“Ephphatha, . . . Be opened,” these are the healing words that Jesus spoke to the deaf man with the speech impediment in today’s gospel. I hear that prayer for us today. Be opened in mind and heart, ears opened to hear the word of God calling to us, eyes opened to see God’s work in our lives and in the world, hands opened to receive what God has prepared for us. A closed mind, a hardened heart is a barrier to God’s grace. Our certainties about our way can be stumbling blocks to us and others.

I suspect that Jesus himself heard that same prayer from the Syrophoenician woman in the first pericope of our gospel. In Mathew’s telling of this story, Jesus tells the woman, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” (Mt.15:24) but she gets his attention asking for the “crumbs.” I can imagine in that moment, Jesus could have realized that his ministry was not limited to Israel, but was rather intended for all the world. Just consider how stunning that insight would have been, especially since it resulted from the words of a Gentile woman. And so, perhaps in utmost gratitude, he blesses her with the healing of her daughter. None of my supposition is written it the gospel, of course, but that kind of picturing of what the details of the story might have been is what Bishop Charles Duval calls reading between the lines.

As long as I am reading between the lines, knowing that each of the gospelers arranged his material to make his case, to get across the message he was called to proclaim, I can see that Mark could have chosen to use this story of the healing of the deaf man, of Jesus’ opening his ears and tongue, as a confirmation of Jesus’ ears and heart being opened to the expansion of his ministry on earth. May our certainties about our barriers and limitations be as easily and thoroughly healed. Ephphatha! Be opened!