A Sermon Preached at St. Stephen’s on Sept. 10, 2006, by the Rev. Cork Tarplee

There’s a poignant story in the novel Corelli’s Mandolin and in the movie made from it. A peasant comes to the village doctor to be healed of the deafness that has plagued him for years.  The doctor probes and finds a dried pea stuck in his ear, removes the pea, and—presto!—the man is cured.  Within the week the man is back at the doctor’s.  Now that he can hear, he is overwhelmed by the sounds of life, the bickering, the noise and the hassle. He can’t stand it.  Would the doctor please put the pea back in his ear?

            There are at least two—perhaps three—healings in our gospel this morning.  First Jesus heals the daughter of a gentile woman.  Some have suggested that Jesus is himself healed in this encounter.  At first he refuses to have anything to do with the woman or her child because they are religious outcasts, dirty and disgusting people according to the religious values of Jesus’ people.  His mission is to the Jews alone, he says. ‘I can’t take food intended for the children and give it to scurvy dogs like you.’ I believe Jesus himself was converted by the woman’s response to this insult.  She points to the overarching mercy of God and God’s historic preference for the poor and powerless: “Sir,” she says, “even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.”  There is, she is saying, enough in the bounty of a caring God to feed both the chosen insiders and the outcasts.  In fact, in a deeper sense, in God’s household there are no outcasts.  Jesus is impressed.  The child is healed. So here, perhaps are two healings:  the little girl is healed, for certain, and also most likely Jesus is healed of his cultural blindness.

            The final healing in the passage summarizes the other two.  The deaf man is cut off from those around him.  He can neither hear what they are saying nor can he communicate to them his needs.  His friends bring him to Jesus who heals him with the word, “Ephphatha:” ‘Open up.’  No more is the man to be cut off from life. Now he is to be open to the joys and the sorrows around him.  I call this a summary of the other two healings because it reveals the nature of all the Bible’s healings:  God restores the connections between people. To be healed is to be enabled to love. The nature and purpose of all God’s healing is that it enables us to reach out beyond ourselves to all members of God’s family.

            Be careful what you pray for, runs the old adage, because you might get it.  Like the peasant in Corelli’s Mandolin whenever we are healed we will hear the uproar around us and we are going to be asked to use our wholeness for the sake of others.  For those of us who believe that God is always acting to draw more people into the circle of divine love, it is no accident that social barriers are broken down in successive waves.  In our own country, slavery falls, then woman vote, then racial walls are breached, then barriers of sexual orientation start to crumble.  No sooner are we healed of one hardness of heart, one kind of blindness, than we are able to see yet another one of God’s children crying out for love and justice.  It is tiring.  We don’t get to rest and enjoy our newfound wholeness just for ourselves. But that is as it should be.  Healing is meant to enable us to love.

            Heather Whitestone McCallum, Miss America of 1995, won that title in spite of being profoundly deaf. Throughout her reign as Miss America , her very presence set off a debate about what was the proper treatment and education for deaf people.  The debate raged again in 2003 when Mrs. McCallum took the somewhat risky and controversial step of trying to combat her deafness with a cochlear implant.  Asked why an icon of successful functioning would take such a drastic step, she told a homely story. “One day, my older son was outside on the back patio, and I was inside. I saw my husband going outside towards the patio, and I asked him what he was doing. He said our son was crying, he had fallen down, and I had no idea that anything had happened," McCallum said. So she made the risky and courageous decision to have the operation so that she could hear her children crying.

            It is the right reason to seek to be whole.  Sometimes, as all of us know, it is a sorrow and a trial to be able to hear the cries of those in need.  Sometimes, God help us, we may shy away from healing and wholeness because we don’t want to feel that pain.

                                                                                                AMEN