HE DID A GOOD JOB THIS TIME!
31 Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. 32 There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged Jesus to place his hand on him.
33 After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man’s ears. Then he spit and touched the man’s tongue. 34 He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, “Ephphatha!” (which means “Be opened!”). 35 At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.
36 Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. 37 People were overwhelmed with amazement. “He has done everything well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” Mark 7:31-37
Why is it that, when good things happen to us, we can so easily attribute them to God’s goodness and yet, when things go wrong, God gets the blame as though He were some capricious, malevolent being who plans bad things to punish us or to make us uncomfortable for His own pleasure? It seems that, deep inside human beings, there is an inclination to find a scapegoat for our ills instead of taking responsibility and acknowledging that the sequence of human choices plays a big part in human circumstances. God gets blamed because He is thought to be a divine puppeteer who manipulates people and circumstances according to His whims.
In this story, a man who had the misfortune to be deaf and mute as a consequence, was brought to Jesus for healing. Unlike the way He resisted the Syros-Phoenician woman’s request, He took the man aside and opened his ears so that he could hear and speak. There were no dead pigs involved this time to ruin their economy, so the people of the region were delighted with what He had done. In spite of His urging them to be quiet, they spread the story everywhere and the verdict was, “He has done everything well.” No blame this time because the outcome of His presence was good!
Why did Jesus want them to be quiet about this miracle? Did He really believe that a deaf-mute who could suddenly hear and speak would go unnoticed? There must have been a deeper reason for urging the people not to talk about it. What is this “Messianic secret” that appears in the gospels?
Jesus was not seeking popularity for its own sake; His miracle ministry had a much deeper significance than that. His “works” were part of a body of evidence to display who He was and why He came. He brought into the world system directed by the devil and his minions, another order of things that put the rightful owner and ruler of this world on display and to reveal the true nature of the Father and His original and ultimate purpose for all creation.