A sermon preached at St. Mary’s by Hilary Pearson on 8th September 2024

Today’s Gospel tells of the healing of a man ‘who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech’.  We are not told if the man had been deaf from birth; if he had been, it would have been almost inevitable that his speech would also have been affected.  I know this from personal experience.  Both my children have congenital hearing loss.  As they were not totally deaf, the rather primitive tests used to test the hearing of babies 50 years ago did not disclose the problem.  I was concerned that they were both slow to talk and did not speak clearly, but it was only testing before my son Andrew, the eldest, started at primary school that discovered his hearing loss.  My daughter Ruth was then also tested. They had both instinctively learned lip reading, which is why it took so long to discover their hearing problems.  This experience was also a factor in the choice of subject for my doctorate.  I studied the writings of Teresa de Cartagena, a 15C Spanish nun.  She had become deaf as an adult, and her first book was a theological and spiritual study of her affliction.

Unusually for the so-called synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, this story is only in found in Mark.  It is preceded by the healing of the daughter of the Gentile woman which is part of today’s Gospel reading: I preached on Matthew’s version of this story last August (you can find this on the church website) so will not dwell on it in detail today.  It comes before a second miraculous feeding of 4,000 people.  This is different from the story of the feeding of the 5,000 which is found in the previous chapter; Matthew also has these two separate feeding miracles.

The first thing to notice is that this took place in Sidon, which was Gentile territory.  The preceding miracle story took place in Tyre; both towns (which are now part of modern Lebanon) are on the Mediterranean coast.  In the first case we are expressly told that the woman was a Gentile – we do not know whether this deaf man was a Jew or a Gentile, but it is likely that at least most of the crowd were Gentiles.

Mark’s Gospel can be regarded as the Gospel of miracles.  The proportion of the text in Mark which narrates stories of miracles, in relation to the entire length of the Gospel, is the highest of all four Gospels.  Another noticeable feature of Mark’s Gospel is that in many examples of healing, like this one, Jesus asked the recipient to tell no-one.  He also asked the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah after he was identified by Peter.  The three disciples who were with him at the Transfiguration were also told to keep silence.  These aspects of Mark have been the subject of a great deal of study and interpretation by Biblical scholars.

There is wide agreement that a major theme of Mark is the Messiahship of Jesus.  One aspect of this is highlighting events that fulfil Old Testament prophecies.  Indeed, Mark opens with a quotation from Isaiah as a prophecy of the role of John the Baptist as the ‘voice crying in the wilderness’, the herald of the Lord.  We can also see that in today’s Old Testament reading: Isaiah says of God’s kingdom that: ‘…the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped.’  This fulfilment of prophecy is an important sign that Jesus is the long-expected Messiah, and Mark has many express or implied references to the prophecies of Isaiah.

There has also been a great deal of discussion by scholars as to why Jesus in Mark’s Gospel puts such emphasis on keeping healings secret, often referred to as ‘the Messianic secret’.  A widely accepted explanation is that the true Messiahship of Jesus can only be seen in the light of the cross.  The Jewish expectation was that the Messiah would be a military leader who would free them from the Roman yoke.  Jesus knew that this was not his role, and did not want there to be a general expectation that he would lead a Jewish army and become king of the Jews.  It is significant that, in the next section of Mark’s Gospel, we have two identifications of Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God; the first by Peter when Jesus asks the disciples who they say he is, the second in the Transfiguration.  Immediately after each, Jesus tells the disciples that he will suffer and be put to death, and will rise again three days later.  This is the role of the true Messiah; the Saviour from sin, not from the Roman empire.

It is remarkable that this is the only mention of the healing of deafness in any of the Gospels.  There are several healings of the blind, including a blind man who was also mute and demon possessed (in Matthew and Luke).  Matthew separately records the healing of a man who was dumb and possessed by a demon.  In these cases, the lack of speech seems to come from a mental condition rather than physical deafness.

However, there is a wide-spread emphasis in all four Gospels on spiritual deafness.  I think we are all familiar with the concept of hearing but not listening; as in the popular expression ‘in one ear and out the other’.  I’m sure we have all had the experience of talking to a spouse or child, who may nod or make noises of assent, but if you seek a response or ask them what you have just said, will give a blank stare; “I wasn’t listening”.  Earlier in Mark we have the parable of the sower.  Jesus concludes the parable by adding ‘If you have ears to hear, then hear’, words he uses on several occasions after a teaching. The one who hears and does not do is like a man who built his house on sand, the house of the one who hears and does is built on rock and will withstand the storm.  Thoughtful listening can be hard work. 

Mark gives an example of the disciples’ own spiritual deafness.  In the next chapter, after the feeding of the 4,000, on the boat on the way home they found that had forgotten to get bread and only had one loaf with them.  Jesus heard them talking and asked why they were talking about this: ‘Do you still not understand?  Are your minds closed?  You have eyes: can you not see?  You have ears: can you not hear?”  He reminds them of how much bread was left after the feedings of the five thousand and the four thousand.  Did they really not understand the clear message?  That God is able to provide all they need and more.

And, even more profoundly, they did not listen to the clear and plain message of the cross that Jesus gave them after Peter acknowledged him as Messiah.  Indeed, Peter tried to tell Jesus off for talking like that: he got strongly rebuked: ‘Get out of my sight Satan.  You think as men think, not as God thinks.’

Do we hear the message?  Are we really listening?  The very next words Mark records Jesus as saying are hard to hear: ‘Anyone who wants to be a follower of mine must renounce self; he must take up his cross and follow me.’  Anyone – not just a few special Christians.  Do we understand?  For us the cross is now a familiar and, dare I say, comfortable symbol of our faith.  To the original hearers, it was the cause of a slow and painful death, and the condemned person had the public shame of carrying that cross through the crowds who had come to witness the execution.  We have Christian brothers and sisters in other parts of the world who do suffer imprisonment, torture and death for their faith.   For us, the most we might have to undergo is some sceptical, but polite, questioning from the more atheistic residents of  Iffley.  However, the first  – and perhaps the hardest – part of the command still applies: we must renounce self.  To fully explore what that means would require another sermon.  But briefly, it does not mean giving up chocolate for Lent; it means getting rid of everything that gets between us and God’s love, saying ‘no’ to anything that prevents us fully following God’s plan for our life.

So, are we prepared to have our ears opened so we hear God’s voice?  That can sometimes be uncomfortable and challenging.  And are we prepared to have our tongues loosened so that we can pass on God’s message to those around us who need to hear it?  For most of us nice, polite, people, that is even more uncomfortable and challenging.  These things can only be done by renouncing, denying, self, taking up that cross and following the example of Jesus.