Ephphatha

23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time - Year B (9 September 2018)

Isaiah 35:4-7 

James 2:1-5 

Mark 7:31-37 

In today’s second reading, St James affirms, “My brothers and sisters, do not try to combine faith in Jesus Christ, our glorified Lord, with the making of distinctions between classes of people.” One of the biggest problems in the world today is the problem of discrimination. Even among the churches we could see the various problems of racism, casteism, tribalism, apartheid, male chauvinism, and other discriminations. Sadly, the Word of God has not penetrated deeply among Christians themselves. That is why, as someone said, it is easier to make a non-Christian Christian, than to make a Christian truly Christian. It is easy to be Christian in name, but to truly live the gospel values that is not an easy thing. 

If we examine our own lives, deep in our hearts there are various unwanted distinctions and discriminations that we perhaps make: “us” and “them”, “right people” and “wrong people.” And we invariably belong to the “right people” category. We may even realize that much harm emerges from our own divisive hearts and minds. This process is not about self-condemnation, but about allowing God and his goodness to fill us and the universe around us. We need to listen to our own experience, to our own failures, to our own sin, to our own salvation, and we need to recognize that we are part of history, a part of a culture or a religious group, for good and for bad. We cannot heal or look honestly at what we do not acknowledge. 

For this, we all need the healing words of Christ, “Ephphatha. Be opened.” We all need the healing hand of Christ to make us hear and speak the message of God properly. Jesus is the one who can remove deafness and dumbness from our being so that we can make full use of these faculties. Is it possible that we are like the man in today’s gospel because of our refusal to give a listening ear to the lonely, the troubled, and the worried? How many times have we failed to utter a word of encouragement, of hope and thanks, or have kept a discreet silence when we should have spoken the truth? Then there are the problems we have in speaking to our partner or neighbours, because of a long standing fight or simply out of jealousy, envy or pride. 

What Jesus is saying to us is that the greatest tragedy of all is not to be born deaf and dumb, but to have ears and fail to hear and to have tongues and fail to speak. We are the deaf and dumb who need to be brought to Jesus for his healing touch, which brings communication where there are silences, companionship where there is loneliness, and encouragement where there is despair. 

Only then can we see clearly that the goodness of God fills the universe, without discrimination or preference. Only He can achieve what we can’t possibly imagine or do. But He needs our instrumentality. The future can exist only when we understand the universe as composed of persons to be loved, subjects to be communed with, not as objects to be exploited or discriminated. 

Dorothy Day says, “I really love God as much as I love the person I love the least.” If this is true, then many of us don’t love God at all. There are so many people that we may hate, because they belong to the “wrong people” category. Let us stop all discriminations. By loving all the wrong people we love God. By loving all the difficult characters we love God. By loving all those who harm us we love God. Perhaps, to become aware of God’s presence in our lives, we have to often accept what is difficult, especially those difficulties that come from difficult people. Let us love people even in their sin, because love cannot exclude anything from its universe. Love is itself universal, all-embracing. We need to make sure that our unique and special relationship with God leads us to see that everyone is included, even our enemies!