This Marcan passage will separate the proverbial men from the boys in any homiletic contest. The boys of both genders will content themselves with the sensationalistic aspect of the story, i.e., that Jesus "makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak." Voil�! Jesus, the miracle worker. End of sermon.
 
The more mature homilist will see two angles: 1) that any one of any cultural or ethnic identity has a legitimate claim on available resources or 2) that anyone who can make those deaf to human need actually hear and respond to it, who can make those cowed into silence by power, stand up and speak truth to it - that such a one is eminently worth following.
 
Mark depicts what is truly a remarkable encounter between Jesus the Galilean and a Syro-Phoenician woman, by whose effrontery and persistence Jesus is essentially undone. Speaking, as we were, of gender, it is necessary in getting Mark's point to note that Jesus the male Jew is bested by a Gentile woman. This is Mark in his iconoclastic mode, dismantling another traditional barrier erected between people of different groups. The text suggests that Jesus wasn't looking for trouble, that, in fact, in Mark's imagination he was trying to stay out of sight (v. 24). But trouble found him in the person of the Syro-Phoenician woman who was not about to take no for an answer. The words Mark puts on Jesus' lips in this scene are almost scandalous as he fends her and her request for help with her mentally ill child: "It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs." In other words, true believers get the resources; infidels get what's left (as she is depicted as saying herself): "Even the dogs under the table eat the children's crumbs."
 
Mark's Jesus -- set up by Mark for his fall -- gives in with no evident embarrassment, pays attention and is credited with a remote-control healing of the little girl. This all took place, as we might gather by the clue in v. 31 in the area of the northwest coastal cities of Tyre and Sidon, whence perhaps the Syro-Phoenician woman in the first place. Just for the record, from Tyre to the closest boundary of the Decapolis (Ten Cities region) would be no less than 50 miles through some pretty rugged territory through which Mark implies Jesus went on his way to the next thing.
 
In the space of one verse Mark places Jesus in that Decapolitan area where is brought before him one with impaired hearing (κωφον) and a serious speech impediment (μογιλαλον). The request is that Jesus should do something to remove both impediments. Why, we do not know, Mark depicts Jesus taking the hearing and speech impeded one aside and in private. There takes place a scene strange to modern eyes entailing the use of spittle in some way not made clear. The use of spittle in the healing arts in antiquity is mentioned by Tacitus. To those who believe they eat Jesus' flesh and drink his blood as part of a church ritual, the application of his spittle might not seem out of line.
 
One question to ask is why Mark has Jesus do whatever he did, as it were, off-stage. It could be because for Mark the incident was as much of a distraction as it evidently was for Jesus who seemed to be trying to move on. Forward motion is a fundamental motif in Mark.
 
Perhaps the bigger issue is what the effect of the hearing-and-speech impaired man's new self might have been. No society gives much respect to impaired persons. Such people are not only shunned but often made fun of. The man must have been obvious in his redeemed estate, and perhaps we are to understand that he was admitted into a society from which his affliction has probably excluded him. Another barrier removed.
 
And that, of course, would be the greater and enduring difficulty. Mark's Jesus especially is depicted as teaching and thereby effecting the redemption of the outcast, including, one supposes, those economically and socially marginalized. Few societies in human history have readily accepted such egalitarianism. They have, in fact, fought it. A political reading, such as Ched Myers brings to Mark, makes clear that the freedom Jesus is depicted by Mark as bringing to people at the margins no doubt contributed to his fatal run-in with the establishment.

The homilist may want to consider one of two tacks on this passage: the first having to do with the inability of the poor and otherwise socially and politically marginalized to be heard in the corridors of power -- people over whom multi-national corporations and financial interests run unheeding of the great damage their rush for profit and share value leaves in their paths.
 
More specifically at this juncture in American life, the Syro-Phoenician woman may be compared to an advocate for children's health and well-being -- especially those who have no health care insurance. Such advocates must be persistent, cross social and other barriers and speak up to power. The man with impaired speech and hearing can be compared to politicians who could, if they would, do something about the grossly unfair delivery of health care in the United States of America. They have to have their ears unstopped and their tongues loosened or stop speaking gobbledygook. They have to be goaded into separating themselves from a financial power structure that rations health care delivery favoring those able to pay or who have generous insurers to pay for them.
 
If religious communities, so-called, cannot or will not be stopped in their tracks by the persistent advocates for the poor and become one of them, they are not paying the rent. If religious communities would stop their mumbling and stuttering about such mindless matters as whether gay and lesbian persons are fully human and open their ears to the cries of the poor and disadvantaged, they will have taken the first step. The second step is to open their mouths and speak clearly and authoritatively to the kind of power that can make the difference.
 
I shall go so far as to say that religious communities in general will share the blame if the effort to bring justice to the delivery of health care is not soon accomplished. The political and economic resistance to such a dispensation is one of those barriers Mark's Jesus would aggress against. So should we.
 
In this regard, take note, please, of the Isaiah reading appointed to go with this gospel in which we hear the admonition not to be "of a fearful heart. Be strong, do not fear . . . then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped . . ."
 
The several readings appointed from the Epistle of James fit Isaiah and Mark like hand in glove: "You have dishonored the poor. Is it not the rich who oppress you?" And "What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?" Answer: no good.