Sometimes It Takes More Than Hearing to Believe

Mark 7:31-37

 

        Growing old is not for the faint at heart. When you get to be our age the hardest thing about exercise is getting up off the floor once we have finished. Of course that is just the beginning of our problems. Remember when we had a lot more energy. Remember when we never forgot where we left our car keys.  Of course the universal malady of folks our age is loss of hearing. I took my grandson to a baseball game in Washington last month. Because of his age he is required to ride in the back seat. Because of his excitement he talked almost the entire trip. Because of his soft voice and my aging ears, my response was always, “Uh-huh”. I have no idea what he said or what I agreed to do. When I later complained to Deb that Andy speaks too softly, she rolled her eyes as if to say, “Who’s calling the kettle black?”

        In Mark 7 Jesus encounters a man who cannot hear. His lack of hearing left him with the inability to speak. Imagine his world of silence. For those of us who are able to both listen and speak, choosing silence can be a remarkable gift. Often my favorite part of worship is when we take time after announcements to just sit quietly. It is as if we are saying, “OK God, we have done all the preliminary stuff. Now we are ready for You to enter our space.” It seems more and more silence has become a luxury. It is good to have a place we can cherish quiet holy moments.

But for this man, silence was a curse which defined his very being. When one cannot hear, vocational opportunities are limited. Being deaf excludes a person from the normal activities of everyday life. But being deaf was even worse in the culture which in which this man lived. Many folks believed his illness was the result of immoral behavior. Because he was deaf he was shunned and excluded. He never had the chance to experience common decency.

But something else we often take for granted was eliminated from him. Imagine life without music. Tuesday I was traveling back from Charlottesville after visiting a jail and nursing homes. The stories I hear can sometimes suck the very life out of my soul so I turned on our very eclectic Public Radio Station. Right on cue the DJ announced, “I think we all need a breath of fresh air”. She then played twenty five uninterrupted minutes of Eva Cassidy. While that name may not be familiar to some of you, I suspect each of you with ears to hear has adopted one or more particular artists who transcend any chaotic moment with melodies that must have been crafted in heaven. This poor deaf man had never experienced such joy, until Jesus arrived.

Jesus did more than just heal the sick. He gave them hope. Furthermore, Jesus always healed in public because there was a lot of other healing and joy that needed to be spread around. Before Jesus healed the man, he didn’t give him a lesson on morality.  To everyone else the man was unclean, even untouchable.  But Jesus reached out and placed his hands on the man’s ears. This gesture was done for the sake of the community. Jesus did not see the man as a sinner. By ignoring the purity laws Jesus confirmed that the man was, and had always been, a child of God.

We can snicker at the ignorance of this primitive culture but don’t laugh too loud. Even as advanced as we are in the art of civilization we are still social isolationists. Sometimes when a person can no longer care for herself she is seen as a burden to society. I am so grateful to the many of you who visit hospitals and nursing homes. The infirmities of folks who are sick cannot compare with the isolation they often experience. But when you visit, when you call, when you send a card, you remind them that they have not been forgotten. I was with Nancy Small at the Martha Jefferson Home Tuesday. On leaving she said to me, “Louie I haven’t been to Rockfish in so long do you think people still know who I am?” I pointed to the birthday cards many of you sent which are displayed by her door. I smiled and said, “They remember you.”

The words and actions of Jesus were music, not only to the ears of the man who was deaf, but to the hearts of the people who witnessed the miracle. They were overwhelmed by the presence of Jesus the Healer. They lived in a culture that demonized a man because of a physical ailment. Jesus broke cultural protocol by touching him. Then Jesus defied the laws of logic by restoring his hearing. The witnesses not only wanted to proclaim the miracle, they wanted to declare Jesus as the Christ because he was destroying cultural traditions and barriers with a single word. Their entire lives they had been told to obey the law. Now this teacher with the power to heal introduced them to a new song.

And that brings me back to Eva Cassidy. In her brief musical career she seldom sang her own songs. She took classics that had been recorded numerous times and somehow made it her own.  Everyone here has heard Judy Garland sing Over the Rainbow. Garland sang it as a child and it was probably the encore for her last concert.  It was The Great Diva’s signature piece.  Twenty years ago a friend gave me a copy of Songbird. He told me the CD had been recorded by a little known singer in the DC areas who had died two years earlier of cancer. Posthumously her version of Over the Rainbow was played on a London radio station. Instantly Eva Cassidy became an international star.  We had heard the songs she sang before but we had never heard them sung quite that way.

When Jesus arrived he did not say anything new. He regularly quoted Jewish Scripture. He told stories that many folks had already heard. His material was not unique; it was just the way he delivered it.  The Rabbi would come out on the Sabbath and proclaim, “You shall not do this and you shall not do that.” Jesus would say, “If you have two coats and someone is in need, keep them from becoming a thief by giving them your second coat.” The Pharisee would proclaim, “The Sabbath is holy. You shall not prepare food on the Sabbath. You shall not wash dishes on the Sabbath. You shall not do anything that brings joy on the Sabbath.” Jesus said, “God gave us the Sabbath in order that at least one day a week we might relax and celebrate each other.”

You would think that everyone would listen to Jesus and ignore the voice of the Rabbi and Pharisee. But the Bible has been preached rather than sung for so many years we have become deaf to the good news.

The Bible has become a hammer rather than an ointment that soothes our wounded souls. It has become a voice of condemnation rather than an instrument of peace and reconciliation. Folks who only lecture the Bible have become deaf to its liberating songs causing folks to run from the Church because they are tired of being damned. Do we really need another shrill voice filling our ears with holy condemnations based on narrow-mindedness and inaccurate readings of God’s Joyful Word? So many erroneous interpretations of the text have left us deaf.

  For the last two years, once a month I visit Jessie Crossain. He is an inmate in the Buckingham Jail. He was sentenced to 30  years for a capital crime. He will receive no parole. As a youth Jessie occasionally went to Church. In jail he has studied Buddhism and Transcendental Meditation.   Six months ago he told me he wanted to read the Bible from cover to cover. I asked him why? He said he had a lot of free time on his hands. He read Genesis and told me it was the biggest BS he had ever encountered. I told him to read it again with his ears and eyes wide open, expecting to be surprised with every turn of the page. The next month he came back and said, “Abraham, Jacob, and Joseph were worse than me but God still loved them.” As of last week, we have made it all the way through Esther. Next month we start of Job. For Jesse, the Bible has become good news in an angry and dangerous world.

Sometimes we stumble upon moments when we cannot hear God. Sometimes the words folks claim God is speaking leaves us weary. Sometimes the so called Good News just seems like old news repackaged.  Then sometimes we hear the Bible in a way that reminds us of Eva Cassidy singing Over the Rainbow.

That is when we are brave enough to pick up our Bible again. That is when we dare to come to the text with curious eyes and open ears. With all the white noise and clutter on your personal airways, perhaps you are finally ready to listen to an old tune sung to an entirely different melody. Come talk to me and we will do it together. Come to SS at 9:00 and you can do it with others. Just pick the Bible up prepared to encounter more than the same old story. You will be amazed with what you discover.