“Ephphatha,that is, be opened”
Are hearing and seeing merely passive senses? If so then what does that mean in terms of the activity of thought? Something seen is received by the eye; something heard is received by the ear. This suggests an activity, the activity of seeing and the activity of hearing.
What is seen and heard are there for the understanding. There is something communicated, the meaning of which we enter into through the profound activity of understanding. There is an acting upon what has been received. It is not just words which are heard or something which is seen that is received. What the words signify, what the vision reveals, is given to be understood. As Paul puts it, “the letter killeth but the spirit giveth life.” Such is the spirit of understanding.
Our understanding is our wrestling with the significance of things. It is a profoundly spiritual activity. It speaks to who we are in the sight of God – those to whom God reveals himself and into whose presence he gathers us. Hearing and seeing, as the senses of understanding, are the ‘intellectual senses.’ They signify an acting upon what is received. There is a similar double-sidedness to our “being opened”.
In the Gospel for today, “they bring unto [Jesus] one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech.” They beseech the healing touch of Jesus upon the one that is deaf and at least impeded in his speech to the point that others must speak for him. There is, in response, the putting of his fingers into his ears, a spitting upon the ground, the touching of his tongue – all outward, tangible and physical acts – but, as well, there is Jesus’ “looking up to heaven,” his sighing and his saying unto him “Ephphatha, be opened.” There is, in short, a healing: “and straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”
As with all the healing miracles of the gospels, they signify the restoration of our humanity. What is wanted is not the deformity of our being but its constant progress towards perfection. What is wanted is our being made totally and completely adequate to the truth of God; in short, our being opened to God signals our willingness to do what God wills for us. The project of the Trinity season is the constant process of being transformed more and more into who we are in Christ through our being opened to his grace and glory.
We are opened, it seems to me, in two senses. There is our being opened to receive and there is our being opened to give. We are not just opened to receive; we are opened to give of ourselves out of what we have received. “Open your hearts,”St. Paul tells the Corinthians later on in 2 Corinthians (2 Cor.7.2). He means that they are to give of themselves. They are to act upon what they have received. And so, too, with each of us.
What we are opened out to sets us in motion towards one another. It opens us out to live sacrificial lives, to be giving of ourselves. It is only then that we are truly opened for only then are we acting in the image of the one who has opened his heart totally and completely to us in the sacrifice of the cross. We are being opened to who we are in Christ.
In this healing miracle, Christ looks up to heaven. There is his openness to the Father out of which comes the healing grace in the form of the words “be opened”. The word is spoken in Aramaic – “Ephphatha” – but its meaning, its significance, is also opened to us by the Evangelist, St. Mark. He gives the word and he gives the Greek translation which has then been translated to us in English; in short, “be opened.”
On the cross, too, Christ looks up to heaven. His last word is to commend everything in himself into the hands of the Father. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” There is the total openness of the Son to the Father in prayer and praise. There is a fundamental connection between the healing miracles of Christ and the death and resurrection of Christ, and even more profoundly, with the give and take of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, the mutual reciprocity of the Trinity itself.
We are opened out to the truth of God so that we can enter into that truth, give ourselves to it, and offer our prayers and praises for it. For what do we give in the giving of ourselves? We give our prayers and praises, our prayers and praises to God, which impel us towards one another in love. For our prayers and praises are never solitary. They always connect us to one another and to God and to a community in praise of God, a community of prayer and loving service. Such is the Church.
What will it take? Only the giving of ourselves to what has been opened out to us. What has been opened out to us? Simply the great and grand things of God himself and for us; the Trinity, the Incarnation, and the redemptive work of Christ. “Our sufficiency is from God,” the Epistle reminds us. The Gospel underscores the point that they “were beyond measure astonished, saying, He hath done all things well; he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.” Will that wonder be realized in us?
To be opened, then, equally means to give. It is the strong counter to the contemporary “consumer” religion of pleasure and comfort which is all take and no give. It is not open but closed to the truth of God revealed. He would have us opened to himself and so to one another. Only then shall we behold the glory, not in fear but in wonder.
“Ephphatha, that is, Be opened”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 12, 2021
(revised from 2003)