This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. The language and the story support the conclusion that at one time the man was hearing-enabled and used a working vocabulary.  Had he been deaf from the beginning there would not have been a post-healing note: “he spoke plainly.” Which perhaps makes his situation even more poignant, one which calls out to our compassion. We can each imagine having hearing and communication taken away from us, severing the social fabric of our lives. We all know some people that are gifted and have “ a way with words.” Pheme Perkins [613] shares some final thoughts on hearing and speech. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. In Mark’s narration there is a common element to Jesus’ encounter with Jairus, the deaf man, and others – he often takes the people aside, away from the crowds.  Lane [266-67] comments on this: “He [Jesus] regarded the personal relationship between himself and the sick to be of supreme importance, and in this instance all of his actions are intelligible in the light of the necessity of communicating with a person who had learned to be passive in life. Through touch and the use of spittle Jesus entered into the mental world of the man and gained his confidence.” Continue reading →

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. As noted previously, Jesus’ arrival in the “district of the Decapolis,” while technically Gentile territory, even in Jesus’ time was the home to many Jewish communities. The Decapolis (literally, “Ten Towns”) figures quite prominently in the ministry of Jesus (Mark 5:20, Matt 4:25, Luke 8:26). While many of the cities’ names would be foreign to our modern English ear (Gadara, Abila, etc.), one of the city names would be quite familiar: Philadelphia. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. This section of Mark has three stories that are often treated separately, not always proclaimed as Sunday gospels, and as such the thread that connects these stories can be lost. The stories are the healing of the Syro-Phoenician woman’s child, the healing of the deaf/mute person and the restoration of sight to a blind person. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time. The withdrawal of Jesus to the district of Tyre may have been for a rest (Mark 7:24), but he soon moved onward to Sidon and, by way of the Sea of Galilee, to the Decapolis. Jesus has moved from Jewish territory to the land of the Gentiles. This movement follows immediately upon the conflict with the Pharisees in which Jesus declared all foods are “clean” and do not defile – and now Jesus moves into contact with the Gentile people, who under some interpretations, are themselves unclean. Thus, to have contact with them renders one unclean. Continue reading →

This coming Sunday we celebrate the 23rd Sunday of Ordinary Time in Lectionary Cycle B. After several weeks during which we took our Gospel readings from the Bread of Life Discourse in John, last week we returned to the Gospel of Mark. When we picked up again in the Gospel of Mark, we bypassed accounts of the death of John the Baptist, Jesus walking on the water, and the healing of the crowds in Gennesaret. Last week we picked up the story with Mark’s account of the conflict between Jesus and the Pharisees and Jerusalem scribes. Given the conflict at the end of the Bread of Life Discourse, that was probably a good segue. Continue reading →