Casting Out Fear

September 6, 2015
Twenty-third Sunday in Ordinary Time
First Reading: Isa 35:4-7a
http://www.usccb.org/bible/readings/090615.cfm

What are you afraid of? Fear grips all of us some of the time and many of us most of the time. We fear what the doctor will say after the test; we fear the stock market crashing; we fear the other drivers on the road; we fear the outcomes of elections and we fear the things inside of us that lead us away from our own best intentions. But living out of fear is a bad idea. Fear causes us to act irrationally and too quickly—like scared investors who pull their money from the market when it dips only to miss its climb back up or like animals hemmed in who run every which way seeking an escape. Fear also paralyzes us like a deer in headlights and makes us unable to act and react as we should. God does not want us paralyzed by fear.

The Ransomed Will Return

In this Sunday’s first reading, he sends us a messenger with an alarmingly fear-free message: “Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, fear not!’” (Isa 35:4 RSV). The Lord sends Isaiah to announce the end of fear, the fear that weakens and incapacitates us. In the previous verse, the fearful of heart are identified as those with “weak hands” and “feeble knees.” Fear unmans us by its ferocious festering, but God swoops in to vanquish fear and restore his people. In this section of Isaiah, chaps. 28–35, the prophet has been going back and forth between judgment and deliverance. This final chapter culminates with the people of God returning from exile back to an abundant land that bursts forth with blossoms and water (35:1-2, 7). Creation is celebrating the return of God’s people, their restoration, the fulfillment of their hopes as “the ransomed of the LORD shall return, and come to Zion with singing” (Isa 35:10 RSV).

Fear Not!

I can almost hear the thick Polish accent of St. John Paul II uttering once again his favorite encouragement, “Do not be afraid!” (Here’s a video of him doing just that.) Fear is the opposite of hope, the opposite of fortitude, the opposite of faith. But in such an untrustworthy, strife-ridden world, why shouldn’t we be afraid? Isaiah’s answer is “Behold, your God will come with vengeance…He will come and save you” (Isa 35:4 RSV). That’s just it. We don’t have the capability to defeat fear on our own. In fact, fear is a rational response to a haywire world. But God, Creator of all, Master of everything, he has the power to defeat fear, to vindicate his captured, fearful, humiliated people. They might have been afraid of foreign powers who would drag them away from the Promised Land, but these serve for us as metaphors for sin and evil which can drag us away from communion with God. Yet the slavery to sin that we sometimes find ourselves in need not be a permanent confinement, a life sentence. God comes to us, he sends his Son to us, he sends others to us to rescue us from that imprisonment, to vindicate us and defeat the fear that lurks inside.

To Fear or Not To Fear

Many times when the Lord speaks to someone in the Bible, his first words warn against fear. Abraham (Gen 15:1), Hagar (Gen 22:17), Isaac (Gen 26:24), Joshua (Josh 10:8), St. Joseph (Matt 1:20), and Mary (Luke 1:30) all receive such messages. God does not come to fill people with terror, but to conquer fear and set people free from its hold. In fact, the New Testament teaches, “Perfect love casts out fear” (1 John 4:18 RSV). But fear has two faces. Other points in the Bible remind us to “fear the Lord” (Deut 10:12; Prov 3:7). How do we reconcile the Bible encouraging fear in some places and in other places telling us not to fear? I think Blaise Pascal said it best, “Fear not, provided you fear; but if you fear not, then fear.” It sounds a bit silly, but the idea makes sense: If you don’t fear God and therefore flaunt his ways, you ought to fear him because of punishment. Yet if you do fear God and find yourself afraid of the world around you, then do not fear, since God is your Savior. It is a paradox, but God seems to love those.

Finding Fulfillment in Jesus

When Jesus comes, he fulfills parts of this passage. He makes the blind see. He makes the deaf to hear and he heals the lame so they can leap. These signs that Jesus performs indicate that he is bringing Isaiah’s prophecies to fulfillment. While Isaiah’s contemporaries might have looked for mere political deliverance from foreign oppressors, Jesus’ actions reveal that the prophet’s message goes much deeper—to deliverance from our spiritual enemies (sin and death) not just our political ones. When Jesus heals people, he shows that he is the Messiah, the savior who comes to set us free from fear, free to live in love. Isaiah depicts the transition from fear to freedom beautifully: “the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water” (Isa 35:7 RSV). What had been a parched, dry desert will flow with water and blossom with flowers. The dried-up, fearful heart will gush with praise.

Now of course, we wait the final fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecies, which will not come to full fruition until the Second Coming. But in the meantime, we need not wait with impatience, fear, doubt and anxiety. Instead, Jesus offers us hope and courage in the midst of a dark world. God will come. He will rescue us. That should be consolation enough, enough for us to look forward with a heart brimming with joyful anticipation, rather than to bring “weak hands” and “feeble knees” upon ourselves by a doom-and-gloom perspective. Isaiah’s message, “He will come and save you,” should unburden us from the paralysis of fear and let us look to God for our future.

Scripture Speaks: The Deaf Will Hear, Mute Will Speak

Gayle Somers

When Jesus heals a deaf, mute man, He fulfills an old prophecy in a startling, unexpected way. How?

Gospel (Read Mk 7:31-37)

St. Mark describes for us an episode that took place while Jesus was ministering in a primarily Gentile region (the Decapolis). “People brought to Him a deaf man who had a speech impediment and begged Him to lay His hand on him.” We don’t know if these were Jews or Gentiles, but we do know that this was an earnest intercession for a needy person. Because so much of our own prayer lives, as well as that of the whole Church, is taken up with intercessions of exactly this sort, we would do well to pay careful attention to the outcome.

Interestingly, Jesus takes the man who lived entirely in silence “off by himself away from the crowd.” Why did He want this to be such a personal encounter? Perhaps He wanted to avoid the heightened excitement of the crowd. Perhaps He wanted the man to remember His own healing touch more than the miracle of being able to hear and speak. Look at how personal and physical Jesus gets with the man. He “put His finger into the man’s ears.” Those familiar with Jewish history will know that sometimes God’s action in the world was described in terms of His “finger” (see Ex 8:19; 31:18; Ps 8:4; also see Lk 11:20). Then, “spitting, [He] touched his tongue.” What intimate contact this is! It placed something of Jesus’ Body, His spittle, into the man’s mouth. When we see how physical this act of healing becomes, we have some sense of appreciation that, in the Eucharist, Jesus still desires to heal us by actually coming into our bodies. Then, “He looked up to heaven and groaned, and said to him … ‘Be opened!’ (translated from Aramaic by St. Mark)” What was the glance to heaven and the groaning all about? Was it a foreshadowing, in Jesus’ own Body, of the Passion He would soon undergo in order for this man to be healed not just of deafness but of sin and death as well? Did the glance to His Father signal a communion of love as the Son worked to perfectly fulfill the Father’s mission? As we shall see in our first reading, long ago the prophets had spoken of a Messiah who would clear the ears of the deaf. Was Jesus’ groan one of both the ecstasy of His obedient love for His Father and acknowledgement of its high cost?

The man was immediately cured, but Jesus ordered everyone to keep quiet about it. Surely this was to avoid mass hysteria and sensationalism from spreading through the towns and villages where He traveled. In addition, Jesus didn’t want news about Him to travel too quickly to Jerusalem, triggering the fierce resistance He knew would come. He wanted time to do His work of preaching and teaching. He also wanted followers who were sincere, ready to follow Him even when He didn’t lift a single one of His powerful “fingers” to stop the Jews from arresting Him and the Romans from killing Him.

The warning didn’t work. In fact, it had the opposite effect. “The more He ordered them not to [talk about it], the more they proclaimed it.” Perhaps His urgency over secrecy convinced them the message about Him really wasvery important. In any case, the people were “exceedingly astonished” by the miracle and said, “He has done all things well.” Their commentary reminds us the constant refrain of the Creation story, when God repeatedly pronounced His handiwork as “good.” This is appropriate, because as Jesus takes up the miraculous work of fulfilling all the prophecies about a Messiah who would heal God’s people, He begins the work of re-Creation, in which He aims to heal not simply physical infirmities but everything that keeps us deaf and blind to God, that cripples us in our walk with Him, and that prevents our tongues from singing a continual song of praise to Him.

Possible response: Lord Jesus, only “say the word, and my soul shall be healed.”

First Reading (Read Isa 35:4-7a)

Here are the words of Isaiah that help us understand the great significance of our Gospel story. At a time in Israel’s history when God had to send severe punishment on their waywardness, He also made a wonderful promise: “Say to those whose hearts are frightened … ‘Here is your God.’” The One about whom Isaiah prophesied would be the very presence of God in the midst of His people. What would He be doing as He saved them? “Then will the eyes of the blind be opened, the ears of the deaf be cleared … then the tongues of the mute will sing.” Jesus used the miracles of physical healing (seen by all eyes) to point to the true and eternal healing He came to give us (seen only by God’s eyes). Isaiah goes on to describe this visitation by God as a time when the dried-out, thirsty earth will itself erupt in streams, rivers, pools, and springs. He is not, of course, talking about changing geography or climate. No, he is seeing a day when the curse that fell on both man and Creation at the time of the Fall will come to an end. The deterioration and death that has been the constant shadow on the whole universe (see Rom 8:22) will finally be banished once and for all. Everything God made—all of which in its own way longs for Him in a never-quenched thirst—will be given new life. Isaiah assures us that the Messiah will make good on this glorious promise. If we believe his words, then we can do what God tells us through him: “Be strong, fear not!”

Possible response: Heavenly Father, thank You that You have already begun to fulfill Your promise of healing Your Creation. Help me be strong and fearless in the times when I struggle to see it.

Psalm (Read Ps 146:8-10)

Perhaps the people in our Gospel story who just couldn’t keep quiet about Jesus would have wanted to use the words of this psalm to express their great astonishment over Him. It is a song praising God’s goodness in setting captives free, in administering justice, in caring for all those sick or burdened or lost. To perceive God at work this way—then, in the psalmist’s day, or now, in our own—leaves us with only this response: “Praise the Lord, my soul!”

Possible response: The psalm is, itself, a response to our other readings. Read it again prayerfully to make it your own.

Second Reading (Read Jam 2:1-5)

St. James now gives us practical direction in how to live our lives in imitation of Christ. We have seen from our other readings that God cares for the lost, the outcast, the marginalized, the sick, the weak, and the helpless. Now, as we live our lives in Christ, we are to do the same. St. James gives us an example of what that kind of life looks like. In our “assembly,” or church gathering, we are to show “no partiality” by treating the well-to-do better and more hospitably than the shabby. In fact, we are to associate with the “poor in the world” to help us remember thatwe are the “poor” God has chosen “to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom that He promised to those who love Him.”

We should always be attentive to the lessons the poor can teach us.

Possible response: Lord Jesus, please help me combat the temptation to show partiality. Help me be as gracious to the poor as You are to me.

One Bread, One Body

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All Issues > Volume 31, Issue 5

<< Sunday, September 6, 2015 >>

23rd Sunday Ordinary Time

Isaiah 35:4-7
James 2:1-5
View Readings

Psalm 146:6-10
Mark 7:31-37
Similar Reflections

FRUIT OF THE LIPS (see Heb 13:15)

Jesus "put His fingers into the man's ears and, spitting, touched his tongue." —Mark 7:33

Jesus' gestures of inserting his fingers into a deaf-mute man's ears and touching the man's tongue seem foreign to our modern, antiseptic culture. Yet if you're baptized, you experienced the touch of Jesus in a similar way. At baptism, the priest or deacon touched your ears and lips, praying that God would open your ears to hear His Word and your lips to proclaim it.

Before Jesus touched the deaf-mute, "He looked up to heaven and emitted a groan. He said to him, 'Ephphatha!' (that is, 'Be opened!') At once the man's ears were opened; he was freed from the impediment, and began to speak plainly" (Mk 7:34-35). Jesus is still the same today (Heb 13:8). He's still groaning and praying that our ears and mouths would be open to the Word of God.

Years of listening to loud music results in a gradual loss of hearing. Likewise, years of listening to the noise and voices of the world causes our spiritual hearing to decay. Repent of any spiritual deafness or muteness. Allow Jesus to take you off by yourself with Him, away from the hubbub of the world that crowds around you (Mk 7:33). Let Him touch you anew and renew your baptismal innocence. "Be opened!" (Mk 7:34)

Prayer: Jesus, whenever I cross myself as I hear the Gospel proclaimed at Mass, touch my forehead, lips, and heart as You touched the deaf-mute. Open my lips to speak Your Word.

Promise: "Did not God choose those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom He promised to those who love Him?" —Jas 2:5

Praise: Praise Jesus, crucified and risen! Praise You, incarnate Love, poured out for me!

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