Today we have two stories in Mark’s Gospel that are wrapped up in the same passage: A foreign woman, a pagan, asks Jesus to heal her daughter from a demon, and then a little further, a little later, a group of people bring to Jesus a man who is deaf and mute. There are many stories of healing in Mark’s Gospel, probably more than in any other Gospel, we call them also “miracles stories”, but if we pay attention it looks like the healing is the request and the outcome, but all that happens in between is very important too. A Christian writer brought that to my attention not that long ago: those healing or miracles stories are first encounters stories, there are stories about how people come to meet Jesus and how this experience brings transformation in their lives, in themselves, they often as well transform their families and communities.
So how do these stories look like?
When we talked about them at Bible study it was funny to see that our first reaction was that they made us cringe a little bit. One of us said: Well, I don‘t really like the way Jesus talks to this woman, this sounds kind of harsh. Another one said: Well, I don‘t really like the way Jesus heals this man, with his saliva, is ita little gross or is it just me? And maybe you all had some similar reactions when you heard the gospel this morning. What I like though is the way we react to these stories: with our guts. We don’t receive them with our heads, we receive them in our bodies, in our hearts, even if it’s because they make our skin crawl. And to me, this is exactly what Mark, and Jesus, are trying to do. What is happening is a personal encounter with raw emotions and we meet a Jesus that is very embodied, real and deeply involved in the encounter. When I was thinking of these stories, I had in mind these images of the Pope when he is surrounded by the crowd and he blesses them from afar as the popemobile makes its way to wherever he’s going. And I thought: Well, this is very different with Jesus. Jesus is not going anywhere (actually if you take the time to look at a map, his itinerary does not make any sense), Jesus is going to whomever he meets on the way, that’s his destination. Each one of these people are his destination. He does not bless the people from afar, including all the crowd in a general blessing, no, he talks with individuals, often he isolates them from the crowd to give them his full attention and he speaks their language: To the woman who is rude and interrupting (see Matthew’s version: Matt 15:21-28), he speaks rather crudely. To the man who is deaf, he speaks with his hands and make signs so the man can understand what Jesus is going to do. He mirrors them, and according to communication specialists, that’s the best way to make a personal connection. Yes, we cringe a little bit but it’s because we are right there with them. We can hear Jesus’s harsh words, and we feel a little bit of the woman’s apprehension, we can see Jesus putting saliva on his fingers and we can hear in the original language the first word the deaf man has been able to hear: Ephphata. As if we were there, even more, as if we were them. And I think it’s because, in a sense, we are them.
The Risen Christ is meeting with each one of us and we are his ultimate destination and his ultimate goal. He has nothing else on his agenda and he ahs nowhere else to be. And he speaks the language we can understand, which maybe not our neighbor’s language, probably not anyone else’s language. And ineach story of healing, Jesus does one of those two things according to Mark: He casts out an evil spirit, a demon and/or he brings back to people one of their senses: sight, hearing or even touch, in the case of leprosy.
So what does it mean?
– First, about the demons. One of us asked if the woman’s little girl was possessed and if a child could really be possessed. Now I know Hollywood isn’t helping us to have a sound theological understanding of what it means to have a demon in the Scriptures. Yes, it’s an evil influence, but it absolutely does not mean, in most cases, that Satan is controlling the person or that the person has become Satan. Rather it’s a bondage, something in the person‘s life, what we would call today a mental or physical illness, or an addiction, that prevents the person from being fully themselves, from being the person they were intended to be. If I am depressed, I cannot be fully myself, for example it’s beyond my will to be happy. Something is preventing me from experiencing the joy of living that is God given to all creatures at their birth. If I have epilepsy, I cannot be fully myself as well, when I am in a crisis I can’t control my body and even in everyday life, I always live with the fear of having a crisis and it’s a bondage that prevents me from living fully. Sometimes these bondages come in our lives because we did something wrong, we pushed ourselves too hard for example (and then we have a mental illness), sometimes these bondages come with no fault of our own, they’re due to someone else’ sin like in the case of trauma for example (People comes back from war with PTSD). So when Jesus casts out demons, it means that he brings to people wholeness and freedom to be themselves. And that’s healing. Healing is always quite dramatic in Mark’s Gospel, and it can happen in our lives to yet most of the time healing looks like this: We feel free again and like ourselves again. If you’re on a wheelchair it may not mean that you are going to jump all over the place again, but you may feel you’re able to live a very meaningful life with purpose, love and joy even in the midst of your suffering. Jesus’s healings in the Gospels are also meant to be signs of reality to come, the fullness of life we’ll experience in the Kingdom. This is what we have to understand when Mark reports this comment from the crowd: Jesus has done everything well. He is making the world well again, one person at a time, as he ushers the kingdom of God. The fullness of healing will be found at Resurrection but until then, Jesus does not make empty promises, he shows us in a way or another, that it is real, he gives us signs (the way the evangelist John likes to call the miracles)
And that brings us to the second aspect of Jesus’s healings: Jesus casts out demons, and he brings people back to their senses, and he also brings their sense back to people, and that’s the second observation of the crowd: He makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak (It’s actually a quotation from Isaiah, that’s how Isaiah describes what the Messiah was going to do). And indeed, Most stories of miracles are about Jesus bringing back sight, hearing or even the sense of touch to people (when you’re a leper, you can’t feel anymore, you have no pleasure and no pain, and that’s why people with leprosy end up often with severed limbs because they keep hurting themselves accidentally).
I really like that Jesus restores senses because we can only imagine how miraculous it would be, to see for the first time or to hear from the first time (we talked about this little girl who heard her mother’s voice from the first time). It also have a spiritual meaning: It’s about being able to see Jesus for who he is, to hear his voice, to understand we are God’s children. The world in which we live is blind and deaf to God, but those who have this encounter with Christ, they are brought to a complete different way of experiencing the world. We too are called to Ephphata, to open ourselves to this God’s dimension we most of the time ignore. And that’s the second side of the healing. We lose a demon and then we gain a new sense. I think that when we feel God’s presence with us, even if we’re going through something really hard, it makes it bearable. The hardest part in our suffering is when we feel rejected, misunderstood, lonely and left behind. If we know we matter, it gives us comfort, strength and courage and certainly Jesus made people feel like they mattered, even if they were considered as underdogs as the pagan woman was in the eyes oft he Jews. I think this is actually how Jesus healed them all. A former parishioner one day told me: Jesus came in the world and he saw people – like it was all he was about. And I think she was right.
So maybe that’s what we can think about and pray about this week: What kind of spiritual bondage do I need to be freed from (an addiction, a fear, a trauma), what spiritual sense do I need to gain (find hope, reconnect with inner joy, be able to trust). There is not a one size fits all response to this. This our deeply personal experience of faith. But as the woman prayed for her daughter and as the deaf man was brought to Jesus by his friends, we also have to remember that we can be an agent of healing like these people were, and even like Jesus was: taking time with those we encounter on our way, seeing them, putting myself in their shoes, speaking their language, bringing connection, making them feel like they matter.