Br. Lain Wilson

Mark 7:31-37

In the last decade of his life, my grandfather’s progressive hearing and memory loss caused him to turn inward. He would sit silently at meals, both unable to hear what was said and unable to follow the conversation. We loved him, of course we did, but it was also easy to notice that the everyday currents of relationship could skirt him by, like a boulder in a river – in the water but not moving with it.

I imagine that this is the kind of life that the deaf man in today’s gospel reading led. Unable to hear, with limited, if any, ability to speak, he would have been cut out of so much of the life of the community. I can’t help but notice how often in scripture we hear or read words like “spoke,” “said,” “proclaimed,” “shouted,” “cried,” and “sang.” How isolated must this man have felt in a time before widespread literacy and automatic captioning?

But there’s one detail of today’s reading that really catches my attention: “they brought to him a deaf man.” They brought. We don’t know who “they” are. This formula is used throughout Mark’s gospel, and one of its early appearances is explicit. “When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, ‘Son, your sins are forgiven’” (Mark 2:5). Their faith, the faith of those who brought someone who couldn’t otherwise, was determinative.

As the paralytic couldn’t have come under his own power to Jesus, the deaf man could not have heard Jesus’ proclamation of the kingdom, or about Jesus’ other healing miracles. But those who brought him to Jesus had, and it was their hope, their faith, and their conviction that bore this man to stand before Jesus for healing. Although the deaf man may have found himself cut out of so much of the life of the community, he still belonged, enough for these unnamed people to have faith that Jesus could heal this man.

We live in a time of unprecedented levels of connection at the macro level; and yet, so many of us feel ourselves to be alone, isolated, drawn inward. We may not suffer from hearing or memory loss, but so many of us experience the loss of another critical faculty – the feeling of belonging, to each other, to something more than ourselves. But we are called to belong to each other; indeed, God created us to belong to each other. Jesus’ healing of the deaf man – and the paralytic, and undoubtedly countless others not recorded – shows us that even when we feel most cut off, most isolated, most alone, nevertheless we do still belong. Recognizing this truth is where we may most need to come – or be brought – to Jesus for healing.

Amen.