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Touch, Matter, Groaning

Touch, Matter, Groaning

Last updated on: September 9, 2018 at 2:32 am by Mary Pezzulo

Touch, Matter, Groaning 2018-09-09T02:32:14-04:00 Mary Pezzulo

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Again Jesus left the district of Tyre
and went by way of Sidon to the Sea of Galilee,
into the district of the Decapolis.
And people brought to him a deaf man who had a speech impediment
and begged him to lay his hand on him.
He took him off by himself away from the crowd.
He put his finger into the man’s ears
and, spitting, touched his tongue;
then he looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him,
“Ephphatha!”— that is, “Be opened!” —
And immediately the man’s ears were opened,
his speech impediment was removed,
and he spoke plainly.
He ordered them not to tell anyone.
But the more he ordered them not to,
the more they proclaimed it.
They were exceedingly astonished and they said,
“He has done all things well.
He makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

The miracle is not in the command. It could have been, but it wasn’t. The miracle is in the touch, the spittle, the raising eyes to Heaven, the groaning, and then the command. Christ put His fingers into the man’s ears first; then He spit and touched his tongue; then He looked up to Heaven to His almighty Father, as He would do again when He broke the bread at that last Passover before the covenant was fulfilled. Then He groaned, that most primal expression of suffering that humans share with animals. Then He spoke the command, “Ephphatha, be opened.” Then the man heard, and spoke plainly, and nothing could stop the story from being proclaimed.

In the beginning when God created the Heavens and the Earth, the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And God said let there be light, and there was light. God created the light and the Heavenly bodies to contain the light; He created the earth and the sky and the deep and the animals with a word, but human beings He did not create with a word. He consulted with Himself, the Trinity looking at the Trinity and planning; Heaven looking up to Heaven and plotting: “Let us make Man in our own image and likeness.” He fashioned us with His hands, out of the soil that had recently been watered with the new rivers in Eden. He breathed life into the man. He didn’t put the life there some other way– He breathed the life Himself. Then He commanded the human person to have stewardship over the earth. The earth and its fullness were made by speaking a command, but human beings were made of looking up to Heaven, touch, matter, groaning; that is how we came to be. Then He gave us a command, and that is how we understood our purpose. Then He gave a second command, not to touch the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and we disobeyed.

He could have called us into being with a word, but He did not. He used touch, matter, groaning and then the command, because we were made in His image and destined to be one with Him. He could have abandoned or annihilated us after we disobeyed, but He did not. He waited until the time was right to become one with us and dwell among us anyway, even though it would hurt Him.

When the time was right to begin to make us one with Himself, God could have done it with a word, but He did not. Instead He became a human person– a thing with a soul and a body made of matter, of atoms arranged in a certain way, a thing subject to change and to time and to suffering the way we humans are. He became Man.

And we know that He is God by this sign: when we brought Him the deaf man who could not speak intelligibly, He did not merely give a command. He touched him. He used matter– the spittle from His mouth. He looked up to Heaven, God consulting with God. He groaned, letting out His breath on the man. And only then did He give the command– Ephphatha, be opened. And it was true; the man heard and understood His word, and the man spoke intelligibly. He gave another command, not to say what had happened, and the man disobeyed. Just as it was in the beginning, so it was when they brought this man to Christ.

Christ took that man’s disability on Himself. He did not speak before the Sanhedrin and before Herod, when the right speech might have saved Him. When He spoke to Pilate He did not speak words that Pilate could understand. He could not hear the Father’s eternal profession of love, God consulting with God, Heaven speaking to Heaven, on Calvary, and He felt Himself alone. He didn’t have to do any of this. He could have given that man the ability to hear and speak in any other way. He could have saved that man’s soul and ours in any other way. But He chose to be a deaf man who did not speak intelligibly, that we should always see Him in people who are deaf, in people who cannot speak, and in every other kind of human person.

He chose to live a human life, that we would know Him in our own human lives, in the things that we have and the things that we see around us, and we still find Him there. He can still be found among us in that dreadful mystery of meeting a person who is different than we are, who experiences the world differently than we do, whose speech we can’t immediately understand. He can still be found among us in matter and in our senses, in the touch between one human being in another, in raising our eyes to Heaven, in our groans of pain, and in pondering His command. All of these are sacred things, because they are things Christ had and did.

Whoever has ears, let him hear. The miracle is not in the command. The miracle is in the touch, the spittle, the raising eyes to Heaven, the groaning, and then the command.

(image via Pixabay)

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