Mark 7, 8

Mark 7, 8

January 16, 2011

Mark 7, 8

Towards the end of Mark 7, Jesus encounters a deaf man who also suffers from a speech impediment.  There is specific description of the way in which Jesus responds to his request for healing.  Jesus takes him aside and works with him and then speaks a word “Ephphatha”, which, we are told, means “Be opened”.  It works and the man’s ears “are opened, and his tongue was released and he spoke plainly”.   Jesus then does what he has done elsewhere and asks the man to keep it quiet.  The request seems especially ironic here, the man has been restored the use of his tongue, given the ability to speak and Jesus asks him not to speak, at least on this subject.  The more he tells them not to speak, however, the more they make known what Jesus has been doing. 

The healing here is the restoration of hearing and speech.  These abilities had been closed off and Jesus commands them to be opened.  This Scripture invites us to consider where we feel closed off and to place that before Christ in prayer seeking to be opened by the One who is capable of such things.

Following the healing of the man who had been deaf and mute and the feeding of a multitude some Pharisees come and ask Jesus for a sign. Jesus responds,  “Why does this generation ask for a sign?  Truly I tell you no sign will be given to this generation.”   One wonders where the sign seekers were when the healing and the feeding was going on.  Maybe they meant they wanted their own sign.  Jesus declines to respond like a performer producing magic on demand – at the same time if they spent any time around him it is clear the signs are abundant and clear.  Are our eyes open to the activity of Jesus that is abundantly clear or are we sometimes, like the Pharisees, so certain of what we want to see from Jesus that we miss the wonders and signs all around us?