Jesus Draws Near To The Man – He Opened His Ear And Made Him Speak

Fr Dexter Brereton, CSSp 

Mark 7: 31-37

Today’s reading from Mark’s gospel closes chapter 7 and tells of the healing by Jesus, of a deaf-mute man. Though at first glance, it is a story about healing, upon deeper reflection, if we listen deeply to our emotions, we realize that it is a story about many things:

• A story about how we treat the poor and those we look down upon as ‘simple’
• A story about how we value the wisdom which comes to us from our ancestors
• A story about how we value the stories of groups with little prominence in society and how these are led to freedom.

Mark says that Jesus heals the man by inserting his fingers into his ears and touching the man’s tongue with spittle. This was the practice employed by other Jewish and Greek healers at the time of Jesus, but its physicality and its intimacy may shock us in this age of pandemic. Jesus comes close to the man in a way that exposes him to contagion.

Yet, there is much in this symbolic ‘physical’ closeness between the man and Jesus. To say that Jesus comes close enough to put his finger into the man’s ears is also to say that Jesus allowed himself to experience the closeness and touch of this suffering human being. As we think about our own doctors and other professionals today, let us ask ourselves, how many of them allow themselves to come close to their clients, to experience closeness and touch?

Some time ago, I was speaking with a friend and remember remarking that the common denominator in so many people’s experience of medicine in Trinidad and Tobago is ‘disrespect.’ From our public hospitals, to our private practices, patients are often treated as objects with no brain, that their informed consent does not matter and that they have no need of a rational explanation for the doctor’s course of treatment. Using the words of the reading, within, the field of medicine today many patients experience themselves as ‘having an impediment in their speech.’ They experience a system that reduces them to silence and does not bother to ask their opinion or consent.

The most ‘therapeutic’ experiences I have had at the doctor is when the doctor or specialist takes the time to sit with me and enter into a respectful dialogue over my health. The best doctors are those who do not assume that I am an idiot, but a patient trying his best to cooperate in my own health care. He listens carefully not only to my questions and misgivings but also to my own experiences and wisdom. Here, I do not experience ‘an impediment of speech.’

As we find ourselves during this pandemic, dealing with what we call vaccine hesitancy in our religious communities, this approach of getting close so that we can place our fingers in our peoples’ ears is needed. Many of them may feel for example that to accept a vaccine is to abandon trust in God and to abandon the common sense of our ancestors whose wise advice kept us healthy all the while. I was touched recently when a Pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, with a Masters Degree in Science insisted that before taking the vaccine, he said a prayer. This man acknowledged the importance and usefulness of science while at the same time recognizing that human science is not perfect and that ultimately God is the one who protects. When it comes to COVID 19 vaccines, it is not a case of ‘either’ ‘or’. It is not a choice between Man’s wisdom or God’s. With the help of the Holy Spirit, we can welcome these two important and valid sources of wisdom into our everyday lives and decisions.

Father we thank you for Jesus your Son who comes to us in our brokenness and our shyness and removes our impediment of speech. So much does he love and respect us that he comes close to us, inserts his fingers into our ears, touch spittle to our tongues and, after looking up to heaven say to us ‘Ephphatha’, meaning ‘be opened.’ Lord we pray for all those who, through personal trauma, or oppression experienced at the hands of others, find that their speech is impeded, or worse, that they have no voice. Stretch out your hands and heal us O Lord. Amen.