“They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly” Mark 7:32-35.
There is healing when we open ourselves. Since I was in grade school, I have found ways to be personable and social without being vulnerable. I knew how to laugh and connect with others without making room for people to truly know who I was personally. There are countless times I allowed people to go forward with their descriptions of me because I believed that it was better for them to go on with their calculated assumptions instead of me opening up about the things I was trying to understand about myself. It was years of this, especially during the first half of my undergrad years. There was a line I heard from one of the staff I worked with at summer camp that described who I presented myself to be. The line was, “I am not who you think I am. I am who you think, I think I am.” As strangely worded that phrase is, it made most sense to how I was. It was better to be someone else rather than myself, because being me meant being vulnerable, and being vulnerable meant some sort of weakness. That’s what I believed. When I reflect, I think it’s funny because I knew that there was an importance to being vulnerable – it’s important for people to be honest with themselves and find people who will listen and speak into them – in fact I intentionally did my best to be that listening and caring ear for others, but I would tell myself that I don’t need to find that in anyone else for me.
But it is this lack of vulnerability that makes it hard for all of us to have community. We try to appear perfect; we try to look for perfect, we try to appear as though we have it all together and that causes us to not accept people that do not have it all together because, in a way, they remind us of the self that we hide from everyone else.
I came across this text at a time when I felt most alone. I resonated with how Jesus took the deaf and mute person away from the crowd. I felt like this was what God wanted for me – to be alone, to be isolated from the crowd, to do my own thing, to not need anyone, but then Jesus says, “Ephphatha.” It was not about being alone, it was about being opened. To be opened back with the crowd, with the community of people – some being the people who walked him there despite his condition. It was through being open that healing was experienced. That openness, that vulnerability allows us to share the good news, as well as the hard things in our lives, that openness lets us be present in our spaces even when things are not exactly to our preference, that openness allows us to be committed to people, over programs. When the moments arise when I want to just want the things that I want, when days come and I want selfish care instead of self-care, when days come when I don’t think anyone cares about what’s on my heart, I hear Jesus say, “Ephphatha,” and then I am reminded how valuable community is.