Fr. Bill Carroll – The Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 8, 2024
Then looking up to heaven, Jesus sighed and said to the man, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Let’s start with the deaf man, whose ears are opened, and then work back to the foreigner who wants her daughter healed. In part, that’s because her story is too difficult to get to right away. (Is Jesus really calling her daughter a dog?) But it’s also because Mark intends for us to hear these two stories together.
The man has difficulty speaking, as well as hearing. In the time of Jesus, this means backbreaking poverty and social isolation. He speaks to the man, and he is healed. The word of Jesus is the strong word of our Creator and Savior, who tells us to “be strong and have no fear.”
Ephphatha means “be opened.” In the story, it is about more than opening the man’s ears. It is about opening his heart. It is about turning his whole life around. In the first century, the Jews who heard this story would have known the prophecy of Isaiah. When they see Jesus healing the man, they know that they are witnessing the signs of God’s Kingdom: “The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped. Then, the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
Even today, many of us live with illness and suffering. We want to be healed. We long to be healed. But we seldom experience miracles like this one–or at least we explain them in other ways. If we are healed, it is more likely through the power of love and community—or else through modern medicine, we think. And yet, we still long for God to heal us.
God still speaks to us today, saying: “Be strong and have no fear.” Our healing lies (above all) in the fact that God has come near to us. In Jesus, God has come close to us, and God is our friend. God is on our side.
Jesus brings powerful words of love and healing for those who carry heavy burdens. Think of that young man in Georgia. What kind of burdens does a fourteen-year-old carry, that he could do something like shoot up a school? Jesus brings healing, even when there’s little chance of a cure. He shows us God’s love. He gives us strength and hope to keep moving forward. He invites us to “follow in his steps.”
Now, back to the hard part of the story, the one with the foreign woman and her daughter. This too is a story of healing and conversion, not just for the girl but, I daresay, for Jesus as well.
Her mother helps Jesus to see the limits of his point of view. She talks back to Jesus and challenges him to grow. At the beginning of his mission, Jesus thought he was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel. But this strong woman, inspired by her love for her daughter, gets Jesus to change his mind. Her faith is an inspiration to him. And so, he says, “for this saying, the demon will leave your daughter.”
So often, when we think of Jesus, we think of him as perfect from the beginning. And, in a sense, that is true. But the Gospels tell us about the Word-become-flesh. They tell us about the Son of God becoming a real human being–living a fully human life. And, as the Gospel of Luke reminds us, Jesus grows in wisdom and favor–with God and with human beings.
At first, he seems to share our human attitude toward outsiders. Not to the point of sin, perhaps, but to the point where he needs someone to open his mind.
The little girl’s mother opens his mind to the experience and reality of non-Jews. She liberates Jesus from an overly narrow conception of what it means to be God’s chosen People.
Jesus does live out a fully human life, just like we do–with a limited perspective, growing and changing over time. He learns to obey God, just like we do–by listening to the Holy Spirit and loving the neighbors God gives him. But, because Jesus is the Son of God from the very instant of his conception, he responds freely and instantly to whatever his God and Father asks him to do.
That said, the woman’s story is still very disturbing. So disturbing—really–that some folks question whether it really happened at all. But that’s not the question. The question is this: why did the Church remember this story? And why did they keep on telling it? Why is it included in Holy Scripture?
Well, I suspect that the first communities struggled, just like we do–with who does and doesn’t belong. This story is about Jesus giving up any favoritism he feels toward those who share his background. Jesus chooses the poor and little ones from every family, every tribe, every nation. The mission of the Church is to every nation under heaven.
The foreign woman convinces him that his mission is to all people, everywhere. By changing his mind, Jesus models openness to the Spirit–and to the Kingdom of God. That’s what his ministry is all about. He shows us how to follow God’s will in every moment–and every choice–so that. like him, we can become children of his heavenly Father.
The first Christians showed a similar openness when they decided that non-Jews could become Christians without first becoming Jews. It was a discernment that all of us have benefitted from. Within decades of the resurrection—with an all-too-human struggle that is recorded in the Book of Acts and elsewhere—the Church chose to listen to the Holy Spirit and become a “mixed body” of Jews and Gentiles living together as one.
That brings us back to the deaf man. “Be opened,” Jesus says to him. Be opened to neighbors, to strangers, even to enemies. Be opened to those who worship differently, love differently, or have a different life than you do.
Over and over, when given a choice, Jesus always chooses to love. That’s what it means for him to be the Son of God sent by God to save the world.
He opens his heart. He changes his mind. And sometimes, so should WE.
Amen.