Sermon for August 27, 2013 ~
10:00 Healing Service
The Feast Day of Thomas Gallaudet
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| from http://bit.ly/17m9oSw |
with Henry Winter Syle
St. Philip’s In The Hills Parish,
Tucson, AZ
The Rev. Vicki K. Hesse
For online access to the readings
click here
Mark 7:32-37
I speak to you in the name of One
God, Father Son and Holy Ghost. Amen
Today is
the feast day of Thomas Gallaudet with
Henry
Winter Syle.
What
do you know about these two?
·
The
bio in Holy Women, Holy Men begins,
“Ministry to the deaf in the Episcopal Church begins with
Thomas Gallaudet. Without his genius and zeal for the spiritual well-being of
deaf persons, it is improbable that a history of ministry to the deaf in the
Episcopal Church could be written.He has been called The Apostle to the Deaf.”
·
He
was the eldest son of the founder of the West Hartford School for the Deaf (Thomas Hopkins
Gallaudet), whose wife, Sophia, was a “deaf-mute.”
·
He
felt called to be a priest in TEC and
while he discerned his call, he taught at the
New York Institution for Deaf-Mutes –
where he met and married his wife,
Elizabeth Budd, herself a deaf-mute.
·
He
established a bible class for deaf persons at the church he served as a deacon.
·
After
ordained, he established a church
specifically to be a spiritual home for deaf people.
1859 St. Ann’s
Church for Deaf-Mutes.
·
One
of his students was Henry Winter Syle,
who had lost his hearing as a child.
·
Syle,
too, felt called to be a priest in TEC and
became the first deaf person to seek Holy
Orders.
He was ordained in 1876 and died just a few years after
he built a church specifically for deaf persons in Philadelphia.
Gallaudet
heard Jesus’ words “Be Opened!”
Gallaudet
found his heart was opened by God
to serve
those on the hearing/speaking margins.
His life
reflects how he used his gifts and deep compassion
to deaf
persons’ needs.
Syle, also
heard Jesus’ words “Be Opened!”
Syle
found his heart, too, was opened by God,
despite
his own hearing/speaking challenges.
God
called him to serve in ordained ministry,
despite
the institutional stumblilng block
that
would not consider him “ordainable.”
=~=~=~=
In the
Gospel text today, we hear how
·
They
brought a deaf man to Jesus
·
Jesus
took him aside, touched his ears and tongue
·
Jesus
*sighed* and said to the man “Be Opened.”
·
The
man’s ears were opened and his tongue was released.
It’s not
always that simple, though, is it?
For
instance, in the fourth chapter of Exodus[1],
Moses is trying to get out of serving God.
He raises an objection to God, that he has never been
“eloquent” and that he is, in fact
“slow of speech and slow of tongue.”
But then, “…the Lord said to him,
“Who gives speech to mortals?
Who makes them mute or deaf, seeing or blind?
Is it not I, the Lord?
12 Now go, and I will be with your
mouth
and teach you what you are to speak.”
And in
today’s text from Isaiah, the prophet is pronouncing this very grace, that in
the safe return of the redeemed to Zion,
God’s power will be known:
“…Here
is your God… He will come and save you…
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall
be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”
In the Old
Testament world, it seems that
there
were ambivalent attitudes.
We find
in Leviticus an admonishment
against
cursing the deaf, suggesting at least some people
were acting negatively toward handicapped persons.
And as
we find in the New Testament,
deaf
persons were also seen as a channel
for
recognizing God’s presence.
For
example, when John’s disciples ask Jesus,
are you
the one who is to come or are we to wait for another?
Jesus
told them, in the Gospel of Matthew,
“Go back
and tell John what’s going on:
The
blind see, The lame walk, Lepers are cleansed,
The deaf
hear, …[2]”
And in
the Gospel of Luke, Jesus gives this answer:
“Go back
and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the
lame walk,
those
who have leprosy are cleansed,
the deaf
hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor.[3]..”
What is
going on here?
Deafness
and healing towards hearing points to
God’s
grace as a gateway of Spirit’s infusion of love.
Perhaps
we who are of the hearing population can
come
with humility to the text and read it figuratively.
Jesus
puts his fingers into our ears. He looks
up to heaven and sighs. He says to us,
“Ephphatha,” - “Be Opened”
To what
is God calling us to be open?
Is there
a place in your life to which your ears have been stopped?
As I
reflect, I think about a friend of mine who
trigger
that inner wince when they call or leave a message.
My
initial reaction is “They always say …”
I
wonder, though, if I simply hear Jesus sighing
and his
healing, Be Opened!
If I
might find grace to hear what my friend is saying –
really
saying – and how that might draw me into compassion.
Perhaps
there is someone in your life – or a situation in your life or in the news –
that causes you to wince or be closed up.
To what
is God calling you, today, to be open?
For when
we hear, with open ears, open hearts, open minds – God’s love
silences
the static,
tunes
out the noise, and
softens
our hearts.
May we find
ourselves astounded beyond measure,
for
Jesus has done everything well.
He has
even made our deaf ears to hear and
our mute
tongues to speak.
Today, may
we be filled with the Holy Spirit,
like
Gallaudet and Syle, so that we, too,
can respond
in love to the needs of all people,
confident
in all that Jesus has done and keeps doing for us –
opening
us, healing us, reconciling us, forgiving us,
and
loving us.
Amen
