Elaborate Healing (Mark 7: 31-37)

The memorable word for today's Gospel is Ephphatha. Jesus is in another place which I assume is filled with Gentiles (Decapolis) and a man was brought to him who had a speech impediment.

What amazes me about this particular healing (and the one involving a blind man and mud) is that Jesus does quite a bit to heal this fellow. He puts a finger in the man's ear, spit, touched his tongue, looked up to heaven, groaned, and shouted Ephphatha!

I seriously doubt that all of that was necessary. As we read in yesterday's Gospel, Jesus could heal from a distance. So all Jesus had to do was will it and the man would have been healed. No touching needed.

Of course it could be argued that Jesus healed from a distance when the ill person was not around and someone just came to Jesus with a request. When the person was right in front of Jesus, he tended to touch them. But in most cases, all Jesus had to do was to touch (or be touched by) someone and they would be healed. So all he had to do was to touch this person with a speech defect.

Re-reading the passage, I'm thinking now that Jesus did everything he did because he felt he was expected to do something like this. The passage notes that some people brought the man with a speech impairment to Jesus and asked Jesus to lay his hand on him. If he were just asked to heal the man, then maybe no touching was required. But he was asked to lay his hands on the man. So he laid his hands on the man and then some.

I guess Jesus heals us in the way we expect to be healed, even if that method is not absolutely necessary.
Or maybe it's the miracle equivalent of speaking in parables.

Tests of Faith (Mark 7:24-30)

Today's Gospel continues the theme of yesterday's Gospel about opening up the faith to the Gentiles. In yesterday's Gospel, Jesus declared all food clean. In today's Gospel, Jesus goes to Tyre, a non-Jewish place and a Greek asks Jesus to drive the demon out of her daughter.

Knowing that Jesus had just come from a debate with Pharisees who by definition are against the infiltration of foreign influences, especially Hellinistic influences, on Judaism, the healing of a Greek's daughter provides a clear message regarding Jesus' mission. He didn't come only for the Jews (which was probably a message the disciples tried to grapple with after Jesus' ascension).

Of course, Jesus could have made things easier for the woman by just granting the request right away. Instead, he feigned resistance and said something to the effect that she wasn't a Jew and so why should he bother with her request. Her reply was that even if she wasn't a Jew, she'd still accept any scraps from the blessings given to Jews. at which Jesus healed her daughter (must note that this is another one of those healings without physical contact. And it's a Gentile again!) The woman was able to demonstrate her faith that God was not just a God for the Jews.

Since I started this exercise of writing everyday about the mass readings, this is the second episode I encountered where Jesus doesn't heal a person right away but introduces a test of faith. The first one involves a blind man. When the person passes the test, Jesus grants the request.

I guess the lesson to be learned is that we must not be deterred from asking God for things that we know is good for us. Maybe sometimes he is just testing out faith.