Mark 7:31 Then he left the district of Tzor and went through Tzidon to Lake Kinneret and on to the region of the Ten Towns. 32 They brought him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment and asked Yeshua to lay his hand on him. 33 Taking him off alone, away from the crowd, Yeshua put his fingers into the man’s ears, spat, and touched his tongue; 34 then, looking up to heaven, he gave a deep groan and said to him, “Hippatach!” (that is, “Be opened!”). 35 His ears were opened, his tongue was freed, and he began speaking clearly. 36 Yeshua ordered the people to tell no one; but the more he insisted, the more zealously they spread the news. 37 People were overcome with amazement. “Everything he does, he does well!” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the dumb speak!”
Can you hear? Can you speak?
Let’s rephrase:
Do you hear? Do you speak?
We’ll get back to this.
This situation is different from what we saw before. The last guy had his tongue tied so he just couldn’t speak. He could hear and knew everything that was going on around him. His trouble was that he couldn’t really contribute well to all that was going on around him. Crippling for sure.
But at least hearing the Word of God spoken sheds light on all of the things you need to know in order to live a life worthy of Abba. You may not be able to add to the conversations but you can certainly receive from them.
Being deaf and having a speech impediment, however, takes this issue to new heights. Not only can you not contribute but you can’t really receive either. Your communication is shut down at an incredibly high level. It’s almost as if you are just watching life pass by on a movie screen. Spectating, at best.
Ok, let’s go over the process here and as we do, we’re going to put you on the receiving end.
Imagine you could not hear nor speak well. Your life is completely silent. Nothing. You can’t listen to music and you can’t hear the chatter in a crowd of people. No birds in the trees or wind rustling the leaves. The joy of hearing children playing at the park does not exist, nor does listening to your spouse speak (ok, ok, for some of you this could be a plus).
Most importantly, you cannot listen to the Word of God being spoken in the synagogue each and every week. There are no slides with the words and there are no bulletins with the topics discussed. You don’t have an app or even a pocket Bible. There is nothing for you in this audio-based society.
Complete silence.
If hearing nothing wasn’t bad enough, you can’t even speak clearly for people to understand you. You have nothing meaningful to contribute. You just exist.
People likely ignore you because that’s what you do when someone has an issue you don’t understand. It seems it’s almost human nature to pretend someone doesn’t exist when all you need to do is pretend you don’t recognize their issue (meaning you treat them like regular people). Focusing on someone’s shortcomings (according to your definition of shortcomings) is wrong and we know it. And since we have trouble acknowledging these types of things, we choose to either pretend their issue doesn’t exist, or we just ignore them altogether.
The ignoring part we get. We can easily do that. But pretending not to see their problem? How do you do that?
Before you try to say this is just faking it, keep in mind that you do this already. Think about that person struggling with an addiction that you treat as normal while knowing they are struggling. Or the non-submissive wife that dishonors her husband in front of others, what do you say? Or even the openly rebellious person that no one will correct -- we all pretend it is not happening, right?
Or when you notice a person with a deformity and you try not to stare so you do whatever you can to not even look their way. Imagine you were lost in a city someplace and you ask someone that’s deaf for directions. Tell me how you feel the instant this knowledge becomes evident to you. Embarrassing, huh? But only embarrassing for you -- they know they are deaf and they expect you to behave weird around them. So it’s easier to ignore people with issues like this instead of being embarrassed, right? It’s an us versus them situation and we always choose us.
A lot of these people have been labeled as almost non-human in the culture because to be human means to be in a relationship. And when people constantly ignore you, you aren’t going to have many relationships. Sure, family and close friends can look past these things but everyone’s potential embarrassment whittles down the total number quite a bit. You simply get ignored because that makes others feel better about themselves.
But we can properly ignore this uncomfortable issue without being fake. As a follower of the Messiah, you have a unique ability. You can ignore it because you can see them as Abba created them. There is no shame in humbling yourself before them and letting them know the obvious -- “I’m not sure how to interact with you. Can you help me?”
What’s interesting is how this statement is received:
(Go back to our examples above and run this statement by each of those and you’ll see exactly what I mean).
What we do when interacting with someone that has an issue is the following:
When it should be:
Ok, back to you in this role. Now that we have our bearing, we can see the natural order is for you to be ignored.
All of a sudden, people drag you out of your secluded life and here you are, standing in front of this strange Man.
In the past, He’s spoken and laid on His hands to call forth healing. In this situation, He’s added something unique: spit.
What?! Why on earth does this call for an extra step? He has the power to speak into this man's life and heal him -- which He does. He also has the power to lay on hands to heal him -- which He does. Now spit placed on his tongue? This is just getting weird.
But let’s think about this a little bit (note: I’m going to run a supremely hypothetical situation here).
The man can’t hear and his speech is impeded. Suppose this guy had the mumps or some permanent variant. The mumps attack the salivary glands which are located right by your ears, and your salivary glands are key in your ability to speak.
Have you ever had such a severe case of dry mouth that you had trouble talking? It’s near impossible to speak when there is no saliva. It’s also not uncommon to have hearing loss with the mumps.
Here are some details from the Mayo Clinic:
Swelling of the salivary glands usually starts within a few days. Symptoms may include:
Complications:
But what if the illness doesn’t go away? Maybe, just maybe, this guy had some version of this virus that was permanent.
If that’s the case, imagine how painful it must have been for Yeshua to put His fingers in his ears. If you’ve ever had an earache you KNOW how painful it is to have your ears touched. Now both fingers pushed into the canals?! “OUCH!! Please stop!!”
Then it happens. This Man spits and touches his tongue. How nasty is that? Keep in mind, you don’t know this Guy from Adam (pun intended), and He’s doing some pretty rude things to you. Digging into your sore ears followed by some of His spit going into your mouth -- seriously?! Where is the sensitivity? This is one of those times you wished you were ignored, huh?
Science tells us, however, that one of the best ways to collect DNA is through your saliva. It appears as though part of Yeshua’s being was transferred into this man, and it fixed the brokenness that was inside of him. This is the first DNA transference we’ve seen when it comes to healing.
Sounds like a little gene therapy to me (well before its time).
Once these bizarre steps have concluded, there is one more piece of odd behavior coming from this Man.
A deep groan comes out of Him and it permeates the depths of his being. I’m sure you’ve been in a situation where the bass from some concert, car stereo, or millennial church service vibrated your entire body, right? Low sound waves have the ability to vibrate every cell in your body.
Even if you can’t hear it, you can feel it.
We love a good formula, right? Good news, here it is. Piecing this all together, we have the following progression: