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Ephphatha
St.
Mark’s Episcopal Church
Sunday, September 10, 2006
The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 35:4-7a
James 1:17-27
Mark 7: 31-37
Biblical scholars and careful readers
of the Gospels have noticed that Jesus as portrayed in Mark’s
Gospel is more human than in the other Gospel accounts. Jesus
gets angry and is hungry; he weeps, shouts and doesn’t
seem to know everything. His ministry and actions are very physical
– involving touching, spitting, sighing and sweating.
In today’s Gospel reading from Mark, we hear a word spoken
by Jesus in his native language of Aramaic. Whereas most of
what we read in our scriptures has been translated from Greek
into English and then updated and revised many times (the translation
that is used here at St. Mark’s and at most Episcopal
churches is the Newly Revised Standard Version) – we can
delight in a direct word from the lips of Jesus for its sound
and authenticity. Ephphatha! Don’t be intimidated by its
triple diphthong, two of which are consecutive. Its pronunciation
is purely phonetic and logical. However, in order to say the
word properly, you need to make a short pause between the two
“f” sounds – something that I don’t
think we ever do in English, the closest being the oft-avoided
and mispronounced word “ophthalmologist.” It is
precisely the pause between the two “f” sounds that
hints at and reveals the word’s very meaning – “be
opened.”
In last week’s Gospel reading,
we saw Jesus at the center of the action, around whom the Pharisees
gathered. I asked you to imagine the bird’s eye view of
the situation - a circle around a center point. Today, it is
not just Jesus but this word “Ephphatha” around
which the action moves and derives its meaning. A deaf man with
a speech impediment is brought to Jesus by an unidentified group
– perhaps his friends, family, fellow villagers or even
a group of Pharisees. In a one-on-one encounter, away from the
crowd and friends, Jesus puts in his fingers in the man’s
ears and spits and touches his tongue. Fingers, fingernails,
ears, earwax, tongue and saliva: these are intimate and important
elements of the story. To use a current expression, Jesus is
literally “in the man’s face.” It is at this
point that the word “Ephphatha” is spoken. And immediately
his ears are opened and his tongue is released. What has been
stuck, bottled up and blocked for a lifetime is now free, allowing
sound to come in and words to come out. This man has gone from
a shadowy existence to a new life, who will now be able to take
on the challenge that Jesus presented to us: “that whatever
goes into a person from outside cannot defile…it is what
comes out of a person that defiles.”
Ephphatha (to be opened) occupies the center of the Gospel and
the center of all or our readings today. The passage from Isaiah
offers the hope that the ears of the deaf will be unstopped
and that the tongue of the speechless will sing for joy. The
Gospel realizes this hope and the letter to James gives us the
tools on how to become opened and remain that way. The prayers
of our liturgy surround and add to the drama, including the
collect for purity that we pray every week: “Almighty
God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from
you no secrets are hid.”
Although our hearts are open to
God, whether we like it or not or realize it or not, they are
not always open to ourselves, each other or the world. To be
opened is painful and takes work. We open cans with a can-opener.
We need a sharp knife to open boxes that have been taped shut.
We need a letter opener to open our mail, keys to unlock doors
and combinations to unlock safes and vaults, or lock cutters
to cut through the locks with lost and forgotten combinations.
To open our hearts, eyes, ears, arms, hands and wallets takes
the sharp Spirit of God, cutting through resistance and rigidity.
It can be easier to stay closed, putting up blinders, avoiding
challenges and changes to our comfortable patterns and assumptions.
But that is a form of death, comfortable death, and I think
that is why it must be that it takes a group of people to get
the deaf man to Jesus. Perhaps they have to drag him, kicking
and stammering to hope of a new life. To open up is painful.
It can make you vulnerable to attack and hurt. Think about all
of those things that the formerly-deaf man will now hear –
music, singing, poetry and the sound of rain and birds –
but negative things too – yelling, crying and ugly words
of criticism, jealousy and meanness.
So here on this Sunday, September
10th, as we begin the program year at St. Mark’s, as schools
and colleges have re-opened, as the seriousness and work of
the fall is now fully underway, we are challenged by our scriptures
to hear and speak the sound of “Ephphatha” - to
be opened. It is a message that couldn’t come at a better
time – for at least two reasons. The first is that you,
the community of St. Mark’s are called to two essential
actions: welcoming and giving. We are welcoming new people every
week who visit St. Mark’s – out of town guests,
church shoppers, neighbors and those simply seeking a place
of refuge and safety. To welcome is to go beyond the first politeness
of “hi” and “nice to meet you.” To welcome
means to open your heart to unexpected and unfamiliar faces,
stories and gifts. Many churches say they welcome newcomers
and visitors, but in reality, they don’t want to change
or be changed by newness. Those churches face a form of stagnation
and death. St. Mark’s is called to be a place of giving
– of time, talents and money. To give is to open your
schedule, open your heart and open your wallet – which
can be painful. But giving is an action and impulse that resides
at the very core of who we are as being created in the image
of God. By giving, we meet that place in the depth of our being
where humanity and divinity collide and flourish.
The second reason that Ephphatha is a message that couldn’t
come at a better time is that it counters what is happening
in our society and daily lives as the fall gets underway –
where calendars are crammed full of meetings, practices and
appointments; where politicians begin to turn up the heat as
elections approach and model behavior that is ugly, one-sided
and everything but open; where stores will soon stock Halloween
and Christmas decorations and whet our appetites for consumption
and happiness through more stuff; where people will remember
the events of September 11th, and its fifth anniversary tomorrow,
with unreflective verbal and physical attacks on Muslims and
absurd caricatures of the faith of Islam, done by those who
are closed to knowing about this or any other faith tradition
and profess to be Christians; where a “war on terror”
is synonymous with “war on Islam.” There is a veritable
tsunami of cultural behavior and reaction that will want to
flood, narrow and close you up. How can we possibly be open?
We turn to the letter of James for advice. “Let everyone
be quick to listen, slow to speak, slow to anger and welcome
the implanted word that has the power to save your souls.”
This implanted word is Ephphatha – with a pause between
the “ph”s that makes it possible to pronounce such
a strange word; a pause the makes it possible to live into its
meaning – a pause that is an opening for the sharp Spirit
of God to work within us, so that we may go from death into
life, from deafness to release, from division to welcoming and
giving, to living our faith, and according to the words of James,
“to be doers of the word and not merely hearers who deceive
themselves.”
Amen.
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