Mark 7:31-37

TWENTY-THIRD SUNDAY IN ORD. TIME

Mark 7:31-37

A good Sunday to all. 

Last week we listened to one of the most controversial pages of the Gospel in the confrontation with the Jewish religion. Previously, Jesus discussed with the scribes and Pharisees and at one point, he told them that they were hypocrites, not in the sense of false, but of comedians. In fact, 'your religious practice is a comedy that does not interest God, you use special clothing, then you offer sacrifices that do not interest God.' And he quoted the prophet, Isaiah. Then he met with the disciples and continued the discussion to the point that Jesus said: 'You are so short of intellect that you do not understand that impurity does not come from without, it comes from the heart; it comes from within.’ At that point of the discussion, the evangelist Mark says: "Jesus arose and went straight away to Tyre and Sidon." He left the disciples there and went on his own. 

Mark says the disciples were not with him. What was the reason? He left—and I add—slamming the door. The discussion about pure and impure had to be very well clarified. From his infancy, Jesus must have assimilated the mentality of his people and what they taught him. He was taught that the pagans were people to be avoided because they were unclean and far from God. And this issue of purity and impurity of people is a big one. 

Jesus was told at a very young age that if he stepped on pagan soil on his way back to the holy land, he would have to remove the dust from his feet not to contaminate the holy land. But Jesus grew in wisdom, age, and grace. What does it mean? That Spirit always guided him in his identity as the Son of God and led him to understand that the catechesis of the rabbis was not the thought of God; it was the tradition of people. That is why Jesus went to Tyre and Sidon. He followed the voice of the Spirit that had guided his life; he understood that people are not impure. Their actions can be impure, unclean, but people are all sons and daughters of God; therefore, they are not unclean. 

He goes to Tyre, and there he meets a Canaanite woman. The account of what happened in Tyre, in this encounter with the Canaanite woman, is not narrated to us in these Sundays, but Jesus had there the confirmation that sinners are waiting for the bread of his word, the word that casts out demons; the pagans have faith as well, and sometimes even more than the members of the people of Israel. This is the conclusion that Jesus came to while he was alone in pagan territory. It is an experience that he wanted to do, to have a confirmation of what the Spirit had always suggested to him; it corresponded to the reality of this pagan world waiting for his Gospel. 

Today's passage begins with the return of Jesus from this pagan land. Let us listen: 

"Again, he left the district of Tyre and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, into the district of the Decapolis." 

If listening to the reading of the gospel passage, you have followed on the map the itinerary followed by Jesus, you will surely be surprised because it is an outlandish route. Jesus departs from Tyre, he wants to go towards the Lake of Galilee; therefore, he must go down south instead of going to Sidon; then he goes down towards the Lake of Galilee because he must go to the city that he has chosen as his residence, Capernaum, and instead, we find him in the middle of the territory of the Decapolis. 

The Decapolis was a collection of cities on the eastern frontier of the Roman Empire. They were ten cities located in present-day Jordan and Syria. Damascus is in Syria; the other cities are all in Jordan: Gerasa, Gadara, Philistia (modern Amman), and the only city in Syria on the western side of the Jordan River was Scythopolis, modern Beit She'an. 

Spontaneously we ask ourselves: Why did the evangelist introduce these strange indications about Jesus' itinerary? The impression one gets is that Jesus is rather reluctant to return to his homeland, he knows that he will again clash with the exclusivist mentality of his people. The issue of purity and impurity is very important because Jesus wants to eliminate it definitively, at least from the minds of his disciples, the idea that there are impure people. All people are pure before God. Actions can be impure, yes. 

Jesus is in the Decapolis. The Decapolis is composed of pagan cities, and among the pagans are found those 12 impure behaviors that Jesus listed in the Gospel of last Sunday and on which we have stopped examining them individually. It is not the first time that Jesus goes to the Decapolis. In chapter 5 of his Gospel, Mark has already recounted the healing operated by Jesus in that land; when he arrived, he met a very dangerous demoniac who was harming himself and others; and when he met Jesus, he said to him, 'Leave us alone,' he was moved by these unclean spirits that are so many. 

It is the image of the reality of the pagan world that is moved by unclean spirits that drive it to do those actions that Jesus defined as unclean. Where Jesus comes, these spirits must leave; and there is a very significant image of these unclean spirits entering the swine and ending up in the sea. Swine are unclean animals, a symbol of impurity. No pig ended up in the sea; the evangelist wants to say that impurity disappears when Jesus arrives with his Gospel, then they are purified. 

Now Jesus comes to this land; whom does he meet? Let us listen: 

"People brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged him to lay his hand on him." 

Before commenting on the passage, I want to recall an observation I have already made on other occasions and that must always be considered because otherwise we run the risk of losing the main message of the passage. When the evangelists relate healing performed by Jesus, they do not want to give us information about the healing simply, about something that happened; no one has ever doubted that Jesus had the power to perform prodigious healings, but its purpose is, above all, to show us how that healing is the sign of another healing that takes place in people when they encounter Christ and his Gospel. There is a prodigy that happens in them; they are healed of those diseases that made them less human and dehumanized them, and now are found to be fully human; so that the healing stories should always be read as parables of this healing realized through the encounter with Christ and his Gospel. 

Let us look at our narrative. Jesus arrives in Decapolis, a pagan land; what man does he find? The person who is sick; is deaf and dumb. Properly it does not say mute but stammerer: μογιλάλον, 'mogilalon,' and this Greek term It is very precious because it is oriented to the symbolic meaning of Jesus's healing in this Decapolis. Where does it orient us? Because this term occurs only twice in the whole Bible, in the Old Testament and the New Testament; once here in our narrative, with this stammerer who met Jesus, and the other time it is in the book of the prophet Isaiah speaking to the Israelites, who ended up as slaves deported to the Babylonians. 

The prophet Isaiah says that one day the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be opened. Then he says that the lame will leap like a deer, and the tongue of these stammerers will shout for joy. The deaf stammerer is the people of Israel who ended up amid the pagans Babylonians. Therefore, it is the invitation to read this episode that happened in the Decapolis in the light of what happened to the people of Israel who were deaf to the Torah, to the word of God. The consequence is that they ended up among the pagans. This condition of the people of Israel, of being deaf, is also found in the other prophets. 

Zechariah has a strong accusation against his people. He says: "They have hardened their ears not to hear. They have hardened their heart, like a diamond so that they will not listen. They want to do things their way; they closed their ears." 

Jeremiah defines Israel as a deaf people. He says they have ears, but they do not hear. When God speaks to Ezekiel, he says: "You live amid a race of rebels; they have ears but do not hear because they are a generation of rebels." What happened to these Israelites who came to Babylon and became deaf to the word of God? What does the deaf do? The deaf man looks around him to behave by what he sees, not by what he hears because he cannot hear. So, Israel, having ended up in a pagan land, what did they do? They let themselves be guided by what they saw the pagans doing, and little by little, totally forgot the Torah because it was no longer listened to, and they adapted to the moral customs of the Babylonians. They behaved like them and lost what characterized them as a chosen people. 

The message is for us, too; it can be our history because we can become like that deaf and stuttering man of the Decapolis, or like the Israelites who ended up among the pagans in Babylon. If we become deaf to the word of God and the Gospel, we end up living as the pagans around us behave; we get involved in what is called secularization; we follow the fashions, the dominant thought, we start to reason and to talk and even to live a little bit like we see the non-believers do, those who focus their lives not on the beatitudes of the Gospel but on the beatitudes of this world; and so we handle the money as others do, sexuality as we see others do, loyalty, justice, even respect for life, everything as we see others do. Then it becomes right and reasonable what the current morality suggests, and the norm becomes "It is what everyone does." 

If you are deaf to the word of the Gospel, you are in trouble because then Christians cease to be the salt of the earth and light of the world, one like everyone else, they are no longer distinguished. The Israelites are these stammerers. Who does this stammerer of the Decapolis represent? He represents that stuttering that all those who do not listen to the word of God have, but who put some truth in it. 

There are many beautiful truths, even in paganism; think, for example, of the Greek and Egyptian wisdom of the entire ancient Middle East, which was trying to find an answer to the riddles of human existence, to the meaning of our existence. And we know how many moral values are also found in pagan thinking. In the famous Book of the Dead, when we read the confession of the righteous before Osiris, he says: ‘I have fed the hungry, given drink to the thirsty, clothed the naked....' It is that love of neighbor which the pagans already spoke of but which was later taken up and brought to the top by the morality preached by Jesus, who will speak of that love that reaches even to the enemy. 

So, can the Christian limit himself to babbling these truths shared even by the pagans? The answer is NO; he has his obvious proposal of man, which he saw incarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore, when it comes to choosing between good and evil, between darkness and light, between sweet and bitter, the Christian cannot stutter. If he stammers, he has become deaf to the Gospel. 

The evangelist then highlights the fact that the deaf stammerer does not come to Jesus alone but is accompanied by some people. The meaning is significant; it is not an extra detail; other times, it is recalled in the Gospel of Mark, that the person who needs to meet Jesus needs to be accompanied by someone; alone, he does not get to find the one who can heal him. For example, in Capernaum, from the beginning, the sick are brought to Jesus on Saturday evening; the paralytic lowered from the roof and carried on a stretcher by four persons; the blind man of Bethsaida that we shall meet on another Sunday is carried and accompanied to Jesus. 

What does this detail mean? This deaf stammerer seems to be the image of the one who resigns himself to his condition, to his diminution of humanity because he cannot make the right choices in his life. This man is the image of the one who is far from Christ, who perhaps no longer has even the consciousness of his condition, does not care, goes ahead as he can, perhaps even attaches himself to his deafness and his stuttering because then he doesn't have to make the right choices in his life. 

Fortunately, however, this man has someone who loves him and won't leave him in his condition; someone who cares and wants him to open his ears to hear a new approach to life. Who are these people who accompany deaf people to Jesus? They are the angels of the Lord, those whom the good God placed with us in life, those who watch over us, they are the guardian angels, they are those who have already known the Gospel that has purified their hearts, they are those who have made the experience of the power of salvation which is present in the word of the Gospel, and they want all to open their ears to this word of life. 

And what do these angels do? They bring Jesus to those who need to meet him, to be touched by him. What does it mean to ask Jesus to heal a sick brother? Many times, we are asked what effect has the prayer I address to Jesus for a needy brother. The prayer is not to convince Jesus. We want him to find Jesus to heal that brother we love. Jesus only wants the good of the people. 

What effect does the prayer we address to Jesus for one of our brothers have? It does not change the heart of Jesus; when we want to help a brother, we present him to Jesus in the dialogue that we have with him, and prayer keeps us in the right disposition towards the brother who is still deaf to the word of the Gospel. If we do not pray we find ourselves in front of a brother who does not want to make decisions, which is slow in his steps, who hesitates, who then has regrets, and even gets angry. If, instead, we pray, then we see the situation of this brother, of this sister, as He sees it, and although this brother maybe offends us and says he wants to be left alone... If we don't pray, we risk ruining everything. What are these angels asking Jesus for? They ask him to touch the sick with his Gospel, that touches the heart, that heals that heart from which the choices conform to the son of God. Therefore, let them realize in fullness their human life. 

After having grasped the symbolic significance of this dangerous deafness and this stuttering, this inability to communicate, we now hear how the healing takes place: 

"Jesus took him off by himself away from the crowd. He put his finger into the man's ears and, spitting, touched his tongue; then he looked up to heaven and groaned and said to him, "Ephphatha!" (that is, "Be opened!") And immediately, the man's ears were opened, his speech impediment was removed, and he spoke plainly. He ordered them not to tell anyone. But the more he ordered them not to, the more they proclaimed it They were astonished and said, 'He has done all things well. He makes deaf people hear and [the] mute speak.'" 

We want to pay attention to all the details of this healing story because they are all loaded with a message. First, Jesus takes this sick man aside, away from the crowd. What is the symbolic meaning of this gesture? If you want a person who lives among the pagans and reasons like them, lives like them because he has not heard other proposals of life, the first thing to do is to take him out of this crowd. If he is still tied there, to that world, he will continue with the same life; if he continues with the friends who follow the pagan principles and values, they are still interested in trivialities, talking about useless things, he will continue with his disease. 

It is necessary to put a muffler to the noises of advertising, shouted by touts who make right seem wrong. If we are dazed and deafened by so much chatter, we end up deafening the word of God and stammering. We stammer some words of the Gospel but mix them with many pagan speeches. Therefore, we must go out of this village. 

And now Jesus makes a series of gestures that may seem strange to us, but they were not strange at that time in that cultural context. These are gestures that were widespread in Middle Eastern culture. Their symbolic meaning is clarified if we read them in the light of the biblical references. In the first one, Jesus puts his fingers in his ears. What does this finger mean? We find it in the Bible, the finger of God. For example, in Exodus, chapter 8, when the wise men from Egypt before the wonders operated by Moses, they say: "That is the finger of God." That is to say; there is an intervention of the power of God. Also, in Luke chapter 11, we find Jesus saying: "If I cast out demons with the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come." Again, the finger of God and the intervention of a power not of this world. An intervention of the Lord is needed to open the ears that are closed to the word of God. 

Christians understood very well the symbolism of this gesture. In the ancient rite of baptism, were all these gestures of the narrative we are examining. They are also repeated in the present rite with the gesture of the opening of the ear placed after the baptism and accompanied by wonderful words: "May the Lord Jesus who made the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak grant you—says the celebrant to this child— the privilege of soon hearing his word and professing faith in him." The Christian, therefore, is not only the one who can hear the Gospel, but also the one who is called to announce it without stammering. 

The third gesture: with the saliva touching the tongue. To understand this gesture of saliva, it is necessary to keep in mind that, in the popular conception of the time, saliva was the concentration of the breath, therefore, of the spirit. With this gesture, Jesus communicates to that tongue his breath, his Spirit, and then that tongue will no longer speak as before with an incomprehensible language, stammering something true but also among a lot of nonsense...NO, now the tongue moved by the Spirit of God will speak a new language; the words which it will utter shall not be dictated by impure spirits but by this voice which is the voice of the Son of God who shall speak only of love, of dialogue, of reconciliation, of forgiveness. This is the communication of the Spirit of God to that stammering tongue. Now it is the son and daughter of God speaking. 

Then there is the looking up. If the other gestures were widespread in the Middle East culture, this one, on the other hand, is new. Only Jesus looks towards heaven, and this gesture indicates that he attributes the healing, the creation of this new man, who now only hears the voice of the Spirit and speaks as a son of God, attributes this healing to a gift from heaven.

Then there is a sigh. This sigh has received many interpretations. I believe the correct one rather than a sigh is a groan of pain on the part of Jesus. This is the meaning of the Greek term. To grasp in this pain an empathy, an involvement of Jesus in the pain of sick humanity in need of his salvation. 

Then he says, "Ephphatha!" an Aramaic word meaning 'be opened,' addressed not to the ears but to the heart closed to the word of the Lord that allows itself to be guided by the evil one who leads it to perform actions which are impure and unclean. On the other hand, the listening is opened to the word of the Lord. And it says that immediately were opened not the ears to which the finger touched, but now the hearing is opened, the heart is opened to hear the word of God. Jesus recommends not to spread the fact because it could be misinterpreted, it could be taken as healing, but he was giving the sign of the new humanity born from the encounter with him and his Gospel. 

The conclusion is a song of joy, of praise from all those who have understood and say he has done all things well. And this is an allusion to what happened during creation when God saw that all things were good, everything was beautiful. Now people realize that what Jesus has done is to create a new humanity; there is a new creation that brings forth a new humanity guided by the Spirit and the word of the Lord. 

I wish you all a good Sunday and a good week.