The Reverend Carolyn Estrada

Imagine!

You have been deaf – and unable to speak – and now, in the words of Scripture, your ears hear and your tongue has been loosened!

What’s your immediate response?

Manifesting those words from Isaiah, "the tongue of the speechless shall sing for joy!"

You’d shout! You’d sing! You’d engage in conversations! You might even talk when no one was around to hear, simply for the sheer joy of being able to do so!

And you’ve been ordered not to say anything!

Now that you can talk, don’t tell!

Can you even imagine not using your new gift?!

And why wouldn’t Jesus want anyone to know, anyway?!

Aren’t we supposed to share the Good News?!!

Look what Jesus has done!

Look what I can do!

Maybe the issue is – what exactly is the Good News?

Is the Good News that lepers are cured, demons are cast out, the blind can see, the deaf hear, and thousands are fed from a basket of five loaves and two fish – all because of this itinerant preacher who can walk on water?!

Are these visible miracles the stuff of which a new religion was born and grew to such magnitudes?

Were these "signs and wonders," as John calls them, enough to sustain the early Christian martyrs, spawn the ensuing wars and persecutions, and inspire a host of writers, artists, and musicians?

Hardly!

Jesus did not want to attract a consumer-based following: Wow! Have you heard about this guy Jesus?! Look what he can do!

That was not his ministry; that was not his message!

He understood how we humans get lost in our human concerns – have our minds on human things, not on Godly things. In an earlier healing story in Mark – that of the healing of the paralytic – we find a profound examples of this tendency. Friends of the paralytic, frustrated be being able to get near Jesus, have lowered their friend through the roof of the house so that Jesus can heal him.

"Your sins are forgiven you," Jesus says.

"Huh? My sins are forgiven me?!!" you can almost hear him reply. "That’s not why we came to all this trouble to see you! What about my legs? What about WALKING?!"

And Jesus, understanding, compassionate, responding, "Oh, that. Take up your mat and walk."

Jesus knew the human tendency to get caught up in the immediate tangible result, the here-and-now demonstration of power, the miracle-you-can-see: indeed, he was constantly having to explain even to his disciples, his closest followers, that no, he wasn’t going to lead God’s troops into war against the Romans, overthrow the existing government, and give everyone a place of honor in the new regime.

His Good News was about a different kind of healing.

His Good News was about a different kind of power.

His Good News was about the transformed lives which manifest a faith by the way people live.

Jacob Needleman, in his book Lost Christianity, talks about how easy it is for us to get caught up in the signs and symbols of faith – the rituals, the sacraments, the loosening of the tied tongue or the sight in the blind eye – so that those signs take on a life of their own. When we "stop at the symbol," as he says, and fail to see that to which those signs point, when the God beyond, behind, and within the symbol is lost in the symbol itself, we are in fact creating idols.

Occasionally we hear of the brouhaha surrounding the posting of the Ten Commandments in public places such as courtrooms. I recall seeing a cartoon in which a figure labeled "Judge Moore," was bowing worshipfully before a monument to the Ten Commandments. A voice, coming from out of the clouds, was saying, "Yo, Roy! Up here!"

We’ve talked before about the "miracles you can see" and the "miracles you can’t see" – and how the "miracles you can see" flow out of the "miracles you can’t see" – that transformation of the individual life as it responds to the God’s Word, implanted in our hearts.

I read with interest an article about a US State Department study program which brought Muslim scholars from around the world to the U.S. to show off the American way of separating church and state, and to demonstrate how American society is able both to nurture faith traditions and to support religious diversity.

All efforts were made to be hospitable to the Muslim participants, and the prepared schedules and activities were designed to accommodate their daily prayer times. However, the Muslim visitors were shocked to discover that the nearest mosque was a 20 minute drive from where they were meeting.

"In our country," one man said, "there is a mosque on almost every corner. When it is time to pray, you simply walk into the nearest mosque." The Muslims went on to explain that religion was woven into everyday life in their countries, incorporated into innumerable daily practices and behaviors, from the moment they awoke until the time they went to bed. They had difficulty understanding how we could claim to be a religious country and yet keep our religious practices separate from our work and public life.

They raise an important point: how can we claim to be a religious country and yet keep our religious practices separate from our work and public life?

Certainly, if our religious practices are limited to specific spaces, symbols, and rituals – if our religious practice were dependent, for example, on a monument to the Ten Commandments or a particular veneration of the cross or even the hour of pew-time on Sunday morning – the Muslim visitors are right! Such a dichotomy, separating religious practices from work and public life, creates a real split in who we are as people of God.

Fortunately, Jesus’ ministry transcends the particularities of place and practice.

Jesus’ ministry is about the implanted Word which transforms the heart in such a way that the Word becomes Incarnate, is lived in the individual, so that it permeates all of who we are and what we say and do, forming and shaping us as the people of God. We are our religious practice!

Think about it: we are our religious practice!

St. Francis said, "Preach the Gospel at all times. If necessary, use words."

Live the Gospel.

Rarely does the implanted Word come heralded by trumpets.

More likely it comes through the ordinary.

Sometimes it comes with spittle, as in the healing story in today’s Gospel.

Peter Gomes tells the story of Ernest Gordon, for many years dean of the chapel at Princeton, who was captured on the River Kwai during World War II.

"While in a Japanese prison camp, Gordon and his fellow British captives were initially very religious, reading their Bibles, praying, singing hymns, witnessing and testifying to their faith. They were hoping and expecting that God would reward them and fortify them for their faith by freeing them or at least mitigating their captivity. God didn’t deliver, however, and the men became both disillusioned and angry. They gave up on the outward display of their faith; but after a while, as the men began tending to the needs of their fellows – caring for them, protecting the weaker ones and in some cases dying for one another – they began to discern something of a spirit of God in their midst. They discovered that religion was not what you believed, but what you did for others when it seemed that you could do nothing at all."

God’s Word, implanted in their hearts, had taken root and grown and blossomed. It had transformed them, even in the most adverse of circumstances.

God didn’t "fix" the prisoners’ situation – free them or mitigate the conditions of their captivity. Instead, the way in which they lived their faith transformed desperation into hope, and despair into redemption.

Nor did Jesus "fix" the 1^st century world into which he was born – to the dismay of his disciples, who kept expecting the immediate and the dramatic to be done for them, superimposed on life-as-they-knew-it, the old order overturned, dissolved, eradicated.

The transformation of the world comes about not through some magic "out there" – but because of the transformation of the individuals who have received the Word, nurtured it, allowed it to grow and bear fruit; shared it…

Today may our tongues be loosened and may we leap for joy as God Word makes itself manifest in our lives, for this is the Good News that we share, its abundance spilling over to enrich the life of our community.

Amen.