Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him,“Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” (Mark 7:31-37, ESV)
This is one of the many stories where Jesus does something really weird to heal someone, which was something I always wondered about. Why did Jesus heal certain people the way He did? He has healed with and without word, as a response of someone's faith, by laying hands, by being touched, by having His shadow go over them. These are all more standard, but still fantastic, ways to heal people. So what's with the whole giving the blind man a wet willy and spitting on his tongue?
And why did He sigh? Jesus is said to have sighed again when He was questioning the hard-heartedness of the Pharisees later on in Chapter 8, which will be for tomorrow. So if He is sighing out of (almost) disappointment there, why does He do the same here? Why is it that He's almost disappointed while healing this one particular man?
I don't have any solid answers for either of those questions, but here's just my speculation. The first thing that the friends of this deaf man do is beg Jesus to lay his hand on him. It's as if they thought this was a standard, that Jesus has a preset amount of ways to heal someone. Instead, Jesus gets invasive and puts His fingers in the man's ears, and spits on his tongue. He invades this man's weaknesses, perhaps a way to get this guys attention, to tell him that even in his weaknesses, Christ can still make His way in.
I mean, after all, his friends probably never would have thought of that. And I don't think Jesus laying His hand on him gives the same message. Especially since this man is deaf, and can't physically hear Jesus, He decides to tell Him the same thing, but in a way that this deaf man can understand.
Perhaps that's also why He sighed. Perhaps Jesus was groaning at the fact that mankind had always tried to put Jesus in some kind of box. The friends of the deaf man thought laying hands was the way to heal someone, but alas, they were proven wrong by Jesus Himself. He can't be boxed or limited by the thoughts of man. The pharisees tried, even His own disciples sort of already did at the time. After all, if anyone didn't believe that Jesus was who He said He was, it was probably His own disciples. They saw Him perform countless miracles right before their eyes, and yet, they were still hard-hearted.
But I guess the beauty of the story is that even though the people were trying to box Him in, He was still able to do His work, and not only do it, but invade the man's life with it.
I sometimes forget that Jesus is beyond this world, that He is outside of the dimensions that we are stuck inside in. I forget that it is a vain attempt, trying to contain an uncontainable God. And yet, even in my stupidity and vanity, Christ makes His way into my life. He doesn't let my thoughts or my actions stop His work, He simply invades.
Another speaker I heard said that in order for good news to be good news, there has to be bad news. And the good news has to invade the bad news, so that when the good news comes in, we might see it, and understand that it indeed is good news.
The good news of Jesus is that He died and came back to life to set us free from our many bondages. Our sins, out thoughts, our attempts at trying to contain God, all of these things existed in us before we even understood what they were. We were stuck in bad news. I was stuck in bad news. I was part of the bad news, I made the bad news, and I was a slave to the bad news. And yet, Christ aggressively makes His way into my life, tells me of the good news, and does away with the bad news.
Clearly, I didn't go out to find God. He came and He found me. He invaded my life. And now He lives in me. He has invasively healed me of my spiritual deafness and blindness, and has set me free.
To a degree, I can't blame that the deaf man and his friends disregarded Jesus' warning, and told everyone about what had just happened. The man was healed! Why not tell the world about the good news? Because at this time of Jesus' ministry, He did not want to be known just yet. Jesus had something more, something bigger in mind.
And again, the good news is that He always does.
So, readers, don't try to contain God or limit Him, thinking that He is constrained to your way of doing or thinking. God is God, let Him be God. And even if you struggle with this, God can still invade your life somehow. I pray that we all repent of our pride, of thinking that God can only work according to our ways, and I pray that we would all experience God's invasive good news at some point.
-simon
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