Brief synopsis of the readings: Isaiah gives us the first reading. He speaks to a people who are confined in exile. He writes to give them courage and tells them that God has not forgotten them and will open the eyes of the blind, open the ears of the deaf, heal the lame, and release the tongues of the mute. Mark’s Gospel continues this theme where Jesus heals a deaf and dumb man of his disability. But Jesus tells all those gathered not to tell anyone what he has done. They didn’t. Instead the witnesses tell everyone what Jesus did.

So what do you do if you find an injustice that others find acceptable? You find yourself at an intersection where a man on the island holds a sign that says: “I’m a drunk who needs a drink” do you give him a dollar? Or do you decide that his alcoholism is a self inflicted wound and you have the moral authority to deny him his most basic desire?

I honestly don’t know what to do in that situation. Part of me believes that I do him more good by not giving him money in the hope that he will choose to be healed of his addiction and do something else (though I’m not sure what it is). But the other part of me thinks that I don’t have the privilege to decide what he will choose and my generosity is good whether he makes a good decision or a bad one. My decision that I should decide to give or not give him something only shows that he is closer to Jesus than I am. We are closer to the Kingdom when we recognize that our call to love is more important than our call to decide.

This puts me in the place of those gathered around the man born deaf. We don’t know why he was deaf but the Gospel implies his ears were closed. Perhaps they were closed because of something he did or perhaps he was born that way. We live in 21st Century and we can usually determine that someone is deaf for a reason. Some are born deaf, and some are rendered deaf because of some reason we understand (Helen Keller was rendered blind and deaf at 18 months because of scarlet fever). But the Gospels were written when we didn’t know any of this.

In the years since this was written we have often looked at deafness as the unwillingness to hear what is said. Jesus’ healing isn’t so much a cure for deafness as a healing to understand what we hear. We are all victims of the phrase that we “just don’t want to hear it.” I remember vividly my first assignment as a priest; I was speaking with a parishioner who expressed frustration that the pastor didn’t agree with him on some issue. He told me: “The pastor just doesn’t want to hear it.” Amusedly I told him that I looked forward to the day when anyone cared about what I didn’t want to hear.

Deafness may be the inability to hear but it may also be the unwillingness to hear. We all have an idea in our head of how the world is supposed to work and we all believe that it works best when everyone agrees with us. I’m as big a fan of humility as the next guy but most of us live with the belief that the universe, the Kingdom of God, works best when everyone agrees that God and I are on the same page.

Except we aren’t. The miracle stories of the Gospels aren’t intended to affirm that we’ve been right all along. They exist to mess up our reality and challenge us to look at our world in a different way.

And here’s where I part company with most of the priests or deacons who are preaching on this Gospel this weekend. When addressing the subject of “opening ears” we often think of those who are stubborn and refuse to hear. We call them to open their ears and “hear what they don’t want to hear” much as we tell small children to eat their vegetables. It’s almost as if the message of Jesus, the “Way, the Truth, and the Light” is a truth we need to swallow with all the disgust of okra or liver (feel free to put in your own hated foods) because it’s good for us.

When Jesus calls the man who was deaf and dumb away from the crowd, I don’t think he thought the man wanted to remain deaf. I think Jesus recognized that this man was scared and marginalized. I think the people around him refused to hear from or talk to him. I think his fear and the hostility of the crowds made him deaf.

And I think Jesus saw through all of this. Jesus took him away from the crowd and spit on the ground. Maybe the combination of saliva and privacy gave Jesus the time to tell him how he should live his truth. This time gave this man the encouragement and courage to speak. In fairness we don’t know what Jesus told him. But perhaps Jesus told him to speak his own voice. Perhaps Jesus told him to not be afraid to speak his truth. Perhaps Jesus healed him by liberating him from his fear of speaking out loud.

A few years ago many of us (myself included) were mesmerized by the movie The King’s Speech. It’s the story of a man who was the younger brother of the heir to the British throne. His life wasn’t easy because he grew up with a stammer, but at least he wasn’t going to be the king. Until his older brother (who was, by that time, the king) abdicated the throne to marry a woman that England would not have accepted as the queen. Suddenly this shy, scared, blessed man was vaulted into his worst nightmare. Suddenly his voice mattered on the world stage and speaking his truth was his worst nightmare. He was a man in great need of healing.

His healing, though imperfect at best, came through a man nobody would have recognized. King George VI met Lionel Logue, a speech coach who found success in working with World War I veterans whose speech was impaired by shell shock. Lionel’s techniques never included spitting on the ground but he did take the king away from the crowds and tell him that he had a voice. If you haven’t seen the movie I encourage you to do so. For me the iconic scene took place shortly before King George’s coronation when Lionel sat on the throne. The “king elect” became furious and ordered Lionel to get out of the seat because he had no right to sit there. Lionel agreed and successfully told him that as king, George VI belonged in the seat and and his voice belonged in the world.

I’ve been playing with metaphors of deafness and the inability to speak and I hope it doesn’t sound like I’m mixing the metaphors. In truth the two are tied together. If we don’t hear what he need to hear we can’t speak what needs to be said. Conversely if we are afraid to speak, we see no point in hearing.

In a final and fitting tribute in the movie, Lionel never wished to gain from his work. His only wish was this: that his student, King George VI, do well. At the end of the Gospel, Jesus tells everyone that they must not speak of this healing. We don’t know why, and it’s been cause for great speculation, but I think Jesus didn’t want the spotlight on himself, but the person he healed. Of course it didn’t work in either case. In the Gospel we know it was Jesus who healed the deaf man, and in The King’s Speech we know that Lionel helped King George VI become the voice of the British Monarchy during World War II.

But if we look at this story in terms of who deserves credit we miss the point. Yes, Jesus had the power to heal, and yes, the deaf man had the willingness to be healed. But the real winner here was the world. Because of this encounter another voice joins the Kingdom of God.

This new voice that finally has the ability to speak its truth is all around us. Most of us don’t have the ability to cure deafness but all of us have the ability to give permission to the voice that doesn’t feel it has the right to speak. Perhaps it’s a coworker with self esteem issues. Or a neighbor who doesn’t look like the rest of the neighborhood. Or someone who wishes to tells us that he is offended by being called an “anchor baby.” In any case we continue the value of this Gospel, not by spitting on the ground, but by telling someone that his voice has a place.