Homily for 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time
Our first reading today from the prophet Isaiah has a very familiar ring to it. Isaiah, with his redeeming promises, is read regularly during the season of Advent. Isaiah is writing for the exiled Israelites. He is trying to keep their spirits up, to put new heart into them, to plant in them the hope that one day they will be returned to their own land. This return, this redemption, will manifest itself spectacularly in wounded humanity: "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, the ears of the deaf unsealed, then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy." The people will definitely know when this return occurs. But the effects of this redemption, this restoration will not be confined to humanity only. It will extend to embrace the earth itself: "Water will gush in the desert, streams in the wasteland, the scorched earth will become a lake, and the parched land, springs of water." A fertile, sustaining terrain is essential to a healthy humanity. Humanity does not prosper in the parched desert for obvious reasons. It is humanity's own interest to care for Mother Earth, to give her the respect and care that a mother deserves. In the Promised Land, mankind and land will care for and sustain one another. This truly is Paradise Regained.
It is very obvious that the gospel reading today is modelled very closely on the promises held out in the Book of Isaiah. In fact, when Jesus preached in his local synagogue for the first time, he used as his text the prophet Isaiah: "He has anointed me, and sent me to bring good news to the poor, to preach liberty to captives, to the blind new sight, and to let the oppressed go free." This gospel extract is about hearing and speaking. On the surface, it's the story in which Jesus heals a deaf man who has a speech impediment. But symbolically it's about hearing the word of God and speaking it. It's all about that favourite Marcan theme, the messianic secret. That is Jesus' desire to keep people from jumping to the premature conclusion that he is just a miracle-worker, before he can fulfill his mission in death and resurrection.
As is common, the first reading prepares the congregation to hear the gospel. Of all the New Testament figures, Jesus identifies himself most closely with the mission of Isaiah. Mark makes this very clear in today's gospel extract: Jesus lays his hands on the man who was born deaf and dumb. Immediately, his tongue was loosened and he spoke clearly. Mark is saying to his community: look, in the person of Jesus, the promise of Isaiah is clearly fulfilled. "The ears of the deaf are unsealed and the tongues of the dumb sing for joy." But then Mark as editor inserts a most peculiar piece of information: Jesus ordered them {the crowd} to tell no one about this but the more he insisted the more they published it. What was the point in giving the speech back to a dumb man and then telling him to shut up! Again, we see here the pitfalls of taking the scriptures in a fundamental and literal sense. With this remark Mark may be saying no more than that Jesus was not widely recognised or accepted as a saving Messiah in his own day. But through healing the deaf and dumb man, he is unmistakably signalling the fact that the place and time prophesied by Isaiah has arrived in his person. Christians couldn't hear those words without thinking of Jesus. And, more and more, it was the God/Jesus they thought of, not the human/Jesus.
As we will gather from the Letter of James, Jesus regularly associated with people who were off the bottom rung of the social ladder. Yet, when James writes, two or three generations after Jesus' death and Resurrection, the writer finds it necessary to warn his community about a situation that could never have happened during the time of Jesus: "For if someone with gold rings and fine clothes comes into your assembly, and a poor person in shabby clothes also comes in,...you pay attention to the one wearing the fine clothes and say, 'Sit here, please,' while you say to the poor one, 'Stand there,' or 'Sit at my feet!'"
The American writer, Rev. John McKenzie, once stated that it only took a few years for the followers of Jesus to stop being criticized for the things for which Jesus had been criticized. The criticism didn't end because society had accepted Christian behaviour and made it the norm. Christians had simply stopped doing what Jesus had done! Although we follow the risen Jesus, not the historical Jesus, it's still important to learn as much as we can about the historical Jesus. He didn't arrive in Bethlehem 2,000 years ago and instantly morph into a resurrected state. His human personality was based on the unique ways He related to people and used God's creation. And it was that personality which initially set Him apart from others.
Another scripture scholar is fond of reminding his audiences, "The first disciples of Jesus imitated Him long before they worshiped Him." We could all attend to this simple if obvious lesson.