The miracle of healing that is at the centre of this Sunday’s Gospel makes clear that Christ is the longed-for Messiah, who brings in a new age, a time of deliverance, of freedom from bondage, a time of restoration. The healing of the deaf and dumb man points us to the prophecies of Isaiah, from which we heard in our first reading, which proclaim a return of God’s people from Exile, a time of healing and restoration, of plenty and of a new life with God and with each other. So, Christ’s healing of the deaf and dumb man is a sign that in Christ and in what Christ does this new age is coming to be a reality. Through Christ human beings can have deliverance and a restored life.
The news is truly good, and yet its demonstration is a little unexpected. There are no dramatic gestures and signs from heaven. No rolling thunder, no flashes of lightning, to accompany such works of power. Instead Christ puts his fingers into his ears and puts his spittle onto his tongue, before commanding him to be healed. It’s all very up close and personal. And very earthly.
By its sheer physicality this healing makes very real for us the fact of the bodily Incarnation of the Son of God. Christ is God made present for the people of his time as a human being, a man very much of flesh and blood, and he interacted with other human beings of flesh and blood in very physical ways. The graphic details of the healing of the deaf and dumb man emphasize and make very evident that the incarnate Son of God is a real physical human being. We even have recorded the very words Christ spoke, the Aramaic word, ‘Ephphatha’ ‘Be opened,’ preserved across all the centuries for us.
Fingers in the ears and spittle on the tongue aren’t glorious or romantic, but they are a sign that what is humble and very earthly can become the means by which God’s grace is given to us. In the same way water, oil, bread, and wine, can become the reality of God’s presence with us. The very ordinary, physical, actions of Our Lord are a foreshadowing of the sacraments he was to give to his Church.
But it is also a reminder that God usually comes to us, not in a voice like thunder from heaven, or a shining vision of light, dazzling our eyes. But in the apparently mundane events of our daily lives, in the everyday beauty of the world around us, and in the words and touch of those images of his with which we are surrounded.
Fr Chris Denham
