(Preached on Sunday, September 6, 2009)
Then Jesus looked up in prayer, groaned mightily, and commanded, “Ephphatha! – Open up!” -Mark 7:34
“Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”
What a dramatic statement. If I were a Hollywood director, this scene would be a natural for a movie. Jesus is passing through a highly urbanized corridor of Palestine, known as the Ten Cities, on his way home to the Sea of Galilee. As usual there is a huge crowd following him. Suddenly the entourage stops short. Before Jesus stands a group with a deaf man who has a speech impediment. He appears to have been hauled there against his will. He spouts garbled language in a frightened tone, his eyes darting about, like a cornered animal. Those who brought him ask Jesus to heal him. The crowd grows silent, expectant. Jesus looks about then he looks at the man. Compassion fills his eyes. Then he spits on the ground, puts his fingers in the man’s ears and touches the man’s tongue. In dramatic climax he raises his eyes and hands to the heavens and shouts in a clear, commanding voice, “Ephphatha! – Open up!” The man grabs his ears, his eyes go wide in amazement, and he begins shouting and praising God in words which all can understand. He has been healed!
“Ephphatha!” Very few of the actual Aramaic words Jesus spoke have been recorded in the gospels. So the fact that Mark remembers and records this word is significant. “Ephphatha! Open up!” was an extremely important word in the life of the early Christians. As late as the 4th century, that is 400 years after Jesus spoke the word, “Ephphatha!” was still being used in many baptismal ceremonies. Water was placed on the baptized person’s ears and lips with the word “Ephphatha! Open up!” In some church traditions today this practice is still followed with the water placed on ears and lips and the words: “May God open your ears to hear God’s word and your mouth to proclaim God’s praise.”
Clearly the author of the Gospel of Mark, in preserving this Aramaic word, “Ephphatha,” was preserving an important teaching of Jesus.
“Ephphatha! – Be open!”
Ephphatha! Be open to the word of God at work in the world and in your life!
Ephphatha! Be open to the possibilities for new life, new relationships, a new world which God is bringing into being!
Ephphatha! Be open to new people, new ideas, new ways of doing things!
Ephphatha! Be open to hearing one another and to accepting one another and to loving one another!
Ephphatha! Be open!
This is more than just a story about a physical healing. Because we read the Bible in short, “bite-size” passages, we often miss the larger arc of the narrative and the point of the larger story. But last week and this week we have had two large sections of the narrative which together comprise one entire chapter and so we have a little more of the larger arc of Mark’s gospel. Remember last the Pharisees questioned Jesus about following the rules and guidelines regarding cleanliness. Remember the rules and guidelines were intended to help people live out the Law of God in their lives in ways pleasing to God. Jesus confronted their tendency to become obsessed with the rules to the point where they actually did not live out the law of God, the law of love. Jesus taught that it was not what went into a person that made them unclean but rather what came out of them which defiled their lives. For what came out of a person demonstrated what was truly in their hearts – whether they were close to God and focused on God or not.
In that teaching there was one little phrase we did not pay any attention to, but which would have been vitally important to the first readers of this gospel. Mark’s author pointed out that by this teaching Jesus “declared all foods clean.” Now that does not seem very important to us. But to the early followers of Jesus, who were almost all Jews, for whom there were strict rules about what to eat and not eat, that little phrase would have been shocking. A big part of their identity as the people of God revolved around what they ate and didn’t eat. It was a big part of what separated them from the people amongst whom they lived who were not Jews, not faithful people of God. It was a big part of what made them “special.” If all food was clean, if it did not matter what one ate, then how were they different? How were they special? What was unique about their relationship with God?
Then the story moves to Jesus’ conversation with the Syro-Phoenician woman, a gentile, an “outsider” to the Jewish faith. This is another shocking story. It is shocking for us because it portrays Jesus in a harsh, bigoted manner, as one who seems to not accept all people. It goes harshly against our UCC view of God’s extravagant welcome. But that would not have shocked the first reader’s of this story. They would have fully understood Jesus’ turning the woman down. They even would have accepted his use of the term “dogs” for describing the woman and her child. What would have offended their sensibilities was the fact that Jesus actually healed the pagan child. What would have shocked them was the idea that God’s healing love was available to those outside the Jewish faith. All sorts of borders and boundaries are crossed in this story, and the first audience, of Jewish-Christians, still trying to process the teaching of Jesus that all foods are clean, must have been even more uncomfortable with this conversation between their teacher and a foreign woman. Where are the clear-cut beliefs, the non-negotiable truths, and the simple answers to their questions?
By healing the daughter of this “outsider” Jesus has moved from declaring all foods clean to declaring all people clean, acceptable, and welcome at the table. Knowing how difficult all this new teaching, this new understanding of the wideness of God’s mercy and love, is for his readers, the author of the gospel presents a picture of Jesus performing the hard work of trying to open up the ears of those who are having trouble hearing. This healing is described in great detail. Unlike the healing of the pagan daughter with just a word of acceptance spoken by Jesus to her mother, not even in the presence of the ill child, this healing takes great effort from Jesus. It takes spit and touch, it takes prayer and a mighty physical effort illustrated by Jesus’ groan and shouted command. “Ephphatha! – Open up!” How ironic that it is harder for Jesus to bring healing to those who are inside the circle of God’s people than it is to bring healing to those who have been thought to be outside the circle? And yet, those on the outside have less preconceived notions to overcome than those on the inside. It is those preconceived notions that keep us “stopped up,” unable to see, unable to hear, unable to speak, unaware of God’s healing power and presence in our lives and in the world around us.
A Lutheran pastor in Racine, Wisconsin, Walter Hermanns has written a blog on the internet about his life with chronic illness: he has multiple sclerosis. In his entry of February 4, 2006 he relates an “Ephphatha!” that is “Be opened” experience. He writes: “And then there was what I remember as one of the worst nights in my life. It was 3 a.m., and I hadn’t slept. My prayers had become simply ‘Why God, why don’t you heal me?’ I went down into the living room and curled up in a ball on the floor. I cried for a while, but then I seemed to run out of tears. I can’t say I felt much of anything. Perhaps my despair led me beyond feeling. Then something amazing happened. I’ll give God the credit, although it wasn’t anything supernatural. There was no light from heaven or angel at my doorstep. The Earth didn’t move. Something did move, however, but it was inside of me. For some reason (again, I’ll blame God for this) I stopped thinking about the ‘Fearful Unknown.’ Instead I asked myself, ‘What do I know?’ That night, I could be sure of two things: God loved me more than anything, and I had MS. Well, what would God be doing for someone he loved so much who had MS? I began to make a list: God would make him aware of the incredible blessings and beauty that surrounded him in this world, God would open up the scriptures in a new way, God would surround him with the love of friends and family, God would invite him into a new and closer relationship, God would support him and help him through the day…. As I made my list, I began to smile. I realized that God had been doing all of these things! While I prayed to God and called upon God to act, God was doing what I needed most. The worst night of my life became one of the best!”
“Ephphatha! Be open!” Jesus calls us to open our ears, open our eyes, open our hearts to God’s amazing love for us and for the whole world. As we become more open to God’s love we become more open to the healing, the new life, the amazing new things God is doing.
In every experience of open listening, especially to God but also to another person, there is a mysterious moment in which the one who listens steps out from a fortress of self-concern and dwells silently in the truth of the one who speaks. This is a moment of great risk and great courage, for it ushers us into a different way of being in the world. As we hear each other’s stories of pain and hurt, our open listening will change us – will engage us in soul-searching transformation. It is so important that we listen with open minds and hearts to each other, especially when that feels like the last thing we want to do. If we stay locked in polarized positions – us/them, ally/enemy – then escalating conflict will follow. Breaking the cycle starts with us. As the Roman Stoic Epictetus observed, what others do is not in our power, but what we do is. When we listen, with true openness to the possibility of being changed, then we are becoming a catalyst for healing our broken relationships.
When we truly listen with open hearts and minds, we can actually “listen” someone into existence. That is what God does for us and what God invites us to do for others. Let me close with a story of one waitress who did this for one little boy. This woman walked up and, looking at the young boy seated at the table, said: “What will it be?” The boy eagerly shouted back: “I’ll take a hamburger, French fries, and a chocolate shake.” The mother immediately interrupted: “Oh, that’s not what he wants. He’ll take the roast beef, a baked potato, and a glass of milk.” Much to the surprise of the mother and the boy, the waitress completely ignored her and again asked the boy: “And what do you want on that hamburger?” The boy shouted back, “ketchup, lots of ketchup.” “And what kind of shake?” “Make it chocolate.” The boy then turned to his parents with a big smile on his face and said: “Say, ain’t she something. She thinks that I’m real!”
When we open up to really hearing people, listening to them with open hearts and minds, they will become very real to us. Jesus’ openness to us demonstrates how “real” we are to God. His call to us – a healing word – is very simple: “Ephphatha! – Be open!”