The Twenty-Third Sunday in Ordinary Time September 9, 2018
Fr. Albert St. Peter’s, New Iberia
Some of my favorite videos on the internet are the ones that show somebody experiencing something for the first time. A few such videos feature Cochlear implants and lets you see what it’s like for someone hear for the first time in their life. Put yourself in that place. Never knowing sound and then… *snap* sound rushes in and a whole new dimension of reality becomes available to you.
You know what happens almost every time? The person lights up and then crumbles into tears. They are overwhelmed with the new experience, with the joy and they’re sometimes even a little embarrassed. I often get choked up just watching it.
And that’s in today, when we almost expect technology to come up with these kinds of solutions. Can you imagine what amazement this would cause 2000 years ago? Back then, being deaf meant always missing out on most of what was going on. No sign language, no implants, no accessibility standards. Then comes Jesus of Nazareth, the miracle-worker; The crowd begs him to do something. Like the millions of YouTube viewers, this crowd is eager to see something amazing.
But Jesus doesn’t care what the crowd wants. He sees this man. He knows, 2000 years before Cochlear implants, what it’s like for a person to hear for the first time. It is immense. It is personal. It really ought to be private. So, he takes him aside away from the gawking crowd to a place where he can experience this moment in its fullness without the embarrassment of becoming an unwitting spectacle to be shared and liked and commented upon. He preserves the intimacy of this moment.
And that so often is the way of Christ. Intimate, personal, genuine. He even follows this miracle with a request to keep it quiet, to prevent the publicity from taking the focus away from what matters. Don’t misunderstand, Jesus is not trying to exclude community from his mission, but he is trying to avoid the carelessness of the mob.
And yet, this private moment has its place in the cosmic plan of salvation. It directly fulfills a prophecy, the exact same prophecy we hear in the first reading. It foretells God’s coming to bring vindication and salvation to his people. By clearing the “ears of the deaf” and allowing the “tongue of the mute to sing,” Jesus is hinting at the reality of his identity – that he is not just the messiah, but that he is God, the Divine Son of the Eternal Father.
The God of the universe, beyond all space and time, made himself into a single man at a single time in history where he healed people and spoke to them as individuals. The infinite power of the finger of God was “wasted” on the time it took for Jesus to stick his finger in the ear of a single deaf man. Why not snap your fingers and heal everyone? Because our God is a Trinity, which means that at the heart of his identity is relationship, a personal and intimate exchange between the Three Divine Persons who are yet one God.
And relationship has to be particular. It has to be specific. For human beings with their bodies and limits, it is concrete, physical, and even a little gross. It’s true with two ordinary people who love each other and it’s true of God’s love for us. Jesus does spit on his finger and touch the man’s tongue… It might seem strange, yet we have the opportunity to receive the very body and blood of that same man on our tongues every Sunday, every day even. This particularity, this physical intimacy is a part of the scandal of God’s love.
And this paradoxical dynamic between the personal intimacy of the miracle and the public proclamation of divine salvation points us to a very important part of our own relationship with God… and with the whole Church. Though we have a worldwide organization with all it’s money, power, and publicity, God always sees each of us. The Truth and the Sacraments and Scripture all come to us through the institution of the Church and through the community, yet God encounters each of us individually in that.
Some of the most profound work a priest does is in the inefficient, time-consuming, and sometimes tedious practice of hearing confessions; one at a time. The Eucharist is consecrated on a single altar and we have to take the time to distribute it to each person. Why not wave our hands and absolve everyone? Why just start with the host in everyone’s hands and consecrate it from a distance? Because we are human and God loves us as humans and became a human being in order to manifest that divine-human love to us.
So, what does that mean? What do you do with that? Take care of your business. You want fix the country? Take time to talk, face-to-face with your neighbors. You want to change the world? Go home and love your family? You want to save the Church from this mess? Then be a friend to the parishioner two pews over whose name you’ve never even heard. Your private prayer really does help the world. Your hidden fasts and sacrifices really do benefit the whole church. Your intimate acts of kindness and charity to unimportant people truly are more important than clever media campaigns and pretty speeches. Jesus lived 33 years, yet we know very, very few details from that time, what he said and did. You may well live only 25 years and die in obscurity but be holier and more effective than cardinals and popes at spreading the Gospel.
Do you want to be successful? Do you want to be happy? Then be holy! Be holy as a personal friend of Jesus Christ. Be holy as a faithful follower of the Church, even when her leaders are not faithful. Be holy as a kind Christian who loves the person in front of them, not as an idea or a photo op, but as a person with flesh and blood, hopes and fears, body and soul. And come again and again to the shockingly personal reality of the Eucharist, to the time-wasting, but infinitely powerful encounter in confession. God is here now. Will you let Him to cure your deafness? Will you let Him stick His finger in your ear through personal – and often uncomfortable – experiences of a faith that is spiritual yet physical, communal yet intimate?
Truly, he has done all things well. He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. But only if we let Him…