This week I was honored to blog at Lectionary Homiletics on the scripture for this Sunday. I chose to blog on the Gospel lesson. Below is that blog on Mark 7: 24-37
“Dad, you need to come to the hospital,” the voice on the phone said. “It’s Christi.”
My daughter, four months pregnant with her second child, had for no apparent reason gone into a seizure and immediately afterward fallen into a coma. I rushed to the hospital and entered into the agony of every helpless parent with a child in the hospital.
Around one in the morning my sons came to me. “Dad, the doctors say she only has about a 10% chance of making it through the night.” My life stopped. It just stopped. Everything was on hold. The world stood still. That helpless child of mine was the only reality of my universe. I would have done anything. I would have sold my soul.
She made it through the night. And then the doctor, the famous neurosurgeon that had been brought in, called us together in a family counseling room. He still did not know what was wrong. He wanted to try a drug. But the drug would kill the baby.
This Syrophoenician woman is a friend of mine. We are kindred spirits. We have both experienced that devastation that comes when the demons are at work on your child. We both have begged him to bring healing. And we both have felt abandoned, alone, without hope. And so we argued with God.
Days later my child awoke. Days after that the doctors conducted tests. They discovered the virus that had caused the tragedy. They developed a recovery program. And then the doctor gave us startling news. “The virus was in every tissue of her body,” he said, “except for her womb. And that’s impossible.”
The woman and I know the uplifting exuberance that comes from finding your child alive on the bed, the demon gone. I do not know how the woman in the lesson celebrated, but when my granddaughter was born, she was named Faith.
Five years ago I married Lynn, who, as had I, lost her spouse. Lynn was a member of my church by when I was young and handsome, fit and smart. The last time I had seen her son was in that earlier day. He was three years old then. As his pastor, I learned to get his attention at church. I would raise my foot and stomp with all my might upon the floor. Chris would then turn to me for he had felt the vibration. I never called to him for Chris is deaf.
Chris is a college graduate. He’s astute and informed. But Chris is in a prison. I cannot know what it is like in there, in that silent world that we hearing people cannot understand.
Chris is patient with me as I try to communicate with him. The problem, you see, is I learn finger spelling by looking at the back of my hand. But when I try to read his finger spelling I’m looking at the front of his hand. Truth be told, Chris thinks me a little slow.
There is a rage in Chris. It’s a rage that comes from not being able to hear and not being able to talk. To walk about a world encased in a box of silence where everyone is isolated from the other boils frustration into a rage that sometimes bursts forth.
I smile at the verse 32 in the text. “They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech ...” What deaf person does not? It is the doubled locked door of the box of silence.
I am trying to imagine the Lord looking up to heaven, sighing and saying to Chris, “Ephphatha,” that is “Be opened.” The deaf man in the story felt his ears opened and his tongue released. If Chris experienced that do you suppose he would tell anyone? If Chris experienced that do you suppose I would tell anyone?
Who does Jesus think he’s kidding.
This reading speaks to me. It speaks for I know the little girl who was healed. It speaks for I am family of the one who cannot hear nor speak.
As I read the commentaries for today’s lessons it I am taken with the efforts to explain why Jesus healed the Gentiles. The writer we are told is reaching out to show Jesus love extends beyond the Jews. The writers are no doubt right. But there’s more.
Jesus is about the business of healing. My granddaughter turns backflips and dashes through this life as one who has been healed. My daughter has given birth to another child since then. She keeps telling me to quit spoiling them.
When you get down to the nitty gritty of this lesson it’s about a little girl and a deaf man in need of healing. I give thanks every day that my child woke from her coma, healed. And I practice and practice every day to get more proficient with that sign language so that I, until Chris’ healing comes, can do everything possible to penetrate that prison cell of silence.
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