15th Sunday After Trinity – Rev’d Christopher Sterry
Listen to audio version
Readings: Isaiah 35.4-7a; Mark 7.24-end
Today, after six weeks meandering through John 6 with the Bread of Life, and an interlude for St Giles, our Patron–we return to the Galilean ministry of Jesus in St Mark’s gospel.
Well, not quite…
In the first of two stories Jesus leaves Galilee to go to the region of Tyre–a Phoenecian city on the coast, situated in what is, today, south Lebanon.
He doesn’t want anyone to know he is there. After he had sought some peace and quiet, across the sea of Galilee, and the crowd of 5000+ had easily found him, perhaps he was taking the opportunity of what is known these days as a ‘City Break’, to go far away where no-one knew him.
If that was his intention, it failed. No sooner has he got there than a woman comes and falls on her knees before him. Her child, she tells him, has an unclean spirit. Clearly the fame of Jesus has spread beyond Judea and Galilee. The woman comes in the simple faith that Jesus can cure her daughter. But she meets an obstacle.
He said to her, ‘Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’
The words conjure up the picture of mangey, possibly rabid street dogs. But the woman, in her answer, transforms the dogs from snarling and dangerous street scavengers to beloved household pets.
“Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs,”
she says.
Her dogs sit under the table and hope for scraps–a familiar experience to all who have dogs. Her faith, and her crafty reply is rewarded. Jesus heals, as he does elsewhere in the gospels, at a distance.
‘For saying that, you may go—the demon has left your daughter.’ So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.
This story is a foretaste of the ministry of Jesus extended beyond the people of Israel, which is, of course, its ultimate scope.
It is also the story alluded to in the Prayer of Humble Access. “We are not worthy so much as to gather the crumbs from under thy table”. Remember this story next week, when you are saying that prayer immediately before receiving communion. For us, as for the woman and her child, “thou art the same Lord, whose property is always to have mercy.” The mercy of God, as the woman confidently believed, is not restrained
Jesus’ brief stop in Tyre is over, and he heads north to Sidon, then back towards Galilee via the largely Gentile area known as the Decapolis–”The Ten Towns”. Here a man is brought to him who is a deaf mute.
Unlike the healing of the woman’s daughter, at a distance, this miracle is very touchy-feely. It is done in private, and has elements of contemporary medical practice. Spitting, in particular, was considered therapeutic, so was sighing. (Perhaps that is what plumbers or electricians are doing when they take a first look at our household problems?) But the crucial element of the healing is in the word of command.
As in the raising of Jairus’ daughter, Jesus speaks in the original Aramaic. Following a look up to heaven, and a deep sigh of compassion, a single word of command. ‘Ephphatha. Be opened’.
And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
I suspect that most of us here share the disability of deafness to a greater or lesser extent. Have you ever sat in a crowded room unable to hear the conversation of those near you because of the background noise? Do your hearing aids amplify the wrong sounds and not the right ones? Has your spouse, for no apparent reason, started to mumble? To be hard of hearing is so isolating. Back then, with none of the modern aids and assistance, to be born deaf was to be excluded from society. By this healing his ears were opened and a whole new world was opened up to him.
But this man, like so many born profoundly deaf, was also mute. His tongue, the gospel says, was released.
What was it released for, we might ask? What did he talk about when he could suddenly speak? Did he immediately start to complain? Did he discover the human capacity for backbiting and gossip? Or did he tell his family that he loved them? Did he sing, or tell tales, or speak poetry? Did he praise God for the wonderful new life that was opened up to him?
We are told nothing about the reaction of the man, but surely he joined with the crowd in praising God for what had happened. The implication is of a tongue freed for the praise of God.
Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
The word ‘zealous’ suggests a real excitement and enthusiasm, a real recognition of God at work among them, in what was largely a Gentile area.
The final words of this story,
They were astounded beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’
In such a short space the gospel writer alludes to two passages in the Hebrew scriptures.
“He has done all things well” reminds us, in the Greek text, of the verse in Genesis 1 when God looked at all that he had created “and saw that it was good”.
The second, and more obvious allusion is to today’s Old Testament lesson.
Then shall the eyes of the blind be open, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then shall the lame man leap like a hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing.
That passage from Isaiah is about the return of the Israelites from exile, about their restoration and re-creation after a period of grievous punishment.
Creation is there in both allusions–or rather re-creation.
Yes, the man can hear again, he can speak. A whole new life for him. But just a hint here, at this stage in the gospel, of the scope of Christ’s ministry, which is brought to a head in his death and resurrection. A whole new life for that man, not just in physical terms but in spiritual ones. And a whole new life for us. Our ears opened, our tongues loosed in the service and praise of God.
As Paul put it, looking, as we do, from the other side of the death and resurrection of Jesus,
Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!
He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.’