Jesus Gets His Fingers Dirty

9.5.21 Mark 7:31-37

31 Jesus left the region of Tyre again and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, within the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought a man to him who was deaf and had a speech impediment. They pleaded with Jesus to place his hand on him. 33 Jesus took him aside in private, away from the crowd. He put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34 After he looked up to heaven, he sighed and said, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”) 35 Immediately the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was set free, and he began to speak plainly. 36 Jesus gave the people strict orders to tell no one, but the more he did so, the more they kept proclaiming it. 37 They were amazed beyond measure and said, “He has done everything well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak!”

Some might consider it a blessing to be deaf. Then I don’t have to listen to anyone yelling at me. I can sleep better at night. I can just live in my own world. Maybe that’s why some elderly people choose not to get hearing aids. They can tune everyone out. But then the only way people can communicate with you is if they shout at you. They become angry and irritated with you and you always have to ask, “What?!?” Being deaf isn’t all that.

Back in Topeka, KS, somehow we came into contact with a deaf man who ended up joining our congregation. We had a very dedicated lady who knew sign language and ended up teaching it to about ten people in our small congregation of about 100 people. It was a neat thing to see so many members join in learning sign language in order to communicate with him.

I soon found out that there is more to communicating with a deaf person than just learning sign language. I’m not sure about all deaf people, but this man had many other struggles that came along with being deaf. He couldn’t balance very well in the dark. He was somewhat afraid of what might happen with someone breaking in when he was asleep. It also seemed that he was somewhat paranoid about whether people were talking about him or not. Individually, he was always somewhat on edge and angry with life because of his disability.

I’m not sure, but it seemed to me that since he couldn’t communicate very well with the people around him he was almost forced to think more about himself. He turned in on himself and was rather demanding of people to do things for him. It seemed that he felt we owed him extra attention because he was deaf. That might be worse than the actual inability to hear, how the loss of a major sense made him more self centered. I can see why. He almost had to be. He didn’t have much choice in the matter.

Deaf people are born that way. We have our own selfish ways of being deaf to those around us and deaf to God too. You can have a husband and wife who are completely deaf to each other. They are so tuned in to social media or their own wants and needs that they don’t even hear each other. We have a society of people that are tuned in to politics and sports that it becomes an obsession. Yet these same people have no ear tuned to what God has to say. It is a self imposed deafness. Teenagers will be more than willing to listen to social influencers than they are to listen to what God has to say.

The deaf man couldn’t speak clearly. We have our own ways of not speaking up too. Think about how easy it is to give someone a care emoji. Think of how easy it is to tell someone “I’m praying for you.” But how often do we even do that? We keep our mouths shut because we don’t want to get in an argument or we don’t want people to get angry at us. We even go so far as to support those who we know are making immoral decisions in an effort to be “loving.” So we are, in a sense, worse than deaf people that can’t speak, because we purposely choose not to use our own tongues where and when we could or we should. We speak in vague ways when we should clearly speak the truth.

It seems that electronic devices have turned us into the most selfish people in this world. We are so worried about what kind of an ONLINE presence we post to the world that we don’t think about what kind of a LIVE presence we are giving to our spouses, our children, and our neighbors. We are too busy being ONLINE so that we are deaf and mute to those who are trying to talk to us most and get through to us in flesh and blood. We are so driven to be connected to everyone that we are connected to no one. Electronics have deafened us to those closest to us to where we don’t know how to speak to each other face to face.