10th Sept 200613th Sunday after Trinity

Fr Julian Browning

Isaiah  35  :  4 – 7a James  2  :  1 - 17 Mark  7  :  24 – 37

He even makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.

Our faith does not tie us down, it gives us an unexpected freedom. 

That's what the crowd say when they find out about this miracle, the curing of the deaf and dumb man. Are crowds worth listening to? Usually not, but this time yes. He makes the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak. This crowd is strange, it's like an opera chorus, commenting on what's happened. And St.Mark expects us  to see the point immediately. But we don't, because we're deaf, we're dumb, and we don't know our Bibles, o deep doesn't call out to deep, it runs into the shallows very quickly. We are losing the art of seeing connections, the skill of using tradition to help us in our spiritual journey. The unlimited information now available on everybody's screen is great fun, but it leads to confusion, a deaf and dumb generation. It is a quotation from Isaiah we are actually hearing here, not just the astonished gasp of the crowd. Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped.

Then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb sing. What starts as a rather messy private miracle becomes the fulfilment of a prophecy, Israel's glorious future come at last, when water breaks out in the desert. The magician who uses his spittle to cure the deaf becomes the Messiah, who will lead us out of our deserts.

It is a story to which we can return time after time to learn who Jesus is and what he can do in your life and mine. Those people back then were bright enough to see a connection between what was happening around them in Galilee and what Isaiah was on about hundreds of years before. Can't we give it a go, and find some link between what happened to them, and what happens to us? Jesus is the one who makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak. That is the measure of the liberation, a very personal liberation offered to us by God through Jesus. We are put back in touch with each other again. What happened to this fellow in the Gospel? His ears were opened, his tongue was released, he spoke plainly. People sometimes say today that they can't be doing with religion. I'm too much of an individualist, I'm not going to be told what to do, I do it my way, and so on. Religion is seen as the handicap which stops us enjoying our lives. But we believe our religion gives us an advantage in life, not a handicap. The Christian religion offers us the chance to be ourselves for the first time, to hear the truth about ourselves and others, to speak plainly to others and to God. Then the demons have to leave, as they left that little girl lying on a bed in Tyre.

When we do learn to hear and to speak again, to hear the word of God, to begin to understand what God can do, and how Jesus can hear, and speak, and heal through us, those earthy stories of St.Mark don't seem so way out after all. We could almost be one of the crowd.

Those two miracles were supposed to be private. It didn't work out that way, there can't have been much privacy out there anyway. It might be easier for us today to work a few private miracles. There's a lot we are able to do. Faith without works is dead, says St.James today, controversially. Jesus, the son of God, wanted to cure that man who was deaf and dumb and he did so. He saw the opportunity. He had been given by God the freedom to take that opportunity. It was instinctive for him. It should be instinctive for us, as Christians, to reach across to those turned in on themselves, the deaf and the dumb in spirit of whatever sort in our generation, without fear, because we can trust the God within us to heal and to raise from the dead. After all, he's done it to us. When we were still far off, he met us in his Son and brought us home. When we were selfish and proud, and unhappy as a result, or at a dead end in our lives, there was hope because of what someone said, some indication that God did mind about our unhappiness, and stretched out his hand and touched us.

Everyone is an outcast, struck dumb, at some point in their lives; that bad day at school recurs, it hurts again. Perhaps it is one of the things which unites human beings, a solidarity in suffering, that fear of any sort of disease or devil or rejection which keeps us outside the city gates for ever. How crude, then, to turn away others.

We get into trouble ourselves, but we still tend to look away from those who have suffered greater misfortune. A Christian is compassionate, that's the Gospel message. Christians learn to see connections, to identify with others, and to believe in the power of a loving God to heal. Our faith does not tie us down, it gives us an unexpected freedom. It's the freedom of the Christian to cross boundaries, and to heal and forgive. In some ways it's the answer to almost all the problems we come up against in our lives, learning to be as compassionate as Jesus is.