2436AFC090624 – Ephphatha!
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Isaiah 35:4-5 – (GNT) [1]
4 Tell everyone who is discouraged,
“Be strong and don’t be afraid!
God is coming to your rescue,
coming to punish your enemies.”
5 The blind will be able to see,
and the deaf will hear.
Psalm 146:5-9 –
5 Happy are those whose help is the God of Jacob,
whose hope is in the Lord their God,
6 who made heaven and earth,
the sea, and all that is in them;
who keeps faith forever;
7 who executes justice for the oppressed;
who gives food to the hungry.
The Lord sets the prisoners free;
8 the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.
The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;
the Lord loves the righteous.
9 The Lord watches over the strangers;
he upholds the orphan and the widow,
but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.
James 2:1, 5 – 1 My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism, really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ? 5 Listen, my beloved brothers and sisters. Has not God chosen the poor in the world to be rich in faith and to be heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him?
Mark 7:33-35 – 33 He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. 34 Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,*” that is, “Be opened.” 35 And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
Matthew 4:23 – 23 Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people.
* ἐφφαθά (ephphatha) {ef-fath-ah‘} This is a Greek transliteration of an Aramaic word which means “Be open,” אָפִחַח in Aramaic; in Hebrew is paqach (paw-kakh’)
ʻŌmea, I pray that you will let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving praise and thanks to God the Father through Christ in the powerful gentility of the Holy Spirit. Our title today is a word most of us will never hear, even if we are present when it is spoken. It occurs only once in the New Testament, and that is in today’s Gospel Key Verse. It is unusual because it is an Aramaic word, a word so specifically appropriate to the situation that it was included into the Greek text of the Gospel of Mark.
Another, similarly powerful occurrence of Aramaic is in Mark 5:41 – 41 He took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha cum*,” which means, “Little girl, get up!” *other translations spell this as koum. Other Aramaic words in the New Testament include Abba, the phrase Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?, Jesus’ plea from the cross. Among the remaining Aramaic words is raca an insult in Jesus” day among Jews, it meant (in our vernacular) “airhead.” Aramaic words which occur in the Gospels of Mark and Matthew illustrate that Jesus spoke to God as his father in common, everyday words, and did not use obscure “magic spells” for that purpose. Aramaic was the common, day-to-day language at that time; Hebrew was mostly ceremonial for worship and (in a sense) politics when arguing over religious interpretations of the Law.
Why was this obscure word chosen? To begin answering that question we need to go back to The Beginning – actually the beginning of the end – in Genesis 3:4-5 – 4 But the serpent said to the woman, “You will not die; 5 for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” We can see by the context that the word opened does not refer to a physical occurrence, but rather a perceptual one. it might be paraphrased as “you will perceive and comprehend,” or “you will experience the realization that….” The verb and/or adverb OPEN occurs in that particular sense in many Scriptural passages in both the Old Testament and the New Testament – in the Old Testament as paqach (paw-kakh’), and in Greek as dianoigó as in Mark 7:34, or anoigó as in Luke 1:64. Dianoigó means “completely opened,” as in freed, liberated, no longer impeded and is often used in a contextual sense. Anoigo, on the other hand, means a physical opening, like opening the mouth of a fish (See Matthew 17:27), or a door (See Luke 11:10), or The heavens (See Acts 7:56).
Ephphatha, is like the Greek word dianoigo; it means completely opened and emptied of all obstructions. The man was deaf and had a speech impediment, yet after Jesus’ clear command in the common language of the man and the people around him, the man was completely cured, and spoke and heard perfectly. Mark makes a very convincing point that it is Jesus who affects that cure, and that he did it without employing anything but his own power. His actions form the basis for the Ephphatha Rite.
The Ephphatha rite is included in the Baptismal rite for the Baptism of infants, and can be included as an optional rite for the Baptism of adults in the Order for the Christian Initiation of Adults. In either rite, the Priest touches the person with his thumb and says, “The Lord Jesus made the deaf hear and the dumb speak. May he soon touch your ears (he signs the cross on each ear) and your mouth (he signs the closed lips) to proclaim his faith, to the praise and glory of God the Father.” In this we see the signification that one needs the Grace of God to hear and to proclaim the Gospel. This “opening” is in the sense of dianoigo. It is a spiritual inauguration in anticipation of future encounters with the Lord in Word and Sacrament. It is a complete opening which anticipates the faithful attention to keeping one’s ears open – for “faith comes by hearing, and hearing from the Word of God (See Romans 10:17) – and prepare our lips to address praise to God as in Psalm 51:15 and Hebrews 13:15. These are both good “memory verses” for reflecting on what we should be doing with our speech. See also James 3:5-12 for some insights into what happens when we fail to follow through on the leading we receive in the Ephphatha rite as our obligation to praise, thank, and love God.
As we see in our Key Verse from Isaiah, there is a longstanding promise that God will open the ears of the deaf and bless the eyes of the blind. These things are impossible for earthlings to command, but for God, nothing is impossible. The Key Verses from Psalm 146 show us that God is faithful, he has created everything, he brings justice to the oppressed, he frees those who are imprisoned. He lifts up those who are burdened, and loves the righteous. The Lord watches over the disenfranchised, but for those who are collaborators in wickedness he rains down on them their just rewards of ruin by sword, fire, and pestilence. That sounds particularly severe in this modern age – especially if we consider the laissez-faire attitude so many people have, the loosey-goosey, ambivalent, relativism of “What’s true for you may not be true for me.”
Now, there’s a terrible sin! It is a true saying that “What we do says who we are. Actions speak louder than words.” We recognize that when people are denying God, they are denying that there is a knowable Truth. It is, in fact, the Truth Eve and Adam wrongly believed they could access on their own. In Matthew 7:15-17 (GNT) 1, Jesus tells his Disciples (and therefore us, Belovéd) – 15 “Be on your guard against false prophets; they come to you looking like sheep on the outside, but on the inside they are really like wild wolves. 16 You will know them by what they do. Thorn bushes do not bear grapes, and briers do not bear figs. 17 A healthy tree bears good fruit, but a poor tree bears bad fruit.” Who are the false Prophets today? Look around us; they are everywhere in everything, even where we least expect them.
They have a lot of different job titles – brownnoser, suck-up, apple-polisher, back-scratcher, teacher’s pet, lackey, minion, knave, politician, wolf in sheep’s clothing, sycophant, all of them fit the term con artist – you get the idea. These are people who will tell you anything they think you want to know. These are people who court our loyalty through favoritism. They make us feel important either by well-worn flattery, or by belittling and devaluing others. If we are honest about our past, we know that, at some time, we have all been trying to make wine from snowflakes. In doing so we miss out on being rich in faith and [becoming] heirs of the kingdom that he has promised to those who love him.
Alrighty, we’ve gone a long way ‘round to get to the purpose of this. Why choose “Ephphatha!?” That word, that concept, was chosen because of the Greek word, dianoigó. Wa-a-a-y up at the top I wrote it is about “completely opened,” as in freed, liberated, no longer impeded and is often used in a contextual sense. Now, think back through the histories and prophecies in the Old Testament, the parables and letters in the New Testament. Do they not tell us to be open to whatever God sends us, to be prepared to communicate in whichever way he chooses? We definitely want our ears open to hear the Word and our lips liberated for proclaiming the Word. We want our tongues to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. We want every possible “catchment system” in our lives to be valid ways to receive and share the word.
What is the value in opening our hearts “just a little bit” to let in a ray of Sonshine when we can throw open the tabernacles of our hearts and let in the Light of the World – Jesus? Couldn’t we let ἐφφαθά open more than just our ears and mouths, our hearing and speaking. Could we let it be the opening of our agape – ἀγάπη – Love, the unconditional Love God shows to us in giving his Only Begotten Son as reparation for OUR sins? Come on, we’ve all got them, and some of them are doozies. Every single one of them can and will be forgiven for those who are willing to go to a one-on-one with Jesus as this unnamed man did. That’s something we can do – be willing to go – but look what else happened.
Sunday’s reading stars with verse 31 in Mark 7. Here are verses 31-32 (↔ Click Link) :
31 Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. 32 They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. SOMEONE took the man to Jesus so that the man might be touched – and healed – by Jesus. Might that be a role we are called upon to take up, to Ephphatha our hearts in compassion, and lead someone else to Jesus’ loving touch and gentle but mind-blowing healing?
What if Ephphatha became the one word that characterized what we do? Would that tell the World who we are? Putting it another way, if we were arrested for being Christians, would there be enough evidence to convict us? And so I invite all of us to pray for those who are indeed Christians, and who are indeed arrested, imprisoned, tortured, and sometimes executed because they are Christians. What would their Ephphatha look like? Does ours look that open to God’s will? Jesus took the man aside, away from all the hubbub and gave him what he needed. If it came right down to that, would I, would you, would we be willing to say, “Yeah, I’m open to that?” Well then, Ephphatha!! Open me! (↔ Music Link)
And remember, IYDKYDK, so Listen Up and open up with everything you’ve got! (Yeah. You better click that link.)
Whatever, whenever, wherever, whoever, however, if ever, forever —
at your service, Belovéd!
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Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture passages are from the New Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition (NRSVCE) New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright © 1989, 1993 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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Aloha Friday Messages by Charles O. Todd, III is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
[1] Passages marked (GNT): Good News Translation (GNT) are from the Good News Translation® (Today’s English Version, Second Edition)© 1992 American Bible Society. All rights reserved. For more information about GNT, visit www.bibles.com and www.gnt.bible.
