And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
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The Gospel for today comes at the very end of Mark Chapter 7. Chapter 7 of Mark and Chapter 15 of Matthew have many parallels and, in fact, only a few months back, on Lent II we had a portion of Matthew 15 given for that Sunday’s Gospel. That was the occasion when a Greek woman came to Jesus asking that he free her daughter from demon possession. You probably recall that his first response to her was less than encouraging: “it isn’t right to take the food of the children and throw it to the dogs.” But she was not dissuaded and her faith in Christ’s power over prevailed and her daughter was set free. The same event is recorded in Mark 7.
Let’s begin this morning by placing today’s Gospel in context. The healing of this man, a man who was both deaf and had a disabling speech impediment is the last account given in Chapter 7. That chapter opens with the arrival, from Jerusalem, of an official delegation of Pharisees and Scribes who have come to make an assessment of Jesus and his movement. After joining up with local Pharisees they confront Jesus with the fact that his disciples were not performing the proper ablutions for purification prior to eating. Good Jews, at least good Pharisees, were expected to wash with a handful of water before and after eating a meal. Now remember that Jesus has already turned the water into wine at the wedding feast making ritual purification impossible at that event. Afterward his disciples took it up as a mark of discipleship not to perform the Pharisaical ritual. The Pharisees have come to pick a fight and they were about to get one. They complained to Jesus that his disciples were not being holy. Jesus replied that they, the Pharisees, knew nothing about true holiness. “You are all hypocrites and your so-called worship is worthless.”
One gets the impression from the text that he literally turned and walked away from them. He appears to be finished with the Pharisees. He called his followers together to teach them what the argument was all about. At this point things were about to change in a sweeping and deep-seated way that no one but Jesus could have imagined.
There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.
This, as Mark saw, was sea change, a reversal that no Jew had imagined. Let me explain. Some scholars say that the washing issue is not an argument over the Law of Moses, but rather it is an argument over the “traditions” of the Pharisees that were added to the Law of Moses. Others say that the Pharisees were applying the specific requirements of priests to the Jewish laity, which is probably true. It was part of the priest’s preparation in making a blood sacrifice to perform these washings. There are other explanations to what Jesus said and did on this occasion, but, they seems to me, attempts to cleanup and disinfect Jesus actions. But none of that matters once Jesus explained to his people what was at the bottom of the issue, all ambiguity vanishes:
There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him; but the things which come out of a man are what defile him.
OK. But what is so scandalous about that? Mark declares the upshot of Jesus’ pronouncement in verse 19:
Thus he declared all foods clean.
This is what I want you to understand: Jesus did not claim that he was clearing up Israel’s muddled thinking on the Law of Moses. It was not that all this time they had misunderstood Moses. Nor was he saying that there was the inner meaning of the Law of Moses they had missed. No. This is what Jesus did: at that moment, in that place Jesus actually changed the Law by his pronouncement:
There is nothing outside a man which by going into him can defile him (Now, all foods are clean).
What is so outrageous about that? The food laws in Leviticus were central to the whole concept of purity and holiness for Jewish culture and Jewish identity. Along with circumcision and keeping the Sabbath the dietary laws were a public mark of Jewish holiness. They were a peculiar people set apart for God, made holy and the dietary laws were an outward and visible sign of their holiness. Among other things, the Law also made it impossible for Jews to share in meals prepared by non-Jews. It was a wall that divided the Jews from the rest of the world and you can see in the Acts that it took a long time for the Church in Jerusalem to accept Jesus’ teaching on this matter. What I am saying is that this was the moment when Jesus himself eliminated that wall that stood between the Jews and the Gentiles. And if anybody got this, St Paul did and he suffered mightily for it:
Thus he declared all foods clean.
It should come as no surprise then that right after that pronouncement Jesus leaves for the region of Tyre and Sidon — gentile cities. When he arrived and entered the home of a resident a gentile mother approached him begging for the healing of her child. What is the Jewish Messiah doing entering the unclean dwelling of a gentile? He freed the woman’s child from the demon and then he moved on again. And yet he circles back around to the Decapolis, and it is there, in another domain of gentiles, that the deaf man is brought to him for healing. So here we have the context of the Gospel for today:
And they bring unto him one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.
According to the text, Jesus healed the man and he could hear and for the first time in his life he could speak clearly.
And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.
The people’s response to this healing was overwhelming. They were “astonished beyond measure,” according to the text. The miracle filled them with wonder and they responded almost like a chorus ending a story:
He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.
Why were the people amazed beyond measure at this miracle? The apostles too were overwhelmed and Mark’s allusion to Isaiah 35 is the clue to understanding their response:
Behold, your God will come with vengeance… He will come and save you. The eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped… and the tongue of the dumb sing for joy!
And with that connection, Mark declares that this is the miracle that, according to the Old Testament, only God is able to perform. We have three big events in Mark 7 that I want you to take note of: First of all, Jesus declared a fundamental portion of the Law of Moses to be null and void when he declared that all food was clean. Secondly, he enlarged the horizon of the Messiah’s ministry to include all those non-Jews who had been excluded on the basis of the dietary laws. And third, he wraps it all up by performing a miracle that identifies him not only as the Messiah, but it also identifies him as God almighty.
In Genesis we have the narrative of man made in the image of God while in Jesus we have God made in the image of man. In both cases, but especially in the Incarnation, we have the glory of God indwelling flesh. And with the Incarnation we see not only the uncreated glory of the only begotten Son, but we also see the created glory of his creature man perfected but not destroyed. And I submit to you that the salvation and the uplifting of man and the bestowal of this glory was the purpose of the Incarnation. In the Gospel for today we have an apostolic memory of Jesus the Messiah breaking down boundaries, eliminating portions of the Law of Moses and performing miracles that only God himself could perform.
I don’t even remember this kid’s name. But I remember him to this day and that was back in high school. His family had moved to our little town when he was in the ninth grade. His father had moved his family from the Midwest in hopes of finding a better life for the son he loved. But he had a hard time with the other kids. I can see him in my mind. He didn’t dress like us, or look like us and he was clumsy beyond belief. And he wore a slide ruler on his belt. Some of you remember what a slide ruler is. This kid was accessorizing with his slide ruler. But what I remember most is that he couldn’t speak in class without literally spitting all over himself. He was the worse stutterer I’ve ever seen. Sometimes he became so frustrated with himself that he couldn’t hide it from us kids. I saw him tear up from the defeat. I said that the stuttering is what I remember most about him, but that’s not correct. What I recall most is the last assembly of the year. He was in the choir and at the end of the choir’s presentation he stepped up and the spotlight was on him. He was going to sing a solo and most of us could see the train wreak heading down the mountain. But then he opened his mouth. He opened his mouth and we heard the sweetest sound come out of his mouth — like an angel. I have no idea what he was singing. It was Latin or German, I don’t remember and wouldn’t have known the difference then. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he stepped up and filled his lungs full of humid, high school auditorium air and transformed it into one of the most beautiful sounds we had ever heard in our life. We sat there, a lot of us with tears in our eyes, memorized by the sound of his voice. I don’t remember his name. I remember how his father loved him. I remember his anguish. And I remember the unexpected beauty he brought into our lives that day.
The need of our world, the need of our own lives and the lives of our friends and families — the need of the poorest of the poor, the sickest of the sick, the most desperate of the desperate — is greater than the sum of all our good deeds and intentions, and politics. Evil is not just the nasty little things we do to one another. Evil, is organized, massive, weighty, subtle and cosmic. But Jesus has overcome the world. And we have been grafted into Jesus through Holy Baptism and because of that we have become part of his struggle — which is a cosmic struggle. By coming to Church this morning, by worshiping a God who allowed himself to be nailed to the cross, we are committing an acts of subversion against this mean, culture of hatred, power and destruction. By our actions we declare that the relation between us and Jesus is not merely personal or private. Jesus taught us to address his Father, as “Our Father.” God the Blessed Trinity is the God who rules the whole cosmos. And he has entered into his broken creation, as a creature. By becoming man God has made it possible for man to truly bear the image and likeness of God. In the Gospel for today the narrative is that God’s love for his creature man is not circumscribed by the antique Jewish horizon. Jesus took the broken man and healed him. God himself loosen his stammering tongue and join all the ransomed of the Lord singing with everlasting joy upon their head.