Whenever
a baby is baptized, after the actual baptism itself come a series of rituals
that symbolically amplify the full meaning of baptism. The last of these is
called the Ephphatha - the Aramaic
word Jesus used in today’s Gospel [Mark 7:31-37]. The fact that the actual Aramaic word was remembered years
later and repeated in its original language in the Gospel (which was written in
a different language) suggests that what Jesus said and did on that occasion
must have made quite a memorable impression on his followers.
At
a Baptism, in imitation of Jesus, the priest or deacon touches the newly
baptized baby’s ears and mouth, saying: The
Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears
to receive his word, and your mouth to proclaim his faith, to the praise and
glory of God the Father.” In other words, in opening our ears to hear God’s
word and our mouths to proclaim his faith, Baptism introduces us to a genuinely
new way of life, just as the life of the man Jesus healed in today’s Gospel was
totally and irrevocably transformed.
Who
was this man, forever immortalized by Jesus’ healing touch that day? Apart from
his disability, we know next to nothing about him. He could have been anyone. Apart
from his disability, the only other thing we can assume about him is suggested
by the geography lesson at the beginning of the story. Jesus, we are told, left the
district of Tyre and went into the district of the Decapolis. In other words, Jesus has gone beyond the
borders of Israel into Gentile territory. So the salvation promised by the
prophet Isaiah (so familiar to us from Handel's musical version) - Then will the ears of
the deaf be cleared; then the tongue of the mute will sing – is coming
true. And one of the first to benefit is a deaf
Gentile, whose ears have been opened to hear God’s word, a pagan, whose
mouth has been opened to proclaim
his new faith!
The
story highlights not just a man and a miracle, but what happened next. The man spoke plainly, and the people were astonished. Sometimes astonishment silences
us. In this case, however, the people proclaimed the good news. So this is a
story about change – not just the dramatic healing of one individual in need,
but the total transformation of his life and the creation of a community of
disciples who have suddenly experienced something new and different made
possible by Christ.
So
what might such a transformed way of life and such a transformational community
actually look life?
The
letter of James, which we are reading this month, reminds us that our faith cannot
just be something somehow incidental in our lives. The exhortation we heard
last week, Be doers of the word and not
hearers only, deluding yourselves, gets “unpacked” in a series of practical
exhortations today [James
2:1-5] to judge, value, and
treat people according to completely new and different criteria from those
predominating in secular society – a tall order, to be sure, in any time and
place, certainly in a society such as ours where we all seem so enamored of the
rich and famous, a society in which a CEO earns several hundred times what his
or her average worker earns, fostering an economic, cultural, and moral gap of
a magnitude that would have been almost unimaginable just a generation ago.
As
members of Christ’s Church, who hear his
word, we are now witnesses of the change God is effecting in us – and
through us in the world. Like the bystanders in the Gospel, we will have no
viable authentic alternative but to proclaim
his faith, to proclaim what we
have heard and seen, something we do by becoming new people, something that
should show in our behavior towards one another, and especially to strangers –
those society seeks to throw away but whom we are called upon to welcome and
embrace.
Homily for the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Immaculate Conception Church, Knoxville, TN, September 6, 2015.
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