“He hath done all things well;
he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak”
Mark does not tell us who “they” were that made this comment about the healing of the one that was deaf and dumb. Yet we can reasonably assume that they are those who lived in the region of Decapolis, an area in eastern Palestine circumscribed by ten (or more) cities established in league with one another under Roman rule following Pompey’s conquest in 63 BC, and distinguished by a rich and vibrant Hellenistic culture. This Gospel story follows immediately upon Mark’s account of Christ’s healing of the Syrophoenician’s daughter who was “possessed by an unclean spirit.” These stories belong to the convergence of Hellenistic culture, Roman rule, and Hebrew religion out of which Christianity emerges; in short, to the abundance of God’s mercy which is “more than we either desire or deserve,” as the Collect puts it.
These stories belong to the theological concept of making known what is universal in and through the particularities of culture and human experience. This is not about reducing theology to the historical and cultural, a common tendency, but its opposite, the gathering together into the unity of God of all that belongs to the truth of our common humanity. Simply put, we are more though not less than the historical, cultural, social, and ethnic aspects of our embodied being. These stories signal the restoration of our humanity; the healing of mind, hearing, and speech are all part of the healing and perfection of our humanity.
The Gospel illustrates Paul’s great insight that “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” That awakening to spiritual life is an essential feature of Christ’s ministry of teaching and healing. It happens in and through his encounters with our wounded and broken humanity. As such it is not about a flight from the particularities of human experience into some vague abstraction of indeterminacy but the redemption of our humanity by its being gathered into its truth and perfection as found in God. This theological point counters all forms of relativism and reductionism and highlights the overarching theme of the sanctification of human life through its being transformed by God’s grace that is made known or opened out to us in Christ.
Paul alludes to the story of Moses whose face shone from his talking with God in the giving of the Law. This was so frightening for the people of Israel that he had to veil his face from them. Paul is suggesting the greater transformation from fear to joy and wonder for us in the encounter with Christ. Quod Moses velat, Christus revelat; What was veiled in Moses, is unveiled or revealed in Christ. My point is that this does not negate the particularities of cultures and experience but redeems them. They are all gathered into the mystery of God in the unity of the spirit. Something happens in and through the divine engagement with our humanity.
Alistair MacLeod’s short story, ‘The Closing Down of Summer,’ reflects on the ending not just of the seasons as in the last few weeks of summer, nor of human mortality, but also on the closing down of traditional ways of life. His deep insight is that something is passed on in and through the passing away of cultures and traditional ways of life. What is passed on speaks most profoundly to the deeper truth of what it means to be human. This has very much to do with the character of literature, and so, too, with biblical literature. The story offers a definition of literature in a textbook formulary: the private experience, if articulated with skill, may communicate an understanding that is universal beyond the limitations of time and landscape. This complements the point of how the universal is made known through the redemption of the particularities of culture and human experience, not by being reduced to them but by their being raised up and transformed.
What is passed on in his short story are the ethical qualities that speak to our lives in the concreteness of community life; in short, the transcendental qualities of our humanity even in the face of radical changes materially and economically. His point is that there is a kind of openness to the transcendental that gives meaning to human life that does not negate but redeems experience by opening us out to what is universal and as such connects us with one another, if we are open to such things.
That is the point. We are being opened to the things of the spirit without which we are dead in ourselves. “Ephphatha,” Jesus says, “be opened.” It is one of those rare moments where an Aramaic word or expression appears in the Scriptures which is immediately translated into Greek, and then subsequently into many other languages, including English. Translation is an inescapable feature of the Christian religion that is essential for its respectful engagement with other religions and cultures, philosophically and theologically. The Aramaic word remains in our text as a quiet witness to the reality of the Incarnate Christ. His spoken words were probably Aramaic, a variant of Hebrew, yet we only know his words through the Greek and subsequent translations. His saving word for all humanity is revealed through a particular culture and language; the universal made known, articulated and communicated in and through the particular.
But what does this mean for our lives in the early weeks of September in the closing down of summer? Do we simply limp back with a reluctant sigh to our usual routines? Do we return with a sense of anxiety and fearfulness about the kinds of changes that we constantly confront and which unsettle us, no longer quite so “assured of certain certainties,” as T.S. Eliot puts it (“Preludes”)? Or can it be that in a more reflective spirit we are alive to what transforms our fears and anxieties into joy and delight? He has done all things well, “they” say, and if so, cannot we learn the same thing, seeing our lives in a new light, the light of the life-giving spirit?
The challenge is to be open to the things of God revealed in Jesus Christ, to the spirituality that seeks the healing of our humanity in all of its sad disarray and brokenness. It means our openness to the things of the spirit proclaimed in Word and Sacrament; it is the whole point of our liturgy.
It is what happens in each and every liturgy. God makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak, you and me. We are the deaf and the dumb. Christ would open us out to more than the closing down of summer, to more than the closing down of our lives, to more than the closing down of culture and belief. He would have us open to the miracle of life which He is. His transforming grace seeks not our condemnation but our being glorified in him who is our glory.
“He hath done all things well;
he maketh both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XII, 2025