31 Leaving the territory of Sidon, Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee, passing through Sidon and then the heights of the middle of the territory of Decapolis. 32 The locals presented him with a deaf man who also had speech difficulties, so that he could lay his hands on him. 33 After taking him out of the crowd to a secluded spot, Jesus put his fingers in his ears, spat, and touched his tongue with his saliva. 34 Then, raising his eyes to heaven, he expressed a plaintive sigh before saying, "Ephphata, an Aramaic word meaning "Be opened". 35 Immediately, his ears opened and his tongue was freed, and he began to speak properly. 36 Jesus asked that this not be known. But the more he asked, the more people spread the news everywhere. 37 And they were astonished, saying to themselves, "God has done a great thing, for he makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak".

Why are we afraid to open up?

The story takes place in the United States¹, in Phoenix, Arizona. Caleb Campbell has been pastor of a small evangelical church for almost 10 years. The spiritual life of his congregation seems uneventful until, in 2016, he indulges in a quip in one of his sermons: "Let's make Jerusalem great again", a retort to Donald Trump's slogan: "Let's make America great again". Negative reactions were not long in coming. But the pastor couldn't help reacting to the government's orientation, particularly towards immigrants: "We shouldn't encourage our government to imprison children in cages," he said. People began accusing him of being a Marxist and a fascist. The Republican media repeated, "If your pastor talks about social justice, get out of this church fast." And when services began to be bilingual, as the church welcomed many Latin American immigrants, former members told Pastor Caleb: if they want to sing in their language, let them go back to their country. Between 2016 and 2020, the congregation lost 80% of its members. Finally, in 2021, protests intensified over the pastor's remark that the events of January 6 at the Capitol were "bad", so much so that the congregation's board decided to meet when the money ran out.

Caleb began to examine his conscience by going to a park each day to meditate. Noting the number of friends he had lost, he came up with 300. But he made an important decision: to understand what was going on. And so he immersed himself in the world of these pro-Trump "evangelicals", participating incognito in rallies of over 3,000 people, subscribing to their newsletters, attending their church services. He understood that people felt good together in sharing their sense of loss of country and the will to stand up for their ancestors and for Christian values. On the other hand, this Christian nationalism meant getting rid of the bad guys, repelling the enemy by force. Who is the enemy? Everything that isn't us. Evangelical churches and families are people stirred by anxiety, a deep anxiety about what they perceive as ethnic erasure, and by rage.

Caleb made a second decision: "What if I began to love them, to have compassion for them?" He was convinced that you can't argue if you're not first connected by the heart. So he took the initiative of writing a book to demonstrate that you can maintain a divergent position by being generous, aware that the other is not an enemy, but a neighbor.

This is the context in which I'd like to read today's Gospel, which focuses on the healing of a deaf man who has difficulty expressing himself. We can't understand Mark's story if we don't perceive the highly symbolic value, firstly of the illness, i.e. being deaf, not being able to hear, and therefore being closed to the words and ideas of others, and secondly of Jesus' words: "Be opened".

What is Mark's intention in giving us this account? He probably has in hand an ancient tradition about one of Jesus' healings, a tradition in which we find the five stages of a healing story: a) the presentation of the infirmity (a deaf man speaking with difficulties); b) a request for healing (in this case, by the deaf's entourage); c) an action by Jesus in response to the request (fingers in the ears and on the tongue); d) the validation of healing (in this case, the narrator informs us that the deaf speaks correctly); e) the reaction of the audience (in this case, the crowd expresses its admiration for God's work). But this story paints a rather crude picture of Jesus as a village healer: to heal, he puts his fingers in the deaf man's ears, then spits (probably into his hand) and puts this saliva on the tongue of the disabled; this method of healing, a little repugnant by our modern standards of hygiene, was probably part of the arsenal of healers in the days when physical contact healed. Jesus' plaintive sigh before healing expresses his exasperation with the problem of the evil represented by infirmity. Mark, who demonstrates a great talent for storytelling, is at ease with this very colorful portrayal, which he further amplifies with words in Aramaic (Ephphata), and the audience's reaction, which explodes as they cannot help but proclaim what they have witnessed and praise God in a boundless way. Unfortunately, Matthew and Luke, who wrote 10 or 15 years later and were familiar with the story, eliminated it from their gospels, so far removed was this portrait of a village healer from their perception of Jesus as the Son of God.

Yet Mark's purpose in inserting this story after the one recounting the faith of a Syro-Phoenician, a pagan from the region of Tyre (modern-day Lebanon), is clear. For the healing of the deaf takes place in the territory of the Decapolis (= deka + polis, ten cities in Greek), a territory inhabited by a majority of Greek-speaking people, and therefore a pagan territory. Thus, the deaf pagan to whom Jesus says "Be opened" symbolizes the openness of pagans to Jesus' word: they too are capable of hearing the Good News. Let's not forget that the Christian community in Rome to whom Mark is probably speaking is made up of people of both Jewish and Gentile origin. This section of Mark's Gospel set in Gentile territory ends with a second feeding by Jesus of the crowd, a symbol of the Eucharist, but this time a Eucharist for those of Gentile origin: the first feeding of the crowd took place on Jewish soil, with the symbolic figure of 12 (the 12 tribes of Israel) baskets of leftover bread, whereas the second feeding of the crowd features Greek symbols, such as the seven baskets of leftover bread and the 4,000 participants (4 cardinal points multiplied by 1,000, symbolizing multitude).

This story raises a question: what is it that makes people remain deaf, i.e. refuse to open up to events and to others, and only through an extraordinary intervention do they agree to open up? Of course, there are naturally conservative temperaments, sensitive to the past, to traditions and to ancestors, and there are others inclined towards the new and the different. But beyond these personality traits, human beings are confronted throughout their lives with situations, words and people that challenge the mental universe they have built for themselves. The challenge, then, is either we take the time to listen carefully to the question posed, or we refuse to listen, so as not to alter our world in any way. What makes some people capable of opening up, accepting the challenge of having their world questioned, while others are refusing completely any questioning? I'd like to think that someone who has faith in the risen Jesus, in his victory over the forces of evil represented by his presence in the world after his rejection by the Jewish authorities, is capable of trusting in life to such an extent that questioning his mental universe doesn't frighten him; change opens up opportunities for life. Only fear, the flip side of faith, leads people to close themselves off.

Pastor Caleb Campbell's openness to people who have repudiated him is explained by his faith in Jesus and the gospel. What would it be like if everyone had this capacity for openness? Wouldn't we be very close to the kingdom of God? Wouldn't we have a deeper perception of that infinite mystery that surpasses us and which we call : God. Our great challenge is to face our fears. For it takes immense confidence in life to open ourselves up to what is different, to what is unknown. More than ever, we need the words of Jesus, who crossed the path of our fears: "Be opened!"

 

-André Gilbert, Gatineau, July 2024

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¹ This story was published in (French) La Presse (Montreal, Canada) by Yves Boisvert, June 15, 2024. For the full text: Evangelical Christians' pact with Trump