An elderly man stopped at a hearing aid center and asked about prices.
"We have them from $25,000 on down to $1.50," the salesman said.
"What’s the $25,000 one like?" asked the elderly man.
"Well, it translates three languages and is the latest in electronics," the salesman replied.
"And what about the one for $1.50?" the customer asked.
"It’s this button attached to a string," said the salesman, pushing it across the counter.
"How does it work?" asked the customer.
"It doesn’t," said the salesman, "But if you put the button in your ear and the string in your pocket, you’ll be surprised how loud people will talk."
Two older men were talking. One of them was bragging just a little bit. "I just purchased the most expensive hearing aid ever made," he said. "It is imported and is guaranteed for life."
The second man asked: "What kind is it?"
The first man answered, "Five past two."
Many of us suffer a gradual decline in hearing ability as we age. Some tones that are clear to young people may not be heard by people who are older. These facts prompted a security firm to develop a device called the Mosquito. The Mosquito emits a high-pitched tone that older adults cannot hear, but which is said to be "earsplittingly painful" to young people. The intended use for this device is to play it in places where older folks do not want younger people to gather. Thus the first group will not be bothered by the disconcerting habits, clothing styles, and music of the second group.
However, youth has found a way to get even. There is now a high-pitched cell-phone ring tone that most people over a certain age cannot hear. This enables students sitting in a classroom to receive cell phone calls unbeknownst to the teacher. So the student can be getting text messages that may range anywhere from idle chatter to answers to the questions on the exam the student is taking at the time. (1)
We can laugh about the hearing loss that comes with aging. It is a minor problem that will affect most of us sooner or later. In fact, experts predict that years of rock music, leaf blowers, and noise pollution in general will result in millions of baby boomers with hearing loss. According to a recent study by the National Institutes of Health, there has been a stunning 26 percent increase in those suffering permanent hearing loss between the ages of 35 and 60, compared to 15 years earlier. (2) Hearing loss is becoming quite widespread and is a nuisance. But there is nothing funny about deafness. The world of non-hearing people can be lonely and difficult.
One of the saddest instances of deafness that I know is that of the immortal composer of classical music, Ludwig van Beethoven. For a musician deafness would be the tragedy of tragedies. As he himself wrote on one occasion, "How sad is my lot, I must avoid all things that are dear to me."
There was a terrible time when Beethoven was struggling to conduct an orchestra playing one of his own compositions. He could not hear even the full orchestra. Soon he was beating one time and the orchestra was playing another, and the performance disintegrated in disaster. There is a pathetic picture of him after he had given a piano recital, bent over the keyboard, oblivious to the applause that thundered about him. (3) He wrote on another occasion, "For two years I have avoided almost all social gatherings because it is impossible for me to say to people ‘I am deaf.’ If I belonged to any other profession it would be easier, but in my profession it is a frightful state." Beethoven died a broken, bitter man.
You and I who have our hearing, have our vision, who are able to get around with a minimum of impediments, ought to thank God every day, and we ought to salute those who overcome obstacles that we cannot even imagine. Did you know, by the way, that the three most popular languages in the United States are English, Spanish, and American Sign Language? There are more non-hearing people in our land than you might imagine.
It is clear that Jesus’ primary mission was not healing the sick and the disabled. He spent an enormous part of his ministry doing just that, but that was not his primary mission. His primary mission was to announce the coming of God’s kingdom to the world, and to form a new community, the church, that would be an imperfect vehicle for the coming of that kingdom. Still, he was a man of compassion. People brought their disabled friends and family members to him for healing, and, of course, he could not turn them away.
In today’s lesson from Mark some people brought a man to Jesus who was deaf and could hardly talk. They begged Jesus to place his hand on the man and heal him. Jesus responded to their request. He took the man aside, away from the crowd. It was never Jesus’ intent to make a spectacle of his healing ministry. So-called faith healers today would do well to follow his example.
He took the man aside. Then he put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then Mark tells us he spit and touched the man’s tongue. He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh Jesus said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
And then Jesus did something important. He commanded the man’s friends not to tell anyone about this miracle. He knew that as word got around about his healing power, he wouldn’t have time for anything else. The need was so great. For you see Jesus didn’t come to build health clinics; he came to build a church. His compassion for others was so great that he could not turn aside those who were distressed, but he needed time for his primary mission. So he asked those who brought the non-hearing man to him not to tell anyone. That was a simple instruction. Don’t tell anyone what happened here. But Mark tells us that the more he told them not to tell, the more they kept talking about it. After all, people were overwhelmed with amazement. "He has done everything well," they said. "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."
There are three elements we need to see in this lesson: Christ’s compassion, Christ’s competence, and Christ’s commission to us. Let’s begin with his compassion.
Christ could not turn away people in need. Whether they were physically disabled, mentally disabled, or spiritually disabled Christ could not turn them away. His sense of compassion was accorded to all. That’s good that he would not turn anyone away, because that means he will also take time for you and me. After all, there will be times when you and I will be in a distressing situation, and we will want to know that Christ has time for us.
Would you mind a silly story from years gone by? At the end of their first date, a young man takes his favorite girl home. Emboldened by the night, he decides to try for that important first kiss. With an air of confidence, he leans with his hand against the wall and, smiling, he says to her, "Darling, how about a goodnight kiss?"
Horrified, she replies, "Are you mad? My parents will see us!"
"Oh come on!" he says, "Who’s gonna see us at this hour?"
"No, please," she says, "Can you imagine if we get caught?"
"Oh come on," he persists, "there’s nobody around, they’re all sleeping!"
"No way," she says, "It’s just too risky!"
"Oh please," he continues, "please, I like you so much!"
"No, no, and no. I like you too, but I just can’t!"
"Oh yes you can. Please?"
"No, no. I just can’t."
"Pleeeeease?"
Out of the blue, the porch light goes on, and the girl’s sister shows up in
her pajamas, hair disheveled. In a sleepy voice the sister says: "Dad says to go ahead and give him a kiss. Or I can do it. Or if need be, he’ll come down himself and do it. But for crying out loud tell him to take his hand off the intercom button!" (4)
There will come a time when all of us will push hard on God’s intercom button, if not in our own behalf, certainly in behalf of someone we love. At that moment we will be thankful that we saw unlimited compassion in Christ. For there will come a time when we will rely on Christ’s compassion.
We also see in this story Christ’s competence. Not only did Christ care that people hurt, Christ had the power to help them.
I don’t know about you, but I have very little difficulty with stories of Jesus’ healing power. Some cynics question these stories, but not me. I have heard too many stories of people to whom doctors gave no hope, but they persisted and eventually they were pronounced cured, to doubt that such things are possible. I know that our mind and our emotions can affect the course of a disease in our bodies. Suppose, then, that we should come into the presence of this unique person, Jesus of Nazareth, and he touched us, and he called us by name. It would not be surprising to me that our bodies might respond with remarkable healing. As Dr. Albert Schweitzer once said, "Each patient carries his own doctor inside him. They come to us not knowing that truth. We are at our best when we give the Doctor which resides within each patient a chance to go to work." That’s what Christ did. He made it possible for the doctor within to heal those who came to him.
Rachel Naomi Remen has written a popular book titled Kitchen Table Wisdom. Remen is a medical doctor. She has learned, through the years, that the best healing of the human body takes place when the mind, body and spirit work together. She is "one of the earliest pioneers in the mind/body health field."
Dr. Remen understands the importance of faith within the field of medicine, because her first and most important mentor was her grandfather, a rabbi. Dr. Remen speaks of the "life force" in people. It is very similar to Schweitzer’s doctor within.
She tells about Max, a sixty-three year old man who was sent to her because he had metastatic colon cancer. In the words of Dr. Remen, "The experts had given him daunting statistics and offered only a guarded prognosis." Their work together had to do with helping Max to see where his life force was.
You see Max had been born prematurely. As a tiny weak baby, he had absorbed his mother’s time and energy in the first few years of his life, which, for some reason, had enraged his father. As a little boy Max overheard an argument between his parents in which his father said, "If that little runt was one of the animals, I’d have put it out to starve." That comment was devastating for Max. For the next 60 years he lived a self-destructive life that would have destroyed a weaker man.
Dr. Remen reminded Max that despite his many brushes with death, the broken bones, the accidents, the risks he took almost daily, he was still here. She asked him what he thought had brought him through. "Luck," he said quickly. She shot him a skeptical look. No one was that lucky. He sat for a while with his thoughts.
Then in a choked and almost inaudible voice, he confessed that he had always wanted to live. She could hardly hear him. "Can you say that any louder?" He looked at the rug between his boots. Unable to speak, he just nodded. Almost in a whisper he said, "I feel ashamed." Dr. Remen said that her heart went out to him. In a shaking voice he said, "Something in me wants to live." His eyes were still fixed on the rug.
"Say it, Max," Dr. Remen thought. "Say it until it becomes real." She wondered if she dared to push him a little further. "Do you think you could look at me and tell me that?" Dr. Remen asked Max. She could sense the struggle in him. Had she gone too far? He had never confronted his father. Most likely, saying such a simple thing out loud, "I want to live," went against a lifelong pattern. Perhaps he would not be able to free himself even this little bit.
With an effort Max raised his eyes, his voice still choked but no longer inaudible. "I want to live," he said evenly.
They stared at each other for a few moments but he did not drop his eyes. Dr. Remen smiled at him. "I want you to live too," she said.
And he did. Max went on to live eight more years. (5)
Imagine if a conversation with Dr. Remen could have such an effect on a person, what contact with Jesus of Nazareth could do for him. Jesus’ works of healing should be the least controversial part of his ministry. Of course, he could heal and he still heals today. Sometimes he heals bodies, sometimes he heals marriages, sometimes he heals broken hearts but he does heal. If you have a need of any kind, bring it to Jesus. He is compassionate. He is completely competent. He may not always heal in just the way we want, but, if we let him, he will heal. His compassion. His competence.
Finally we hear Christ’s call. He commissons us to a ministry of compassion as well. This is why there are so many hospitals worldwide with Christian names. This is why there are so many Christian homes for children who have been abandoned or abused. This is why there are so many Christian relief agencies. We continue Christ’s ministry of compassion.
Did you know that during the Renaissance, Benedictine monks so identified with deaf people that they created a new definition of deafness that still shapes public perceptions in the twenty-first century? The monks lived in monasteries and took a vow of silence. Having developed their own nonverbal forms of interaction, they knew that significant daily human communication was possible without speech. This was during a time when the church in general shared society’s prejudice against the deaf, and routinely barred deaf people from receiving Holy Communion simply because they could not "confess aloud" their faith. Spanish Benedictine monk Pedro Ponce de Leon, the first teacher of the deaf, so identified with deaf people that he developed a sign language and wrote a book on the topic of how to teach the "mute deaf." Ponce de Leon’s ideas were eventually exported to France and later to North America, perhaps changing deaf education forever. Because of God’s grace in the monks’ strong identification, millions of people who have hearing and speech impairments are no longer treated as if they were subhuman. (6) This is but one example of Christ’s compassion lived out through his followers.
I wonder who Christ is calling us, as the church today, to reach out to in the same way that the Benedictines reached out to the deaf. I do know this: we follow a compassionate Christ who never turned anyone away. He healed everyone who called to him for help. And he calls us today to continue his ministry to the least, the lowliest and the lost whoever they may be.
1. Charles R. Boatman in The Standard Lesson Commentary 2008-2009 (Cincinnati, OH: Standard Pub. 2008), pp. 50-51.
2. With Adam Hanft, Dictionary of the Future (New York, NY: Hyperion, 2001), p. 3.
3. William Barclay, And He Had Compassion (Valley Forge, PA: Judson Press, 1976), p. 66.
4. Thought For Today, http://www.tftd-online.com/.
5. (Penguin, 1996), pp. 12-13. Cited by Jean A. F. Holmes, http://www.npcpearl.org/Sermons/Sermon10292000.htm.
6. Quentin J. Schultze, Communicating for Life (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, Co., 2000), p. 37.