by CCW | 30 August 2020 08:00
Link to the Audio File of Matins & Ante-Communion for the 12th Sunday after Trinity[1]
This is one of two Gospel readings from Mark in the Trinity Season, one on Trinity 7 about the feeding in the wilderness, and this one today about the healing of “one that was deaf and had an impediment in his speech.” I know, one of you will remind me that there is another Gospel reading from Mark on the 18th Sunday after Trinity. That is true, but that was simply about substituting Matthew’s account with Mark’s in the modern Canadian Prayer Book of 1962, probably on the assumptions of biblical scholarship about Marcan priority, namely, the idea that Mark’s Gospel is the earliest of the four Gospels to be written. Such thinking came to influence preaching about that time. It is a modern concern which has very little to do with the way in which the Scriptures have come down to us, to what they mean theologically, and to how we read them. But never mind.
What is interesting about this Gospel reading is that it is entirely unique to Mark as is the word, “ephphatha”. It is an hapax legomenon, meaning that it is the only time the word appears in the Scriptures. It is an Aramaic word, one of a few Aramaisms that are found in the New Testament, and mostly in Mark’s Gospel. Aramaic is a Hebrew dialect which was probably spoken by Jesus. Here Mark gives us the Aramaic word and its Greek translation or transliteration, “be opened.” Words matter but in what way? Heidegger claimed that “language is the house of being” but as one of my mentors, James Doull noted, the ancients knew that “language is not the house of being but needs its own interpreter”, a reasoning mind. It is the meaning of words that matters most and that always requires thinking and interpretation.
It is an intriguing and touching story about the nature of our engagement with God, an engagement which is at once sacramental and healing. The lesson learned is that “he hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.” We are the deaf and the dumb, deaf to the Word of God in the witness of the Scriptures proclaimed in the liturgy and life of the Church; dumb in our speech about the grace and glory of God at work in human lives. Our sufficiency is not in ourselves “to think anything as of ourselves” but in our openness to the grace of God whose glory is at work in us. “The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life,” which is what we see in this story. Ephphatha is about our being opened to the life of God in us.
In the Epiphany season we attend to the miracles of Christ as the manifestations of the essential divinity of Christ and as revealing the divine purpose for our humanity. Here we see that work in us both individually and collectively. “They bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech.” The unnamed “they” seek the healing of the unnamed “one.” This acknowledges, on the one hand, a need, a lack, an insufficiency in us, an awareness of something incomplete; in short, a disability, and, on the other hand, an awareness of something divine in Jesus, the power to heal and restore, to make whole. Our wholeness is fundamentally about the total openness of our being to God. Without that we are radically incomplete.
The healing is the word in action: “tak[ing] him aside from the multitude”, put[ting] his fingers in his ears”, “spit[ting]”, “touch[ing] his tongue”, “looking up to heaven”, “sigh[ing]”, and then speaking but one word, “ephphatha.” It is not too much to say that such actions are analogous to the healing arts of the medical profession and to actions which are sacramental. That is to say they are about using the things of the world to effect the healing of our infirmities and equally and ultimatlely for a spiritual purpose. Our ears are opened to hear the word of God; our tongues are loosened to praise the works of God. Such is the glory of God at work in human lives. Such is the nature of the intimate engagement of God with our humanity in Jesus Christ.
“He hath done all things well” is a potent reminder to us that the redemptive work in Christ belongs to the essential goodness of God in creation and to the truth of our humanity. This is the counter to our current fears and worries about the Covid-19 pandemic as if the material world was somehow evil and in the disturbing divisions and animosities among one another in our disordered world. It is a world badly in need of healing. Sin and evil are not in the physical world but in us in our relation to the world, to one another, and, above all, to the truth of God. The counter to such negative thinking can only be in our openness to the truth and power of God. In the Christian understanding that is seen in Jesus and wonderfully so in this unique story. It affirms the essential goodness of the created world and lifts our humanity in its disorder and distress to God in prayer and in action. Such is healing.
In Christ we find the healing and the good of our humanity as restored to God in our essential rightness with God. It can only happen by the grace of God revealing his glory in us by restoring us to health and goodness. In Christ alone we find our sufficiency, our wholeness. Augustine’s wonderful observation and word-play about the human condition, much beloved by Medievals and Reformers alike, bears mention here. Our humanity before the Fall is posse non peccare, able not to sin; our humanity after the Fall is non posse non peccare, not able not to sin, sinners all; our humanity in Christ is non posse peccare, not able to sin. The latter is not by any power of our own but by the grace of God at work in us by which we are what we are called to be: open to the divine life in us. In every way, it is totally “ephphatha”. “I will alway give thanks unto the Lord; his praise shall be ever in my mouth.” And only so can we open to one another in care and compassion. Being opened is about bringing ourselves and one another to God, seeking his grace and mercy which is by definition “more than either we desire or deserve.” The healing of our wounded and broken humanity lies in our complete openness to God’s truth and goodness.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 12, 2020
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2020/08/30/sermon-for-the-twelfth-sunday-after-trinity-6/
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