There’s a moment in Mark’s Gospel (Mk 7:31-37) when Jesus travels to Gentile territory, that is, outside of Jewish territory, to the people whom many Jews would have considered as objects of contempt (and vice versa). He had just healed the daughter of a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Gentile. Now, he is responding to a request from a group of Gentiles to heal a friend of theirs. The man is deaf and he has a speech impediment. He can’t make himself understood when he speaks.
Jesus responds to the group’s request by acting almost like a Hellenistic wonder-worker. He puts his fingers into the man’s ears and some of his spittle on the man’s tongue and says a “foreign” word—foreign at least to his Greek-speaking readers—the Aramaic word for “be opened” (Mk 7:34). But what Jesus is doing is not magic. He looks up to heaven, asking for divine power to show itself, and then issues an authoritative command. Jesus’ word heals the man so that he now hears and speaks in a way that allows people to understand him.
In this passage and in the one about the Syro-Phoenician woman (Mk 7:24-29), Mark wants us to recognize that Jesus’ mission is not only to his fellow Jews but to the Gentiles as well.
We all could recite a huge list of things that are wrong with our times, but there are also extraordinary advances being made.
Commentators point out that the Greek expression used here to describe how Jesus heals the man, which translates to “his tongue was set free” (cf. Mk 7:35), suggests that Jesus is liberating the man from demonic power. The language Mark uses here implicitly refers back to passages in Isaiah that use similar vocabulary to speak about the future time when God will fulfill God’s promises to Israel. Mark wants his readers to appreciate the fact that Jesus’ healing of the deaf and the mute is a sign of that promised in-breaking reign of God, the arrival of the Messiah.
I believe that this Markan text can help us in our time. It offers lessons that we Christians may use to approach LGBTQ issues and people with deepening respect and love, on the model of Christ.
We are living in extraordinary times, a time of epochal change. We all could recite a huge list of things that are wrong with our times, but there are also extraordinary advances being made.
Society’s prejudice and hatred made it impossible for LGBTQ people to speak openly in a way that would allow other folks to understand them.
Some 60 years ago we witnessed the emergence of the gay rights movement. And more recently, we have witnessed transgender people coming into the light from the shadows. These folks weren’t listened to, to put it mildly, and society’s prejudice and hatred made it impossible for them to speak openly in a way that would allow other folks to understand them.
But we are now in the situation where LGBTQ people are articulating who and what they are, and asking for recognition and respect.
Is it a stretch to relate these movements to what Jesus was doing in his time with the despised Gentiles? Is it a stretch to perceive the action of the Holy Spirit in people who are naming who and what they are to those of us who up until now saw ourselves as the undisputed norm for human identity? Everything in this arena is relatively new, and those who are thoroughly shaped by the traditional understanding of human sexual identity find this emergence not only challenging but scary.
Could it also be the case that the Spirit is leading us to more and more truth about the images of God in our midst, human beings, in all their God-given diversity?
Jesus tells us in John’s Gospel that the Holy Spirit, the divine Advocate, will lead us into all truth, if we listen to that Spirit and follow its inspirations (Jn 16:13). Here, Jesus is referring principally to our coming more and more into the truth of Jesus as the definitive self-revelation of God, of the Creator of all whom he called “Abba.” But could it also be the case that the Spirit is leading us to more and more truth about the images of God in our midst, human beings, in all their God-given diversity?
For many centuries, the majority of human beings in many areas of the world have forced people different from them to live in the shadows, on the margins of society, with terrible feelings of shame and guilt. These minorities have been on the receiving end of horrifically hateful speech and actions.
But in our time, we are being asked by these people to meet them with respect and love as they emerge from the shadows—to treat them as fellow images and children of God. And we need to accept the fact, the truth, of the existence of these people. They are not going away. They are here to stay, part of God’s family, which is all of humankind.
We are being asked by LGBTQ people to meet them with respect and love as they emerge from the shadows—to treat them as fellow images and children of God.
Christians who are deeply troubled by the emergence of these people of varied sexual identity and sexual orientation need to ask for the grace to live out, in wider fashion, the commandment to love their neighbor as themselves. The Risen Jesus, working through the Holy Spirit, wants to heal our hearing so that we can listen actively and deeply to those who differ from us. And the Spirit wants to loosen our tongues to speak to these folks with truth and love and to speak about them to others with truth and love.
I’m not saying anything strange or far-fetched here. But we are not all living out the love commandment in this area. The whole people of God—lay members, lay ministers, deacons, priests and bishops—are called to live the love commandment and model that behavior to others. (Remember that “love” in the New Testament is not a matter of warm feelings about others; it is a way of life that seeks to increase the authentic flourishing of the other.)
The Risen Jesus, working through the Holy Spirit, wants to heal our hearing so that we can listen actively and deeply to those who differ from us. And the Spirit wants to loosen our tongues to speak to these folks with truth and love, and to speak about them to others with truth and love.
The Risen Jesus, working through the Holy Spirit, wants to heal our hearing so that we can listen actively and deeply to those who differ from us.
As Christians, we are called to some specific activities.
First, we must seek the best scientific understanding of LGBTQ issues. Here it is important that we distinguish between solid science that is faithful to its methodologies and ideology posing as science.
Secondly, we need to avoid using Scriptural texts as proof texts, taken out of context and ignoring the literary form that is being used. Let’s stop citing “Male and female God created them” (Gen 1:27) as if this bit of Scripture is dealing with our contemporary issues! We need to determine theologically what divine revelation tells us about human sexuality and what it does not intend to tell us.
Thirdly, we are called to listen deeply to these fellow human beings and to seek to understand their experience from their perspective.
And lastly, we are called to pray to the Holy Spirit to lead us Christians to the truth, the scientific truth and the revelatory truth concerning human sexual identity and sexual orientation. This kind of prayer requires that we pray for the gift of freedom from all biases, and for the ability to listen well to the data and to the persons who might differ from us, so as to be able to engage them with compassion, understanding and love.
These practices will help us to become a patient people, discovering what God wishes us to unlearn and discovering what new learning God desires for us.
We Westerners are in the midst of an unprecedented moment as people who have dwelled in the shadows because of their sexual identity find their voice and ask us, at long last, to understand them and to appreciate them. These practices will help us to become a patient people, discovering what God wishes us to unlearn and discovering what new learning God desires for us.
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