Jesus “said to him, ‘Ephphatha’, that is, ‘Be opened’“ (NRSV, Mark 7:34)

The healing of the deaf man who had a speech impediment is remarkable in that it showed that Jesus was concerned wholly with the deaf man as a person.  He took him aside from the crowd as an individual.  He indicated to him his purpose in so doing by putting his fingers into the man’s ears, and touching his tongue with saliva which was popularly supposed to have curative properties.  He looked up to heaven to show that the cure would be the work of God and not a piece of magic.  And then he addressed the man himself and said to him, “Be opened”, as though the man was in a locked room, shut off from the outside world.  Thus Jesus made it plain that he was interested in the whole man, not just his organs of hearing and speech.

Communication by hearing and speech is an important part of forming and maintaining a relationship with other people.  And that is true also of our relationship with God where such communication is not merely important but essential.

We were born spiritually deaf and spiritually dumb and we have to rely on God to enable us to communicate with him.  In this connection Jesus said something which was most revealing.  It occurred almost incidentally in his Discourse on the Bread of Life in the synagogue at Capernaum.  “No one” he said “can come to me unless drawn by the Father who sent me…” (NRSV, John 6:44, our emphasis).  It is always God who takes the initiative.  And Our Lord went on, “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me” (NRSV, John 6:45, our emphasis).  In that context to hear is to perceive, to learn is to take to heart.

How, then, does the Father actually speak to us, within our innermost selves?  For an answer to that question we turn to the experience of the prophet Elijah.  Elijah had fled for his life to Horeb, the Mount of God.  There the Lord made himself known to him.  First there was a violent and destructive wind, then an earthquake, and then a fire; but the Lord was not in any of them.  Lastly, there was “a still small voice” (King James Bible, 1 Kings 19:12).  The original Hebrew is much more expressive: “there was sound of gentle stillness”.

And that is how the Father today draws us to his Son.  If we call it a voice, it is almost imperceptible.  Yet it is too insistent to pass unnoticed, but not so compelling that it cannot be disregarded.

That word ‘draw’ really means ‘pull’.  It is used in the Gospels for pulling a net full of fish on to the beach.  It implies the possibility of resistance: “No one can come to me unless pulled by the Father”, influencing, modifying, changing one’s basic assumptions and one’s attitude to life; but all the time pointing us to his Son.  And if we seek to put into one simple sentence what the Father is telling us to do, we find the answer in the Father’s injunction to the three Apostles at the Transfiguration: “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (NRSV, Mark 9:7, our emphasis).

And when one responds to the Father’s inner pull by hearing and learning – perceiving and taking to heart what he is teaching us in that sound of gentle stillness – then we become conscious of his Son’s pull on us.  In Holy Week Jesus said to the crowd of Passover pilgrims in the Temple, “…I, when I am lifted up from the earth,” – that is, on the Cross – “will draw all people to myself” (NRSV, John 12:32, our emphasis).  And significantly that word ‘draw’ is again the same word meaning ‘pull’: I will pull all people to myself – not pull everybody but people of every sort.  For we have to recognise that those who do not listen to the Father will not listen to his Son either.  The one deafness leads to the other.

But once we take to heart the Father’s word, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” (NRSV, Mark 9:7), the situation is quite different.  If Jesus is the Father’s beloved Son, then he must be our beloved Lord and Saviour.  And we know what he says because we have it all set out for us in the Gospels.

However, the reality is that very few accept his written words and apply them to themselves.  That need not surprise us, when we remember that throughout his ministry in Palestine he met with exactly the same response to his spoken words.  He described the popular attitude to him and his teaching by quoting the prophet Isaiah: “seeing they do not perceive, and hearing they do not listen, nor do they understand” (NRSV, Matthew 13:13).

The real reason for that attitude was that the people generally rejected the moral content of his preaching, in spite of the fact that they found the preaching itself enthralling.  As St Luke says of Our Lord’s audiences in Jerusalem, “…all the people were spellbound by what they heard” (NRSV, Luke 19:48).  However, it is also Luke who records a challenging question which Jesus put to a huge crowd in Galilee: “Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord’, and do not do what I tell you?” (NRSV, Luke 6:46).

Included in what Jesus told them was his call to repent, to give up their present attitude of thinking and living as they fancied, and instead to place themselves under the Sovereign Rule of God.  Then, as now, most of his listeners found that idea singularly unattractive.

The message of Jesus is extremely simple.  To repent, to believe in him, to love him and to obey him.  In that message the spiritual and moral dimensions are inextricably entwined – we cannot have fellowship with him unless we love him; we cannot love him unless we obey him.

Neither the spiritual nor the moral finds favour today.  And regrettably there are those Christian writers and preachers, both clerical and lay, who are willing enough to cater for the general worldliness by changing and adapting the Gospel, toning down – or dismissing – much of its moral content so as to make it easy on the secular ear.

Whatever else it may be, it is not the word of God.  That is contained in the New Testament and supremely in the Gospel record of the words of the Father’s beloved Son.  And for those who have ears to hear, that written word carries forward within their innermost being what “the sound of gentle stillness” first set in motion, informing their conscience and deepening their faith.  In St Paul’s words, “…faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the word of Christ” (NRSV, Romans 10:17).

Let us conclude with the Collect for the Festival of St Bartholomew (August 24th):

“Almighty and everlasting God,
who gave to your apostle Bartholomew grace
        truly to believe and to preach your word:
grant that your Church
may love that word which he believed
and may faithfully preach and receive the same;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever”.  Amen (1)

1. © The Archbishops’ Council (2000) Common Worship Collects and Post Communions for Festivals July to December, contemporary language.  Available from:
http://www.churchofengland.org/prayer-worship/worship/texts/collects-and-post-communions/contemporary-language/julytodec.aspx (Accessed 13 August 2012) (Internet).