6th August Trinity 2016, Hand That Loved Me (Redux)

6th Trinity August

Mark 7, 31-37

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 Trinity August

August 28, 2016

Mark 7, 31-37

A wall separates two spaces. A doorway is an opening between the two. And the door itself opens or shuts. It regulates the flow between them.

Our senses are the doors between the inner life of the soul and the outer life of the world. In sleep, the doors of the senses are closed.  Upon waking, all sensory doors open. They will remain open or close, depending on where we choose to direct our attention. Being absorbed in the activities of the world, all doorways are open; being absorbed in the inner life can close the doors of the senses, making us oblivious to noise, for example.

The deaf mute’s sense organs for hearing and speech had become permanently closed. An exchange of words had become impossible. His friends bring him to Christ, the Logos, the Living Word. At Christ’s intimate and loving touch, at His fiery word – Ephphata! Be opened! – the closed doors open. The man can hear and speak again. He can fully engage with the world.

At the same time, Christ has opened the same doors in the crowd. And though He tries to tell them not to proclaim the event far and wide, they will talk. They represent that in us which cannot yet regulate our speech, which cannot yet recognize when to close the door.

Christ said of Himself: My I AM is the Door. He is that capacity in us that is able to choose to open or to close, and to know when it is time to do which. Both capacities, opening and closing, are necessary for the soul. It is only the extremes – always open, or always closed – that are unhealthy. Christ, the Door, helps us to know when we are to open and when to close.

The deaf mute’s experience of Christ is expressed in a poem by Antonio Machado:

Tissot

From the door sill of a

dream they called my name…

It was the good voice,

the voice I loved so much.

“—Listen: will you go

with me to visit the soul?…”

A soft stroke reached

up to my heart.

“With you always”… And

in my dream I walked

Down a long and

solitary corridor,

Aware of the touching

of the pure robe,

And the soft beating of

blood in the hand that loved me.*

*Antonio Machado, translated by Robert

Bly, from the book

Times Alone: Selected Poems of Antonio Machado (Wesleyan Poetry in Translation)

6th August Trinity 2015, Hearing Loss

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 Trinity August

August 30, 2015

Mark 7, 31-37

We can think of our senses as portals into the soul. They allow the outer world and our inner life to interact. Our sense of hearing brings things deep inside of us; it is also necessary so that we can speak properly. Our modern sense of hearing has lost its fineness. We no longer hear the music of the spheres, the singing of the stars. We are deaf mutes in the face of the higher worlds. The poet David Wagoner describes this:

When Laurens van der Post one night

In the Kalihari Desert told the Bushmen

He couldn't hear the stars

Singing, they didn't believe him.  They looked at him,

Half-smiling.  They examined his face

To see whether he was joking

Or deceiving them.  Then two of those small men

Who plant nothing, who have almost

Nothing to hunt, who live

On almost nothing, and with no one

But themselves, led him away

From the crackling thorn-scrub fire

And stood with him under the night sky

And listened.  One of them whispered,

Do you not hear them now?

And van der Post listened, not wanting

To disbelieve, but had to answer,

No.  They walked him slowly

Like a sick man to the small dim

Circle of firelight and told him

They were terribly sorry,

And he felt even sorrier

For himself and blamed his ancestors

For their strange loss of hearing,

Which was his loss now.  ....*

In the gospel reading the man’s lack of hearing and speech cut him off from his ability to interact with his fellow human beings. This must have resulted in an enormous sense of isolation. His own inner activity is severely hindered. And yet this deaf mute has a community of friends who bring him to Christ.

It is interesting that the first thing Christ does is to isolate him again – he takes him apart from the crowd. This probably serves to focus his attention and to emphasize his existence as an individual human being. Then Christ engages in a series of actions involving the sense of touch. He touches the man’s ears, his tongue. Then looking up to the heavens, from whence the life of our senses flow, he speaks the divine word that has the power to become reality on earth, the fiery word  - Be opened!

And the gateways are opened. The man can hear and speak. His isolation is overcome. At the same time Christ then asks the crowd not to speak. For we can both speak too little or too much. It is as though Christ is warning them against uncontrolled speech, which becomes just noise. Be opened, yet find the middle way.

*David Wagoner, "The Silence of the Stars" in Traveling Light

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