Trinity 12

Mark 7:31-37 - Trinity XII - August 18, 2013 

Sharing Our Faith

Jesus was walking through a region of Judea where the population consisted mostly of Gentiles.  This means that they didn’t have the word of God.  That’s what made them Gentiles.  They had notions of God, of course.  But their notions were false, because the gods they invented were crafted in their own hearts.  They learned what they thought they knew about God by consulting their feelings and experiences rather than by listening to what God actually said.  Needless to say, their source of information was flawed.  And since they had a flawed understanding of who God was, naturally they also had a flawed understanding of what to expect God to do. 

Of course, they knew God was powerful.  This much they knew – what he could do.  But who doesn’t know this much?  You don’t need Scripture to tell you this.  Look at the earth and sky.  Notice the intricate design of the plant and animal world around us.  Look at how fearfully and wonderfully made everything is.  Seeing God’s handiwork certainly tells you a lot about God.  But it won’t tell you his will for your life.  The most important thing you need to learn about God can only be learned by listening to what he says to you. 

But all these Gentiles saw was his power.  Ah, but what a thing to see!  It’s easy to be satisfied with this.  Power is good.  Power gets things done.  And they saw in Jesus of Nazareth not only the ability to do amazing things, but a willingness to get it done.  This man, Jesus, they concluded, had clearly received power from God.  They could see that.  What more did they need to know about him?  And so they brought to him a friend who was deaf and mute, and begged him to make him whole. 

Well, they didn’t just beg.  They actually prescribed for Jesus the exact thing he needed to do: “Lay your hands on him,” they said.  Now, maybe the crowds had seen Jesus heal others in a similar way.  Or maybe they just assumed that this is how one ought to go about healing.  Either way, that’s what they expected from Jesus.   And they told him what they expected.  But that’s not what they needed from Jesus.  What they needed was for Jesus to teach them.  By healing the man in his own way, Jesus did just that.  He taught them. 

It’s typical of those who don’t listen to the word of God to presume to tell God what he must do to help them, and how.  You might know that God is powerful.  You might even have a good hunch that he’s willing to accomplish what you need.  But if you don’t listen to God’s word, if you don’t consider what the Bible teaches you about yourself, and receive instruction from Jesus, then you don’t really know what you need at all.  And this is the spiritual predicament of every sinner everywhere of all time. 

The deaf-mute in our Gospel lesson this morning serves as the perfect image of this universal spiritual condition of man: He couldn’t hear; so he couldn’t talk.  Likewise, without hearing the word of God, we have nothing to say – we don’t even know what to ask for.   But people like to talk anyway.  Oh, they’ve heard the word of God.  They’re Christians.  They believe.  “But anyway.”  As though all this were just details.  “Anyway.”  They like to talk about how God has touched their lives.  People like to talk about what Jesus has done for them here and now.  Maybe it was a problem with drugs.  Maybe it was gambling.  Maybe it was a weight problem, or something more serious like cancer.  They tell Jesus what they need, and then they tell it on the mountain how God meets this particular need of theirs – how the hand of God touched them in this way or that.  Their testimonials to God’s power become their message of praise.

But Jesus touches our lives in a more profound way than that.  He doesn’t lay his hand on us; he speaks to us.  He tells us what we need to hear.  And he tells us who we need to hear it from.  He teaches us Christian doctrine.  Let’s take a look at how he did this for the man who couldn’t hear or talk, and so also see how this relates to how he deals with us today. 

The first thing that Jesus did was take the man aside. The crowd was thick.  He wanted to deal with this man without all the commotion.  But the commotion wouldn’t have bothered the man, you know.  He was deaf.  No, he took him aside in order to teach us that he deals with us in the same way.  He takes us aside.  He draws us away from the world, away from what the world begs and clamors for; and he deals with us personally – as he alone knows we need to be dealt with.  When Jesus speaks, he is speaking to you.  And he makes sure there’s no doubt about that.  Faith is personal.  Not inasmuch as it relies on the person believing, but inasmuch as the person believing must personally hear and apply the promise of the gospel to himself. 

The second thing that Jesus did was touch the man’s ears.  First the ears.  He was telling him in a sort of sign language that he was going to restore his hearing.  So Jesus deals with us.  The first thing he tells us to do is listen.  The first organ that must encounter Jesus is not our heart.  It is not our tongue.  It is our ears.  Faith comes by hearing, the Apostle tells us.   And he’s right.  Even before Jesus heals the man, he communicates to him what he’s going to do.  He’s going to fix his hearing.  And so he does with us.  Before he meets our greatest need, he tells us exactly what we need him to do.  He tells us to listen.  We need him to speak the words of eternal life. 

The third thing that Jesus did was spit and touch the man’s tongue.  He was going to give him the ability to speak as well.  That’s what he communicated.  First the ears, then the tongue.  So it is for us.  Jesus teaches us what to speak with our mouths by speaking into our ears.  Do you want to know what you should say when confessing what Christ has done for you?  Then listen to what Christ says to you.  Say what you hear.  Jesus’ communication – his signs – with this man were only symbolic.  He was not healing him by doing these things as though the miracle were in the gestures.  He was directing him away from all flashy acts of power to the word that would accomplish what he needed. 

But before he spoke, he showed where the almighty word came from.  By spitting, he showed that it would come from his own mouth.  By what he did next, he showed that the word would come from heaven.  

The fourth thing Jesus did was look up to heaven and sigh.  He looked to heaven because that’s where he came from.  He was not praying for power.  He was locating his power.  He came from the Father.  This man Jesus with a flesh and blood mouth that needed spit to speak like any other man is in fact the eternal God who had been speaking from eternity, who indeed spoke all things into existence.  The Father sent him to have mercy on sinners.  This mercy required that he take not only the impairments and weaknesses of man upon himself, but even the very sin that caused man’s suffering.  That’s why he sighed.   He knew the cost of his power to have mercy.  He knew what he would have to endure to earn the mercy he was showing.  And knowing this, he proceeded. He spoke. 

The fifth thing that Jesus did was speak.  He looked at the man and spoke a word that opened the man’s ears and loosed his tongue.  “Ephphatha.”  “Be opened.”  He heard it.  

Ephphatha is Aramaic, a language related to Hebrew.  It was the spoken language of this region in Jesus’ day.  The Holy Spirit chose to record here in Mark’s Gospel the exact syllables that came from Jesus’ mouth.  The New Testament is written in Greek, which, although Jesus would have also known fluently, was not the language that he would have usually spoken.  And so this doesn’t actually happen too often that we have the exact syllables recorded.  It’s significant that we do.  The point is that Jesus uses no magic formula.  His words are not lofty or difficult.  They are common and clear.  He says what is understandable and ordinary to the one he’s helping.  He draws us away from all else and invites us to consider the simple power of his word alone.  Ephphatha.  The word has meaning, and St. Mark is quick to translate: “Be opened.  Be completely opened,” the word means.  He destroys with this single word all barriers between God’s will and this poor man’s heart by opening his ears to hear. 

Ephphatha.  Now you know it.  Simple word.  But this man whom Jesus healed would not have known it.  Consider that.  He was deaf.  A simple word like “be opened,” although recognizable to anyone, would have been complete jibber-jabber to the one who is hearing for the first time.  But for him it was not jibber-jabber.  It held meaning the moment it was spoken because the moment it was spoken it accomplished what no man’s word can accomplish. 

We don’t rely on our ability to understand in order for God’s word to have power.  But at the same time, God speaks in such a way that we understand him.  He persuades us.  He communicates by relaying information that we need to know, and that we can learn.  At the same time that he teaches us to hear his word, he teaches us to confess what we believe, to repeat what we have heard. 

Jesus said, “Ephphatha, be opened.”  And at the same time that the man’s ears opened, his tongue was loosed.  The two go together.  As the Apostle says, “For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation” (Romans 10:10).  This was part of Jesus’ miracle – that the man was able to speak plainly right away.  And so also, it is a part of the miracle of Christian faith that we speak aloud what we have heard, as the Psalmist said, “I believed, therefore I spoke” (Psalm 116:10, 2 Corinthians 4:13).   

We speak what the Spirit teaches us to speak.  We don’t speak what our hearts teach us to speak.  If we feel something in our hearts then what we are feeling we are feeling in the very source of our sin.  From the heart proceeds everything that God’s law condemns.  As Paul says in our Epistle lesson, the letter, that is, the law kills, but the Spirit gives life.  No, we don’t trust our hearts.  Instead we trust the word of God’s Spirit that speaks to our hearts, that converts our hearts to trust in Christ above all else, the word that forgives the sin in our hearts and gives us a good conscience for Jesus’ sake alone. 

The word for mute used to be translated as dumb.  But then the word dumb began to be used as an insult, as though to call someone stupid.  And so the word has become sort of obsolete.  But really it is this negative connotation of dumb that makes it a better word choice for our Gospel lesson.  The man was not mute.  He could make noises.  But the noises that a deaf person makes do not sound very intelligent.  My mother’s parents were both deaf their whole lives.  I remember them fondly.  They were both very smart, but you had to find a way to communicate with them to learn it.  Because they did not sound smart.  They didn’t know what they sounded like.  It’s not their fault.  But when they made noises, they gave it totally away that they did not know how to hear. 

What noises do we make?  When we share our faith, when we proclaim the wonders that God has done, do we give evidence that we have been listening to the word of God?  Or do we sound like we haven’t.  Do we defend and discuss the doctrine of Baptism as we have come to learn it from Luther’s Small Catechism, or do we just talk about how God makes us feel? — as though the promises of Jesus only hampered our confession of Christ?  Do we point to the plain words of Scripture to defend the doctrine Christ has taught us about his body and blood in the Lord's Supper?  Or do we speak as though we have not heard it, as though we do not know?  How do we share our faith?   Well, what has God taught us to believe?  

Jesus commanded the folks in our Gospel lesson not to tell anyone about what he had done.  That’s because all he had shown them were impressive miracles of power.  But the signs were imperfect.  He had much more to teach.  He had much more to do.  He had not yet suffered.  He had not yet fulfilled what he came down from heaven to fulfill. 

But Jesus has now.  The signs he gives us today are perfect.  And they perfect.  They have power.  They give to us what Jesus says they do.  The sacraments perfect our faith by keeping it grounded in the saving work of Jesus on the cross.  And so we know what to speak.  We cling to what Jesus has spoken to us.  Jesus does not forbid us from telling others.  He gives us the gospel, which is a light shining in a dark place.  He gives us the words to speak by teaching us in words that save us from the sin he himself took away. 

Jesus healed, and the crowds could not obey the command to be silent about it.  But more amazing and abundantly astonishing is God’s love to us in Christ which we have known.  Nothing else is more impressive or relevant to you in your life or in your conversation with others who want to know an answer for the hope that is in you.  Jesus doesn’t just give us the power to hear and speak – even as he so kindly preserves and heals our bodies in so many ways.  He gives us something worth hearing and worth repeating – because it gives you life and health forever.  Learn how to articulate the gospel – keep learning even if you already know.  It will be good for you.  And it will be good for those who listen to you. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.