Twelfth Sunday after Trinity - August 30, 2009

The Church Season of Trinity
The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, One Year Series
Our Savior Lutheran Church, Midland, MI (August 30, 2009)

“Be Opened”

Readings:
Psalm 146
Isaiah 29:17-24
1 Cor. 3:4-11
Mark 7:31-37

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Grace, mercy and peace be to you from the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen

The text for today’s message is as recorded in the Gospel Lesson from the 7th chapter of St. Mark

Mark 7:31-37 (NIV)

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 him to place his hand on the man. 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 (Jesus)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.”

Jesus has just traveled from the region of Tyre and Sidon, a place where He cast out a demon that held a young girl in its grip. Now, our Lord is by the Sea of Galilee, and again He comes face to face with a person in the bondage of Satan. The people bring to Jesus a man whose ears are imprisoned with deafness and whose tongue is bound by an impediment of speech. For when a person cannot hear, neither can he speak clearly or rightly. Such is the goal of the devil: to disrupt and tear down the lives and the capacities of those who were created in the image of God, to cause people trouble in both soul and body. The evil one does this in an attempt to turn our hearts away from the Lord.

We do see the working of the devil in our physical troubles. For was it not through Satan's temptations that sin entered the world, bringing with it sickness, pain, and death itself? Indeed, that is why St. Paul refers to his "thorn in the flesh," his bodily ailment, as "a messenger of Satan to buffet me."

It is so true that we often turn to God most eagerly and pray to Him most passionately in difficult times–like when we're facing financial difficulties, right before a surgery, in the midst of illness, ongoing bodily pain or when we loose someone we love. But you know through those bad things the devil, the destroyer, is turned in against himself. For though we may be weak by ourselves, and our own efforts, yet we are made to be strong in the Lord. For our trust is then directed ever more fervently to God's strength and His mercy. When Satan buffets us, the Holy Spirit draws us to pray in faith the words of the Psalm, "Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Make haste to help me, O Lord!"

However, we cannot pray in this way unless the Lord first opens our ears and unlooses our tongue. For like the man in the Gospel we are by nature deaf and mute towards God. Being bound by Satan even from birth, our ears are closed off and calloused towards God. We don't naturally grasp His words or perceive what He says. We don't "speak His language." Just like the 12 disciples, we don’t how to pray, but Jesus taught them. For Jesus said to His disciples, “When you pray...”(Mt. 6:9) And Jesus teaches us too, and He does so by speaking to us through the curing of a deaf-mute man.

For us the impediment in our hearing causes an impediment in our talking and our praying. It's sort of like listening to music on headphones with the volume up. If someone tries to talk to you, the noise keeps you from hearing them. Your hearing something but at the same time not able to hear what the person is saying. And if you try to speak back to them, your speech is liable to be slurred and funny sounding because you can't really hear yourself. That's also how it is in our relationship with God. The noise of the world and of our own fallen nature keeps us from hearing Him speak, from listening to and grasping His words. And our speech back to Him, if there is any, is slurred and garbled and turned inward by sin. Indeed, in a very real way, we are just like the deaf-mute in today's Gospel.

When Jesus touched someone, they were touched by the hands of God. God is a hands-on God, who stepped down from His glory in heaven, to step into our human flesh, to dwell among us and touch us through His own true humanity–fingers in the ears, spitting and grabbing tongues. He is the God who deals with us as the human creatures that we are. None of this out of body "spiritual" nonsense we hear about today. God deals with us in the grubby, ordinary, earthy, everyday way of our human existence. When Jesus stuck his fingers into that man's ears, they were the fingers of God. When Jesus touched the man's tongue, it was God touching his tongue.

Even now our Lord comes into contact with us not only according to His divine nature but also according to His bodily human nature. He touches us tangibly in the sacraments. We meet Him face to face in the Holy Supper of His true body and blood. He takes us aside and lays His hands on us in baptism and in private absolution and speaks to us His words of forgiveness and release. Indeed, our Lord still attends to us, His people, and He does so personally and hands on.

Our Lord's words also shatter the chains which bind and enslave you. He says to you, too, "Ephphatha! Be released!" And by water and the Spirit you are set free from the powers of darkness. "Depart, O unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit." So it is that at the baptismal font the Lord liberates you from the control of the oppressor–and that is a miracle no less marvelous than the one here by the Sea of Galilee. Christ releases and frees you from Satan's grip and brings you into the loving and uplifting hands of God, as the Psalm says, "The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners."

That freedom, however, does not come without a price. For as Jesus is about to speak, He sighs, He groans. Our Lord groans because He takes on Himself all the things that has caused us to groan–the pain, the loneliness, the troubles, the sorrows, or weaknesses, our mis-directions, and misgivings–whatever binds and imprisons us.

Yet for us to be released from the prison of our self-centeredness and sin. In trade Jesus Christ makes Himself a captive. For you see, in order to release us from the captivity of satan, the Lord paid a tremendous ransom to set us free. He let Himself be placed into the hands of the powers of darkness, who finally killed Him. There on the cross He made direct contact with our sin–like fingers in the ears–and He groaned and breathed His last in our place. However, in that death He was not defeated but victorious. For in so doing Christ took away the sin that gives Satan his power. He overcame all that makes us sigh and groan in this fallen world and put it to death. And by rising bodily from the grave, He restored the bodies of all the faithful to a life which is whole and immortal and imperishable–no more deafness and blindness and disease and death. The humble also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.

God has freely given us our faith by His grace. God has freely given us himself in the life and death of His Son on the cross. This freeing Gospel of Christ cannot be restrained, nor can it be bound. It proceeds ever onward in the ears and on the lips of His church, given freely for you, His people. Jesus says to you “Ephphatha!” (which means, “Be opened!”), and in His heavenly home you will most certainly hear the voice of your savior, and together with all the saints who have gone before us, we will open our lips and declare His praise for all eternity. Amen.

In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

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