Sometimes you just have to see something before you can understand it. You can read books, but unless you see it in action, see it demonstrated, there is just something missing. That is one of the great things YouTube can help you with. They have videos to teach just about anything from carpentry to quilt making. Read, watch and then do it yourself. I wouldn’t try open heart surgery. I might leave that to the professionals.
If you have ever been in a place where they don’t speak your language and you tried to communicate, you probably had to use some gestures to do it. Hands, facial expressions, even objects from you environment come into play. I remember locking my keys in my car back in 1977. I was in a small French village and no one we could find spoke any English.
So trying to explain to a shop keeper that I wanted a coat hanger to pop the lock on my VW Beetle became quite the town happening. By the time we were done we had a crowd of about 20 people watching. At one point a very kind old gentleman who had never popped a lock on a car door decided he would help. He rushed in and spent 20 minutes trying before I was able to politely get the hanger back and pop it in under a minute. Cheers followed.
But the initial conversation about the coat hanger would have been classic, if we could have captured it on film. I felt like an actor without any props. I acted out taking off my coat and hanging it up on a wire coat hanger. That didn’t work. They were a baffled as I was about what I was trying to explain.
Jesus has to communicate with a deaf person. This is long before the invention of sign language as a full language. Jesus is going to heal this man’s deafness and his inability to speak. So He puts his fingers in his ears, spits and touches his tongue, and then looks up to heaven and with an exaggerated physical expression of speaking commands the opening of his ears.
The gestures helped Jesus communicate. We use pictures to communicate all the time. We post them on FaceBook to tell the stories of our lives. Road traffic signs in most countries are primarily pictures. We use Emoticons to express our emotions.
Jesus used the available means at His disposal to communicate His intent with this man. Can we do any less with the Gospel?
The Arnold Journey 