Peace be with you. Friends, I love this
Gospel for this weekend —the story of Jesus healing the
man with the speech impediment who can't hear. It operates at so many different
levels, and they're all beautiful. Here's a first thing
to notice about it, is Jesus does something which is
relatively rare in the Gospels; that is, he wanders outside
of the territory of Israel. So mind you, he said, “I've come for the lost
sheep of the house of Israel.” So that's his
first obligation. But we know that after
the Resurrection, especially Paul here
comes to mind, the Church goes outward from Israel
to the ends of the world. So occasionally in the Gospels,
we get a kind of foretaste, a kind of hint of this move —well, especially in this story,
because Jesus wanders out of Israel into what's called
in Greek the Decapolis. It just means the area
of the ten cities. This was a territory to the
east of the River Jordan —so in present-day Jordan. At the time, it was very much
under the influence of the Greco-Roman culture,
because the Romans wanted to signal “Our culture has gone
to the ends of the world.” So it was kind of the Eastern
extreme of the Roman empire. So into this more Greek, Roman
—we might say today, this more secular sort of
territory—Jesus wanders. And there, they bring to him
a man who cannot hear, and as is often the case
with someone who can't hear, they have a speech impediment. And Jesus famously
cures him. Now, I've said this many times
to you before: the Gospels are intensely
interested in Jesus the healer. So that this really happened,
that's without doubt; Jesus healed people
all the time. And this story is so vividly
remembered that it undoubtedly is describing a real
historical event. But having said that,
the Gospel writers are all literary and theological
geniuses. And so they take these stories, and they present them
in such a way that they operate
at deeper levels as well. And so we're meant to see
in this story of healing, a kind of deeper
story of healing. And I think this story is really
all about evangelization. Now, what do I mean? Well, let's read
it more symbolically. The Decapolis, the ten cities,
the realm that's more secular, outside of Israel. I think much of our Western culture
today is like the Decapolis. In other words, not a culture
shaped by the word of God, but shaped very much
by secularist influences. As a result, a lot of people
in our culture can't hear
the word of God. They are attuned
to other voices, but not the voice
of the Lord. If Israel stands for this
religiously trained culture that knows how to hear
the word of God, the Decapolis, that's the
realm of unhearing —the realm, if you want,
of spiritual deafness. Now, do we hear lots of
voices in our culture? And the answer
is obviously yes. We hear all the time
the voice of materialism. I mean the view —boy, do young people share
this in massive numbers— the view that all there is,
is the world of matter. The world the sciences describe —matter and motion—
that's all there is. Spiritual purpose,
deeper meaning, moral value —no, everything just comes down
to matter, materialism. And so find as much pleasure
as you can in life. How about the voice —I've talked about it
a lot with you— of subjectivist individualism. “I am the source of value.
I'm the source of truth. Truth is what I say it is.
I determine my own moral values.” That's rampant in our culture. That voice is heard
all the time. Relatedly, the voice
of moral relativism. “There's no real moral truth.
There's what's true for me, and what's true for you. And who am I to impose
myself on you? And let's just kind of blandly
tolerate each other's points of view.” Yeah, that voice is heard
all the time. In fact, all three of these,
I think, can be heard echoing over and over again in almost
every movie you watch. Watch a movie today
and be attentive to the ultimate message
of the movie. I think you're going to hear
some version of these voices. Listen to pop music. Listen to the lyrics
of the songs that young people
are attending to. I think you'll hear these
voices very clearly. Read the books that are
popular in our culture. Listen to the pop stars who
dominate the conversation. Yeah, you’ll hear a lot
of these voices. Now, how's it work? My ability to speak articulately
is correlated very directly to my ability to hear. Right?
If I hear certain voices, I'm going to start
reproducing them. That's the way that
we learn language. If these are all the voices
we ever hear, that's all we're ever
going to say. What's the point? We, in our culture, this Decapolis of today, are often deaf to
the voice of God, deaf to this higher voice that speaks a
divine spiritual truth, that speaks of eternal
moral values, that speaks of the
existence and demand and invitation of God. We're deaf to that voice. And therefore, what? We are inarticulate in our
capacity to express these truths. Because we can't hear them,
we can't speak them. I mean, I think this is
massively true throughout much of the secular
culture of today. Okay? With that more symbolic
reading in mind, let's go back and
visit this story and the way Mark describes it. So the “people brought
to him a deaf man who had a
speech impediment.” Can I suggest it's almost, it's
everybody in our secular culture. “He took him off by himself
away from the crowd.” It's very interesting. You say, “Well, that's just
a little minor detail.” I don't think so. What's the key to this man
recovering his hearing and his speech? He's got to be led away
from the crowd. The crowd today, the voices
that surround us on all sides. Part of the job of the
Church is to lead away from that world that another world
might open up. To move people into
another arena of experience, into the arena of moral
and spiritual truths, the truths about God. Move him away
from the crowd. Maybe young people, especially,
listening to me right now: What kind of crowd
are you with? Whom are you
hanging around with? Whom are you listening
to like all the time? Whether you're on Facebook,
you're on Twitter, you're on Instagram,
you're watching the films, you're listening to songs. What is the crowd
that surrounds you? Maybe it's time to allow
yourself to be led away from that crowd. Okay, now listen. Took him away from the crowd. “He put his fingers in the
man’s ears and, spitting, touched his tongue.” Now, stay with that admittedly
kind of weird image. Jesus puts his fingers
in the man's ears, and then—we're not quite sure
exactly what this means— spitting, touched his tongue. Here's how I think about it. Think of Jesus as it were
plugging himself into this man. Jesus, as I've said
a million times, is not one teacher
among many, one great spiritual guru. No, no; he's like
a field of force. He's the one in whom we live,
through whom we know. He's the vine;
we're the branches. Well, this image of Jesus
now plugging himself as it were
into the man's ears —this is taking someone
today away from the crowd and plugging him or her into the electrical current
that comes from Jesus. That’s the whole life
of the Church, isn't it? That's evangelization:
to bring people to Christ that they might be plugged
anew into his energy, they might begin to hear him
and resonate with him. “Spitting, touched his tongue.”
Was this maybe an ancient healing gesture?
Well, we don't know exactly, but Jesus may be borrowing it
from his culture. But what I love here: the intensity of
the physical contact. Jesus, as it were, like rubbing
his own life into this man. What are the sacraments of the
Church, which involve these visceral physical elements
—water, and oil, and the imposition of hands,
and bread and wine consecrated? What are the sacraments but
the means by which Jesus is rubbing his life into us. I just love the plugging
in the ears and the spitting
on the tongue. It's such a visceral,
physical contact. Well, that's what it means
to be in relationship with him. It doesn't just mean “Oh, I've taken on a new
interesting teacher in my life.” No, no;
I've come to live in him. “It's no longer I who lives,”
says Paul, “but Christ who
lives in me.” Plugging into his ear,
spitting on his tongue; this is the intense contact
with Jesus. Now listen;
I love this. “Then he looked up to heaven
and groaned, and said to him, ‘Ephphatha! ’
— that means, ‘Be opened!’” First “Ephphatha”
—there are three times in the Gospels when the
Aramaic of Jesus, his own speech, is
preserved. First is the “Talitha kumi,”
remember, to the young girl; “Little girl, get up!” The other one is
“Eli, Eli, lema sabachthani?” from the cross. “God, my God,
why have you abandoned me?” And then this one.
It's interesting, isn't it? Three times only in the
Greek of the Gospels that the original language
of Jesus is preserved. “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.”
You see what that is? Paul Tillich, the Protestant
theologian, talked about self-complacent finitude. He meant the view
of the world that “Here, I'm in the finite
world of matter and the goods of this world.
And I'm okay with that. I'm self-complacent
in my finitude.” Another great
Protestant thinker, Karl Barth, said the prime
deadly sin of today is sloth
—a kind of spiritual laziness. “Be opened.” “Ephphatha.”
Open your mind and your heart and your ears to hear
a higher voice. But I love this. So Jesus —now, imagine—
he's got the fingers in the man's ears. He's the Son of God.
He's the Word made flesh. He looks up to heaven —that always means looking
to his Father— and then he groans. “Ahh.” What's groaning
but just allowing breath to kind of run over
the vocal cords. Can't help but see this as
an image of the Trinity. The Son looking up
to the Father, and then the breath
of the Holy Spirit. Remember Paul talks about the
groanings of the Holy Spirit in us. Well, here it is. This deaf man who can't speak
—that's all of us today, or many of us in
the secular culture. We can't hear the word of God
and therefore we can't speak it. What's the point
of evangelization? Is to plug these deaf
and inarticulate people into the field of force
who is Christ, so that in turn,
they might be drawn into the very life of the Trinity. There's the program. There's the program everybody
for evangelization. Maybe you feel, as you
listen to me right now, that you're not
sufficiently evangelized. Maybe you feel, “Yeah, I'm
kind of deaf to the word of God.” Come.
Come to Christ. In the story, people brought
him to Christ. Okay, you go.
You go on your own. Get plugged into his power. Or maybe, maybe,
you hear the word of God, but a lot of people
around you don't. Bring them. You. Now.
Today. As these friends did, you
bring people to Christ. Bring them to the Church,
bring them to the sacraments, plug them into the
power of Christ, that they might hear, and eventually that they might
therefore be able to speak, the word of God. And God bless you. Thanks so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video,
I invite you to share it and to subscribe
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