Ephphatha: Be Opened!

Rev. Marcel Divine Emeka Okwara, CSsR

Homily for the Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year B

St. Alphonsus Catholic Church, Brooklyn Center, MN

Sunday, September 5, 2021

Our Gospel today (Mark 7:31-37) is about Jesus healing a deaf man who also has a speech impediment. As the narrative says, Jesus is making his way into the district of Decapolis, which means Ten Cities in Greek. The region is located on the Southeast side of the Sea of Galilee. The cities were a mixture of Greek and Jewish style and persuasion. As Jesus gets there, people bring to him a deaf man with speech impediment. Jesus is a physical healer. One of the major reasons why people originally paid attention to him and followed him was his reputation as a healer. But as St. Augustine said, since Jesus is the Word made flesh, every one of his actions is also a word. It means we should look at the surface and the depth of every one of Jesus’ actions in order to uncover a deeper spiritual meaning.

Throughout the Bible, we hear the great metaphor of God’s speech. God says “Let there be light and there was light.” God says, “Let the earth come forth, and the earth comes forth.” God’s Word creates. Furthermore, the Book of Psalm says we can hear the word of God as we look around creation. We can hear the word of God as we look at the orderliness of the universe. But God also speaks in a pointed way to the patriarchs, to the prophets, and to all the great figures in the Scripture. In the presence of God’s Word, what do we need to be? Hearers of the Word! We need to be listeners of God’s Word. Now, by listeners I also mEean doers. When I was growing up, my mom would sometimes say to any of her children that failed to do an assignment or did it poorly, “You don’t listen!” By that she meant that even though we heard her instruction, we decided to do it our way. So, there is a close connection between listening and acting. What is our problem spiritually? Deafness! But the right attitude of a believer, a saint is, “Speak Lord, your servant is listening.” St. Paul says that “Faith comes from hearing the Word of God.”  

Now, who does this deaf man stand for? All of us! You and me! The deaf man stands for everyone, up and down the centuries who did not hear God’s word. He stands for all of us who have grown deaf to it, who are oblivious to it, and who have lost the capacity to discern it. But how come we don’t hear it? There are so many voices! There are so many sounds competing for our attention. The media, the radio talk show, the TV talk show, the commercials, the MTV, the movies, the music, the politicians at the local,, state, national and international levels etc. are competing for our attention. How can we finally hear the Word of God? Remember prophet Elijah who went to the mountain to see God. There was a powerful wind, but God was not in the wind. After the wind, there was earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake. Then there was fire, but God was not in the fire. After the fire came a gentle whispering voice (1 Kings 19:11-12). So, to hear God, we must bracket-out all those noises that compete with God’s Word. Again, many of us are staying away from participating at Mass on a regular basis. As a culture, we are increasingly growing ignorant of the Bible. However, the Bible is God’s Word. Deafness to the Word of God, ignorance of the Word of God is ignorance of Christ as St. Jerome taught. 

What’s the result of deafness? At the physical level, it is a speech impediment. If you can’t hear sounds of articulate speech, you can’t reproduce them. A deaf person can’t speak clearly. At the spiritual level, if you don’t hear the Word of God clearly, then you can’t speak it clearly. Spiritually, you will have a speech impediment. How many Catholics can actually speak the Word of God with clarity and confidence? If you are questioned by a passionate protestant about your faith, are you able to answer confidently or will you become tongue-tied? Sadly, when it comes to retelling Bible stories, many Catholics are simply clueless.

In this story, what did Jesus do? “He took him off by himself away from the crowd.”What is the spiritual significance of this move? One reason we can’t hear is we spent too much time in the crowd. The myriads and cacophony of voices of so many, the conventional wisdom that surrounds us, the voices of advertisement, the loud voices of political and social activism, the persistent voices of secularism etc make us deaf to God’s word. So, to be able to hear God’s voice, we have to be introduced into a new environment where we are able to hear the Word of God clearly, a place of silence and communion and contemplation. Jesus is leading the deaf man and us away from the crowd of distraction, the crowd of secularism, the crowd of power tussle, the crowd of materialism, the crowd of consumerism, the crowd of commercialism, the crowd of the corrosive internet into the Church, into the Christian assembly. After taking the man away from the distractive crowd, he puts his finger into the man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue. Scholars said that the detail of spitting on the man’s tongue is a common gesture for a healer in Jesus’ time especially for a rabbi respected as a healer. After that Jesus looks up to heaven from where our help comes from and said to the deaf man, “Ephphatha!” That is, “Be opened!” What is Jesus doing? He is setting up a kind of electrical current. By looking up to heaven, Jesus links himself to the Father. After that, Jesus plus himself into the deaf man, thereby establishing a current that will run from the Father through the Son to the deaf man. Then he said, “Ephphatha!” Be opened to the Word. You have spent your life closed. You have spent your life listening to your own voice and listening to the wrong voices of persons that agree with you, listening to the voices of the culture that is increasingly becoming less and less godly and violent. You have spent your entire life reading and listening to people who are angry like you, who are destructive like you, who are rebellious like you, who are aggressive, bitter and violent like you. Now the time has come in Christ to be opened to the Word of God. Jesus is talking about the Church, about the liturgy, the Sacraments, especially the Eucharist, about the proclamation of the Word and all those ways we become plugged in to Christ and through Christ to the Father. After that, we hear that the man’s speech impediment was removed. If you want to hear clearly God’s Word and become an evangelist, be plugged into Jesus Christ and through him to the Father. Remember, it is through the Bible, through the liturgy, through the Sacraments that you begin to hear God’s speech and speak it clearly and articulately and confidently. So, stay plugged in to Jesus!