Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time, September 8, 2024 - Isaiah 35:4-7A; James 2:1-5; Mark 7:31-37
Some time ago, I went to have a hearing test, and they discovered that I have a severe hearing loss in one or two pitches at the highest level. And so, I was fitted with a set of hearing aids. I had to go back several times while they adjusted the hearing aids, so it was just those pitches that I was able to hear better. I am sure all of you have also had the experience of going to the eye doctor and being fitted for glasses. It’s, “Is it this one or this one that’s better? This one or this one?” And the thing is that, in both of those cases, there’s a gradual improvement. With glasses you never get a lighter set of glasses, you always get one that is a stronger prescription. But, over the course of time, the doctors are able to adjust and adjust and adjust and fix things better. That idea of gradualness in healing is something that we are going to use to help understand today’s gospel and the setting of today’s gospel.
If Jesus had GPS, and he was going from Tyre into Sidon in order to get to the Sea of Galilee, the GPSs would have kept saying, “Recalculating. Recalculating.” because you can’t get there from here, so to speak. What Jesus has done is taken a deliberate detour. Tyre and Sidon are over by the Mediterranean Sea. And he wants to get back to the Sea of Galilee, which is inland. Instead of going inland, he goes up further along the seacoast to Sidon, which takes him further away from Galilee, then goes across and back down, and then this way to the Sea of Galilee. Obviously taking a circuitous route. And Mark wants us to understand that because he wants to keep Jesus in non-Jewish territory for as long as possible. In Gentile territory, where the non-believers live.
And this part of Mark’s gospel is one of Mark’s favorite devices. He makes a sandwich. Remember, back a couple weeks ago, we had the thing about the centurion’s child. They come and tell Jesus, he’s on his way, and then some lady comes up in the crowd, he heals the lady, and then they finally get to the synagogue official’s house. This is the same sort of thing. It’s actually, literally, between two pieces of bread.
The first part of the story was the multiplication of the loaves and fishes for the five thousand people. Right after that, Jesus and his followers are in a boat, in a storm, and they panic and say, “Don’t you care that we’re about to sink?” And Jesus, who was asleep, gets up and calms the storm. And then Mark says they completely misunderstood what was going on. They were awestruck, but they had no clue as to why Jesus could do this.
Then, Jesus meets, in succession, a whole bunch of people in pagan territory. The first one he meets is a woman whose daughter is ill. And the woman wants Jesus to cure the daughter. And Jesus says to her, very rudely, “I was called only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” And his disciples say, “Chase her away. Make her stop bothering us.” But she persists, and Jesus gets uglier. He says, “It’s not right to take the food of the children and toss it to the dogs.” And she says to him, “Please, even the dogs eat what drops off the plates of the children.” and he says to her, “Woman, you have incredible faith. Let it be as you have asked.”
Moving on, he then meets this guy in today’s gospel. And notice what he does. He takes the man away from the crowd, so no one can see him perform the miracle. It’s almost like he’s embarrassed to be caught performing another miracle for pagans.
And, right after this story, comes another multiplication of the loaves and fishes. Here he is, caught in pagan territory, with a large crowd to feed, and he repeats the miracle. Right after he repeats the miracle, they get back in the boat again. And there’s a big commotion in the boat. And Jesus says, “What are you arguing about this time.” They say, “We’ve forgotten to bring bread.” It’s a ludicrous statement. Jesus has just fed four thousand people with a couple loaves of bread, and they are worrying because they don’t have enough bread in the boat. And he says to them, “Do you not yet understand?” Do you not yet understand?
Right after that, they’re back home in Jewish territory, and he’s asked to cure a blind man. He makes mud, and he smears it on the guy’s eyes, and then he washes it off and he says, “Can you see now?” And the man says, “Well, I can see something. But the people look like stick figures.” And Jesus repeats the process a second time. He says, “Now how do you see?” “Oh, now I can see clearly.”
And that’s the moral of this whole long episode, from bread to bread. It’s about seeing clearly. And the disciples now begin to understand who Jesus is. And in the very next episode, Jesus will then reveal to them that he will be crucified and rise. Because, up until that time, they could not hear that message.
And that’s what these stories are about. They’re about coming to understand, from non-belief to belief, from lack of understanding to understanding. And even Jesus has to grow in his understanding of his mission. He started out thinking that he shouldn’t do any miracles among the pagans because he was called to preach to the Jews, and he ends up doing the most marvelous of miracles among them because he has grown in his understanding of what God, his father, wants him to do.
Sometimes, we don’t see. It could be because we can’t see, or it might be because we don’t want to see. Sometimes we don’t hear. It could be because we can’t hear, or it could be because we don’t want to hear. Being unable to see or hear means there is something outside of ourselves that is blocking our being open. Not wanting to see or hear means that we ourselves are blocking further understanding. Notice what Jesus said to the deaf man. As he put his fingers in his ears he said, “Be open.” Be open.
Sometimes we need to pray that God will help us to see what we don’t want to see, to hear what we don’t want to hear, to be able to see what, so far, we’ve been unable to see, to be able to hear what, so far, we’ve been unable to hear.