Job 9:27-35 (NKJV)
I will put off my sad face and wear a smile,’
I am afraid of all my sufferings;
I know that You will not hold me innocent.
If I am condemned,
Why then do I labor in vain?
If I wash myself with snow water,
And cleanse my hands with soap,
Yet You will plunge me into the pit,
And my own clothes will abhor me.
“For He is not a man, as I am,
That I may answer Him,
And that we should go to court together.
Nor is there any mediator between us,
Who may lay his hand on us both.
Let Him take His rod away from me,
And do not let dread of Him terrify me.
Then I would speak and not fear Him,
But it is not so with me.”
Mark 7:31-37 (NRSV)
Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
~
"So you have here the plea, as it were, of the demonized man put into the mouth of Job [from the passage quoted above]. But here we have present the Redeemer, the Mediator, who is going to touch him, who - in the words of this [passage] - who bends down to his face, [... who] is going to look up to heaven and groan because he's the Mediator, and then touch his face. And [the mute man is] going to be able to speak. So we have Jesus being the Mediator, but not as one of vengeance, as one who is doing in a sense the reverse of what is talked about in Job, but as the Mediator he is enabling the person to speak. It's a beautiful little enactment that we're getting here in Mark's Gospel.
[...]
"So let's remember what is it that has ears but cannot hear and a tongue but cannot speak. Well it's an idol. Jesus is in 'idol' territory. Psalm 135 has the famous quote about “with ears they cannot hear with tongue they cannot speak.” So here is someone who in pagan territory is semi-idolized, semi-turned into an idol, and how he's being brought to life, brought to the possibility of speaking. “And his tongue was loosened,” [literally] “the block was undone.” It's the loosing of the block, it's the same word as binding and loosing. Jesus is enacting [...] the binding and the loosing. Here he is binding the evil one and loosing the tongue. What does this mean? That whereas when he'd been doing the same amongst the people of Israel, he was talking about sins being forgiven and faith. Here it's about driving out demons because they're half demonized, but bringing to life because that's what undoing demons does.
"And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and it says: “and he spoke plainly.” It's the word 'orthōs'. It's a beautiful little hint because in the book of Deuteronomy, this is chapter 18, the Lord speaks to Moses [and] tells him that the people are right, they speak rightly to him, they speak right - 'orthōs'. And then [God] says, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from one their own people, I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet who shall speak to them everything that I command.” In other words, this semi-idol [in Mark's Gospel] who has been brought to life bears witness to the fact that this is the prophet whom God had promised to Moses.
[...]
"“They were astounded beyond measure.” [v37]. So this is the fulfilment of the Isaianic prophecies about the wilderness bursting into life, into flower, into song, into dance at the arrival of the Lord. The one who is hidden is coming into their midst: “He has done everything well.” They don't realise it but they're announcing that the one who has done everything well, the one who made all things and saw that they were good, the Creator, is alive. “[H]e even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” In other words idols [which are deaf and mute] are a thing of the past, humans who are bound down to idols are being turned into daughters and sons of God. And so Jesus continues with his 'more than Joshua, greater than Moses', the Lord coming into the midst of his people to reveal who He is."
- James Alison, from video "Homily for Sunday 23rd in Ordinary Time 2021" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hJqucPRYi8)
~
"Note that [the man] could not hear and he could not speak. Does this tell us something? Perhaps he is a wise man in this regard, compared to those who jabber on even though they cannot or will not hear, let alone listen. This man at least inhibited his tongue because he could not listen (We are told that he had a speech impediment; I take this as an instance of what used to be called “hysterical” afflictions; he knows he is cut off from one side of the dialogue and so he inhibits the other. He is “tongue-tied,” and the text tells us that his tongue was “set free” when his hearing was restored). In any case Jesus gives him back both powers, and he does it in the most physical way.
[...]
"Let us reflect. We are interested in the world of the spirit, whose essence is hearing and speaking, not in the realm of the body. We wish to escape into a world beyond empirical verification or falsification, from the place of action to the place of ideas, from events to words, and to make the narrative a symbolic presentation of states of mind; but the physicality of the contact with Jesus, the event nature of the restoration of hearing and speaking, means that we cannot. We cannot avoid the “event” nature of this restoration of spirit. We do not work our way out of spiritual deafness and dumbness by strenuous thought and rigorous argument, but rather we come to Jesus and ask for him to heal us. He puts his hand in our ears and his spittle on our tongues, his bodily substance and his bodily fluid on us, and we speak and hear again. That means that we eat his flesh and drink his blood, we take the bread and wine of the Eucharist, and in that event he opens our ears and frees tongue-tied speech.
[...]
"[O]ur faith is not a pattern of ideas, or a chain of proofs, but rather a series of historical events. Events in the flesh entail events in the spirit, and for this reason the Word became flesh (John 1:14) and not simply more words. It was to put an end to speculation and calculation, an end to idle words, that “The Word became flesh and dwelt among us full of grace and truth; we beheld his glory, glory as of the only son from the father.” Notice how strikingly John says that we beheld the glory in the flesh, not in the mind or in a vision or pattern of words. So our miracle story is part of the great narrative of the incarnation of God, telling us that God is not ashamed of our flesh, and we shall find him there when we allow him to unstop our ears are untie our tongues."
- Robert Hamerton-Kelly, from a sermon delivered on September 10, 2006 (source no longer available online)
[Note that the Job passage quoted is not from the lectionary, but is included for the reference in James Alison's homily. For extensive analysis and discussion on all this week's lectionary texts: https://girardianlectionary.net/reflections/year-b/proper18b/]
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