Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17
Mark 7:24-37
Click here for an audio of the sermon
To be open:
adjective: allowing access,
passage, or a view through
an empty space;
not closed or blocked up.
"the pass is kept open all year by snowplows”
Verb: to unfold
or be unfolded; spread out.
"the eagle opened its wings and circled up into the air”
Noun:a championship or competition with no restrictions on who may compete.
“Today is the men’s finals for the US Open”
Ephphatha, “Be
opened.” This isn’t just a call for
unstopped ears. Like so much in
Sacred Scripture, words contain multitudes and so is the case here. It is a call to access, passage,
and freedom. It is a call to fullness…to being
unfolded and spread out. It is a call to soar unhindered…a call to
transcendence. It is a call to full
inclusion and a call to belonging.
In this particular context
an unnamed man is deaf with a speech impediment who can’t even beg Jesus to
heal him himself but depends on others to get Jesus’ attention. He is not free and has little
self-autonomy…and is trapped in his own silent, speechless world. He can’t express himself and can’t hear
others express themselves to him. He
lives a stunted existence, blocked from the fullness of life God designed for
him.
In
juxtaposition, we have Jesus, “the Opened One,” who, ever since his baptism and confirmation in the Spirit’s
gentle descent and the Father’s
affirmation of love, is driven by the sole mission of making God’s
loving presence known. He
knows who he is, God’s Beloved, and this knowledge opens him to the world
without partiality and with dogged determination. Scene after scene in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus’ open spirit allows him to move freely in
the love of God and to freely make this love known. To those bound by demons, bound by paralysis, bound by
deformities, bound by sickness and disease, bound by hunger, or bound by the
debilitating prejudices of others. Jesus’ openness confronts a bounded world and
those whose spirits are bound meet a power to release them and to become just
as open as this “Opened One.”
But, the Gospel
is clear, Jesus’
open spirit did not pave a way for him
without obstacles. The same open spirit that drove him to the oppressed also caused deep concern from the religious establishment (you can say, the other oppressed who didn’t realize they were oppressed or, the “closed” ones who had no room for the radical openness of Jesus). Such a confrontation occurs immediately before the passage we hear today. So, at this point in the Gospel, Jesus is becoming acutely aware that his open spirit and the transformation that it is causing in the community may very well become his downfall. I imagine Jesus spending much time in prayer, at this crucial point of his life, reflecting on how to proceed. We don’t get much of a glimpse into his inner deliberations, but what we do get is his inner resolve that is evidenced in his continual commitment to bringing God’s transforming presence to those who need it most. And we see his strategy: to minimize the attention that these transformative encounters are causing so that he can open as many people as possible before he is captured, if that was, indeed, to be his destiny. “Tell no one” he tells the man newly released from his deafening silence. Does the man listen? Would you if the same thing happened to you? Which is precisely the point! The kind of openness that Jesus brings cannot be contained or constricted. It’s that place where you just can’t help yourself!
I see at work
in this passage, and the Gospel
of Mark as a whole,
a
dynamism of elements that
come together to create this openness, this spiritual vitality that is free and
fearless. They are: the priority of
silence, contemplative observation, desperate faith,
judicious speaking, and transformative power.
Each of these elements play a vital role in the life of Christ and
characterize his spirituality of openness and how he goes about making others
open.
The priority of silence. It all
begins with listening…with hearing the gentle Spirit of God pronounce the divine belovedness over us. And not just once…but in developing a life of listening and
hearing until this God of love resounds from within and our lives begin to
reverberate this divine sounding. Like
the Open Christ who possessed such self-determination to so freely and
fearlessly make God’s love known in the face of such existential threats, we
too follow in his way by hearing God’s solemn mantra in the silence of our
hearts: “You are my beloved, you are my beloved, you are my beloved.” And as for the deaf mute, it was because he was first silent
that he was able to find such boundless, open joy in being able to hear and
speak.
Contemplative
observation. The Open Christ was on
the search. His openness was characterized by a particular way of seeing,
of gazing into the reality of things and recognizing hidden
pain. He read souls and, moved by an
alert compassion, called those hidden pains to the light. He saw what others couldn’t because of the silent
centeredness of his life and his acute attunement to the Father. Like Yahweh, he looked upon the heart and allowed himself to be
determined solely by the condition of those hearts he encountered. And with the deaf mute now before him,
Jesus, with his fingers in the man’s ears and his saliva on the man’s tongue,
locks eyes with him and communicates everything that needs to be known through
his penetrating gaze.
Desperate faith. The condition of being oppressed usually solicits one of
two responses: desperate faith or desperate self-assurance. The religious establishment had fallen into the latter and mistook their religiosity for true spirituality. Those with desperate faith, though, like the deaf mute, take what little openness they have and cry out for more. And when desperate faith encounters the penetrating gaze of God, openness happens.
Judicious speaking. In the
percolating convergence of silence, contemplative observation, and desperate
faith sounds the word of life. The
word cannot be heard without the previous silence, it doesn’t know what to say
without the observation, and it meets no fertile ground without the desperate
faith. But at just the right moment
your “Ephphatha” comes. Whether it
was a word of affirmation or consolation, a word of correction or rebuke, or a sound of command as we hear in this instance, Jesus
spoke with judicious discernment and precision. Nothing was spared or
superfluous. Cor ad cor loquitur, “heart speaks to heart,” was Jesus’ personal philosophy long before St. Augustine coined the memorable phrase.
Transformative
power. This spoken word releases
power. As the proverb states, “To make an apt answer is a joy to anyone, and a word in season,
how good it is!” And how good it is when someone who sees
our hearts and feels our pain speaks our “Ephphatha!”
These elements to a vital spirituality of openness are, you may have
noticed, particularly monastic. Monks
and other contemplatives should be among the most open of us all, and, maybe,
we should consider such openness as being one of our most precious
gifts to the world. It’s seen in our radical
hospitality and open doors.
It’s experienced in our priority for silence and our listening with open and
hungry hearts. It’s internalized in our attunement to the divine heartbeat and our observant lectio or reading of all that is around us. It’s practiced in our judicious and timely speaking. And, hopefully, it bears fruit in the
transformation of our lives through our common fidelity to this resolute and
radically intentional way of life.
The Cistercian monk, Thomas Keating, in his classic work on centering prayer, Open Mind, Open Heart, teaches us how to grow deeper into this open and full way of being in the world. In his Introduction, Fr. Keating sites Matthew 6:6: “If you want to pray, enter your inner room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” On this foundational verse for a deeper life of prayer, he comments: “Notice the cascading movement in this text into ever deeper states of silence: 1. Leaving behind external tumult, the environment we may be in, and the concerns of the moment by opening the door to our inner room, the spiritual level of our being, the level of intuition and the spiritual will. 2. Closing the door, that is, shutting out and turning off the interior conversation we normally have with ourselves all day long as we judge, evaluate, and react to people and events entering and leaving our lives. 3. Praying in secret to the Father, who speaks to us beyond the sound of words.” The truth of the matter is that there are worlds within each of us that now exist behind closed doors. But through the silence and attentive prodding of our wills in love, God’s Spirit gently, sometimes dramatically, opens doors and invites us in. And from these secret places we discover new depths of being and a quality of life begins to manifest itself that is open and free—like the Open Christ—to live by the law of liberty, the unrestrained, unstoppable law of love that just can’t help itself.
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