From Around Here ? (2015-09-06)

Sunday September 6, 2015,  23rd Sunday, Year B

• Isaiah 35:4-7a  •  Psalm 146   • James 2:1-5   •  Mark 7:31-37  •

[__01__]   Are you from around here? Where are you from?

If we  were to encounter someone with a different accent, tone, or manner of speaking, one of the first questions, we ask ourselves is, “where is this person from?”

And, if we – ourselves – were to go to, say  … South Carolina or the South of France or Staten Island, to a place where people speak differently, we might feel self-conscious about our own “accent.”

Where are you from?

[__02__]    At times, these differences in speech may create a boundary or an obstacle. We may not understand the other person’s accent regardless of how loudly or slowly the other person may speak.

[__03__]     I can recall the first time that I had the opportunity to travel outside the United States, to go on a study trip to ENGLAND, in college.

There, I learned of the existence of an “accent” or manner or speaking that I had not known existed.  Until that time, I did not know that there was something – some strange creature of God’s creation – called an “American accent.”

Other students – classmates would say … we could hear you coming, we could hear from around the corner… we can recognize  your “American accent.”

So…I don’t think I said anything right away…but I was thinking… no, I don’t have an AMERICAN accent, you have a BRITISH accent.

I could hear the accent – or dialect or variation in tone in another, I could not hear it in myself.

[__04__]    In the Gospel this Sunday, we read of a deaf man who also suffered from a speech impediment. He could not hear, he could not speak plainly.

Our Savior, Jesus Christ, healed him by touching his mouth and ears and opening them.

The Aramaic phrase – “Ephphatha” or be opened – was spoken by Jesus as healed the man.

[__05__]    And, this word is presented, handed down to us for our use in the baptism ritual.

After a child is baptized, the priest blesses his or her mouth with this same proclamation, “be opened.”

So, it is a blessing – a spiritual gift to be able to open so that we can hear and speak …this is not only a physical power or endowment.

In Psalm 51 we read, “Lord open my lips that my mouth may proclaim your praise”

[__06__]   I am very aware, perhaps you are also are very aware of an accent or tone of speech different my own – or your own.

We may even find some of these to be impediments.

[__07__]   However, do we not also need help – God’s grace – so that we can grow and speak clearly – so that our ears may also be cleared to receive God’s word and mouths to proclaim his praise.

[__08__]    Going into another country, culture, language, we are often aware of our own habits, expressions, idioms, and preferred way of speaking.

However, in our journey of faith and examination of conscience, we are also called to grow in awareness of our gifts, talents, and how we SPEAK and SHARE them.   That is, how can we be opened?

[__09__]     We are called to grow in awareness of our brokenness, our inclination to sin, my inclination or yours to respond with undue ANGER, to something that is an ordinary frustration or a situation we cannot change immediately …or our inclination to be cynical when we experience rejection.

In these and other ways, we may have trouble not only finding the right words…. But also hearing God’s word and God’s way, discerning God’s will.

We may be a bit hard of spiritual hearing.

At such a time, we are called to seek God’s presence, God’s touch through the sacraments, through penance & reconciliation, through the Holy Eucharist, so that we might be opened to speak again, but first so that we might hear the truth from God from whom there always honesty and from whom there is also a translator …someone in our life –friend, family member, living or deceased, through whom we are taught to hear and speak.  [__fin__]