving moisture. And like a gem hunter opening the thunder egg, his words strike emphatically – Ephphata – Be opened!

Christ also speaks to us today – be opened. For we have become hard of hearing, hard of heart. Yet we can be opened; we can become actively receptive. We can receive and bear the One who is himself the Word of God, the Logos. And we can actively bring him forth, sending him out to others on the stream of our own words. In the words of e.e. cummings we can jubilate:

i thank You God for most this amazing
day: for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky; and for everything
which is natural which is infinite which is yes

….how should tasting touching hearing seeing
breathing any-lifted from the no
of all nothing-human merely being
doubt unimaginable You?

(now the ears of my ears awake and
now the eyes of my eyes are opened)[1]






[1]  e.e. cummings in Complete Poems 1904-1962


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