23rd Sunday Year B - Homily 3

Homily 3 - 2021

Jesus had been making a sweep through pagan territory bordering on Galilee. His purpose seems not so much to have been to preach there the Kingdom of God as, perhaps, to give himself some “head space” after engaging with scribes and Pharisees from Jerusalem. While in pagan territory, he had encountered a Syrophoenician woman who had begged him to cast out a devil oppressing her daughter. Though at first Jesus was apparently reluctant, she had eventually changed Jesus’ mind and he graciously yielded to her pleading.

In today’s incident, some pagan friends of a pagan man suffering from deafness and dumbness implored Jesus to “lay his [healing] hand” on their friend. This time, Jesus promptly acceded to their request and healed the man.

For Mark, the man’s affliction symbolised a situation too often existing in his own Christian community — and, by extension, among his later readers such as ourselves. We can all so easily fail truly to “hear” the message of Jesus, to read his heart, to share his values and his urgency. So often, as the cause of our deafness to his message, lies the profound, homogenising but unnoticed influence on us of our surrounding culture. Jesus led the deaf man “away from the crowd” and connected with him personally “in private”. We need to give Jesus time to be alone with us — and to hear his wonderful plea to us, “Be opened!”. He yearns that we open our hearts, and allow the two of us truly to engage with each other firstly in trusting silence, so that later we have the courage and the wisdom to “speak clearly”  to our confused and confusing world.