True Hearing and True Speech
So. I am sitting in a rocker in the west lounge of the infirmary — the sunset-room that looks out on the shale country as the sunrise -room on th east looks out on the limestone country — I am quietly rocking and reading. Quietly. And the phone rings, once, twice. And out of his room back of me bounces Br. John wakened from his nap. He answers: “No. He’s not here.” And he goes back to continue his nap.He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, put His finger into the man’s ears, and touched his tongue with spittle. Then, looking up to Heaven, He sighed, and He said to him, “Ephatha”, that is, “Be opened”, and the ligament of his tongue was loosed and he spoke clearly.
And I think: how remarkable the human ear: among other sounds to sort out only the phone and pass it on to the sleeping brother. So I continue my rocking and my reading.
And I understand why Jesus would be interested in restoring a man’s hearing, and, in consequence his speech. Rather than saying He restored them, may we say, rather, He gave what he never had: the man had never heard and consequently never spoke. Noises are not speech.
And so we understand why Jesus took him aside and away from the crowd. For the onslaught of sound would no doubt overwhelm him, bewilder the man, maybe frighten him. For he would hear the human voice for the first time. And, of course, not understand a word. How could he? He’d be quite overwhelmed.
So, there’s more than one miracle here. There are several. For Jesus taught him in a moment the mystery of speech. The man not only heard the human voice, but understood it. And the first voice he heard was that of Jesus.
Nor was that all. For his tongue was loosed. He not only understood human speech when he heard it, but he was able to respond, to speak. He who never spoke before. Who never heard before. A whole series of miracles.
Perhaps you have read, as I did, of the man who lost his sight as a child of 3 when playing with some chemicals that exploded? Now, nearly 40, he recovers his sight. Sight he has, but he cannot see. He has to learn: how to interpret the images his eyes fashion. For we learn to see with the gift of sight: a long, slow process. It takes him a while to recognize his wife. He is not sure trees are but shadows. He is more comfortable skiing with eyes closed than with them open. We must learn to see.
How wonderful the work of Jesus in restoring the man’s ability to hear and to speak, then giving the man the ability to use them, to hear and to speak.
The analogy is not too hidden, the lesson in all this. We have hearing. And we have speech. But we may not have the art of hearing, nor the gift of speech.
Not only with one another. But also with God. And then to move on to another kind of hearing and another kind of speech: the inner kind, the spiritual communication.
These are arts dying in our day. The world is overwhelmed with seeing and hearing and becomes overwhelmed, unable to see and to hear on the deeper level.
The inner communication is gone. The line is dead. The inner life is dormant. And the world is satisfied with mere seeing and mere hearing. All becomes shallow and superficial, without depth.
And where people deep by nature become shallow by nurture, we are cultivating the frustrated life in which even a surfeit comes nowhere near satiety.
In which case a house that cultivates listening and fosters the inner dialog, is about the most significant thing around. Does a finer service to the human scene than done anywhere by anyone.
It is a work of God, of course. And He takes us aside to do it, away
from the crowd. Apart.* Amen.
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* The analogy is a reference to the cloistered monastic life.