23rd Sunday in
Ordinary Time
I was kind of thinking of
two things this morning while reflecting on this gospel. One is the importance—do we have a prayer
corner someplace when can get away, just have a relationship with God and tell
him what’s going on in our lives and sit back and listen a little bit for His
response in the silence of our hearts?
Do we have some kind of time that we could slide into our Palm Pilots? You know if I don’t put it in my Palm Pilot
it’s not going to happen because I just don’t have that good of a memory. I mean we make schedules all the time with
people and spent time with one another.
Wouldn’t be cool if we could write that into our schedule too to spend
time with the Lord a little bit more? So
we can listen and understand.
The other thought I was
thinking about was this morning there are going to be many people who woke up,
not to the sound of an alarm clock, but to the whir of a vibrator under their
pillow. And these people are totally
deaf. It’s the way they wake up. They can’t hear an alarm clock. Most of us think that blindness, you know,
could be worse than deafness. There was
a woman--she was called Helen Keller comes to mind. She was both blind and deaf. And she said that deafness is the greatest
handicap anyone could have. You see when
you are totally deaf there is this door to the world that closes all around
you. You begin to feel lonely and
abandoned. You become a stranger in your
own land because you can’t understand what’s going on. You can’t hear.
The Scottish theologian,
William Barkley, he quotes a prayer written by a deaf person. And here’s a portion of what it reads,
written by a deaf person, “Oh God, the trouble with being deaf is that most
people find deaf folks a nuisance.”
Think about that. They sympathize
with people who are blind and lame but they get irritated and annoyed with
people who are deaf. As a result deaf
people are apt to avoid other people and become isolated from the hearing world. This poignant prayer gives us kind of an
insight into how it feels to be deaf, much less deaf and dumb.
This bring us to a point
that very few people think about and it is this—there is a situation that is
even worse than being physically deaf and dumb.
Even worse. That situation is
being spiritually deaf and dumb. Now
that’s really, really bad. People who
are spiritually deaf and dumb are unable to speak to God in prayer and they are
unable to hear God speak to them in the depths of their hearts. You know this spiritual tragedy is as old as
the world, but is increasingly becoming a tragedy in our day.
There was a great
playwright, his name was Tennessee Williams.
He refers to this in his famous play, a play called The Night of the
Iguana. Some of us old-timers might
remember that movie. But anyhow at one
point in the play he has this conversation take place between Hannah Joust and
Mr. Shannon. And Hannah says to Mr.
Shannon, “Liquor isn’t your problem.”
Shannon says, “What is my problem?”
Hannah answers, “The oldest problem in the world. The need to believe in something or
someone.”
This raises a very practical
question about spiritual deafness and spiritual blindness if you will. What can we do about the problem? Lawrence Gold answers bluntly, “For one thing
we must stop gagging on the word spiritual.
We must rediscover and reassert our faith.” But how to we rediscover or reassert our
faith. For example what if we are a
Christian who is experiencing this problem to some degree in our own life. How
can we learn again to hear, and to speak to God once more?
Today’s gospel really point
to the answer. We must ask God to do for
us what He did for the man in the gospel.
We must ask Jesus to do for us what he did for the man in the
gospel. Recall what happened when he was
brought to Jesus for healing. So what
Jesus did was He took this man off alone, away from the crowd and He put His
fingers in his ears and He touched his tongue and He said, “Ephphatha”, which
means “Open up”. And them Mark concludes
by saying, “At one the man was able to hear and his speech impediment was
removed and he began to talk without any trouble. And all who heard were completely amazed. How
well He does everything. He even causes
the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak.”
To be healed, you see, of
our spiritual deafness and our dumbness, if you will, we must turn to
Jesus. As the man in the gospel did, we
must break away from the crowd. We must go
off alone with Jesus and spend time with Him in prayer. Concretely it means that we must set aside
time each day to be with Jesus and we all know that time is valuable,
especially in our busy, busy lives.
Yeah father, easy to say,
hard to do. I know. You see the thing is though when two people
want to get to know each other what do we do?
We agree on a specific time and a specific place to meet don’t we? It becomes important. So we jot it down or whatever it is to remind
ourselves. I put mine in the Palm Pilot
so I know what I have to do. It is
scheduled right into my day.
The same is true about
developing a closer relationship with Jesus, we need to make the time. The demands of our modern life are such that
unless we schedule a time for daily prayer into our day the reality is we probably
won’t pray at all. Think about it. It’s true.
If we have to schedule it in that’s what we need to do. Otherwise how do we get to know Jesus
better? How do we get the opportunity to
listen? You know the important thing
however is this, whether we schedule five minutes or ten minutes of meeting
with Jesus for prayer, for relationship, we need to be faithful about setting
that time. Because if we don’t it’s just
not going to happen. Moreover just as we
need a program to follow when we get serious about, let’s say physical fitness,
we set a program to do that, we need a program to follow when we get serious
about spiritual fitness.
One simple procedure I could
recommend is follow the Bible and use it as your program. Take the Bible, using the gospel according to
Mark is a really good place to start because in Mark we see in it that Jesus is
always going somewhere, doing something or saying something, right? Simply read ten or so verses slowly at each
prayer session. Some briefly after every
verse or so as the Spirit leads you and then speak to Jesus about the verse
from your heart. And then, this is
important, listen to Him respond to you in your heart.
Finally it also helps to
keep a notebook nearby in a table next to your prayer chair. Again going back to my first intriguing
curiosity this morning. Do we have a
place we can go for that? Do we have a
prayer chair or a quiet room? Sometimes
it might just be behind the locked door of a bathroom, huh? But the important thing is take that time. Go out in the backyard. Go in your car. Wherever it is you can not be disturbed and
talk to Jesus and then listen to Him.
Jot down something He tells you in the quietness of the day. Visit the garden and experience the awe of
nature, something that is conducive and grounded and present with Jesus,
because if we don’t take the time to do it it’s not going to happen. Having a prayer chair or a quite room allows
us to jot down any special thought, any idea that may have come to you during
your prayer time with Jesus. And many
people find writing to be an excellent way to conclude their prayer. It only takes a minute or so, but it often
becomes the most fruitful aspect of the prayer.
Let’s close with an example
of a note. Here’s a great example of a note
written after such a prayer session.
This was found by a mother who’s young daughter had to wear a hearing
aid. And this is what it reads, “Dear
God, I don’t want to hurt Your feelings but I wish You hadn’t made me
deaf. Could you change me back? Signed Sue.
PS: Say hello to my guardian
angel.” And the next day Sue found a
note. It was written in gold ink, gold
ink, and obviously the work of a mother who was a creative as she was
loving. Here’s what it reads, “Dear Sue,
I am your guardian angel and I asked God to answer your note. You see God made me deaf too. But God did give me two fast legs. I can run like the wind, two lovely arms so I
can hug everybody, and an imagination so that I can fly anywhere. But what I really like best is being able to
turn off my hearing aid when other angels are yelling. It makes me think, makes thing quiet so that
I can better hear God singing love songs to me in my heart. Signed Your Guardian Angel. PS: I
love you more and more every day.”
Isn’t that beautiful? Take the time wherever it is. I know we’re busy. I’m busy.
I came home last night, I don’t even know where the priests are, they’re
all gone. Busy, busy, busy. That’s our world. But if we don’t take the time to jot it down,
to experience and spent that time with Jesus and then to develop that
relationship, and then listen to what He has to say to us in the silence of our
heart. If we don’t take that time I
guarantee it’s not going to happen. Take
that time. Commit to it. Just like your best friend, I need you, I
love you, spend some time with me. Of
course, when shall we do it. Let’s
schedule it right now. Start out with five
or ten minutes, but do it. Do it. I guarantee what a beautiful relationship
will develop. You might even get a
letter written in gold, you never know.