Trinity 12 + Mark 7:31-37 + September 3, 2017
Order of Holy Communion - Pg. 15
Opening Hymn # 3 Lord Jesus Christ, be present now
Sermon Hymn # 30 Oh, that I had a thousand voices
Final Hymn # 26 Praise the Almighty, my soul, adore Him
Sermon Hymn # 30 Oh, that I had a thousand voices
Final Hymn # 26 Praise the Almighty, my soul, adore Him
Introit
Make haste to help | me, | O | Lord!
|| Let them be ashamed and con- | found- | ed *
Who | seek | my | life. (Psalm 70:1–2a)
|| Let them be turned back and con- | fused | - *
Who de- | sire | my | hurt.
|| Let all those who seek You re- | joice | - *
And be | glad | in | You.
|| But I am poor and | need- | y; *
Make haste to | me, | O | God!
|| You are my help and my de- | liv-er- ∙ | er; *
O Lord, do | not | de- | lay. (Psalm 70:2b, 4, 5)
|| Make haste, O God, to de- | liv-er ∙ | me! *
Make haste to help | me, | O | Lord!
|| Let them be ashamed and con- | found- | ed *
Who | seek | my | life. (Psalm 70:1–2a)
Collect for the 12th Sunday after Trinity
Almighty and Merciful God, of Whose only gift it cometh that Thy faithful people do unto Thee true and laudable service, grant, we beseech Thee, that we may so faithfully serve Thee in this life that we fail not finally to attain Thy heavenly promises; through Jesus Christ, Thy Son, our Lord, Who liveth and reigneth with Thee and the Holy Ghost, ever one God, world without end. Amen.
Readings
Sermon
Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
1) Our Lord Jesus heals a deaf mute in today’s Gospel lesson. In one sense, this miracle is like all the rest of Jesus’ miracles. There was a man in dire need. In no way could he open his own ears or loosen his own tongue. Men lead the deaf mute to Jesus because these men had heard the good report about Jesus and believed He could help. Jesus takes the deaf mute away from the crowd and answers their prayer. He heals graciously heals the man. Jesus speaks a word, “Ephphatha,” which St. Mark translates for us as “Be opened.” At the uttering of the Word of God, the deaf mute’s ears are unstopped and his tongue is loosed. Like so many other miracles, Christ speaks and the Word performs precisely what it says. David describes how the Word of God works in Psalm 33:6, 9, “By the word of the LORD the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.” Jesus speaks and Jesus word does what it says, just as God’s Word rang out in the beginning, “Let there be light"; and there was light” (Genesis 1:3). Here Jesus says the word “Ephphatha, Be opened.” The ears which had never heard before obeyed the voice of their creator. The tongue which was rigid and broken hears its maker and heeds His creative word. Jesus speaks and the creation hears and responds obediently. In this way, Jesus’ miracle here is no different than His others.
2) But in another sense it is a bit different. Before He heals the man He sticks His fingers into the man’s ears, then spits and touches the man’s tongue with the spittle. He does this, perhaps, to signal to the man what He’s about to do. But it’s more than that. This is the finger of God Himself, the same finger which struck the ancient Egyptians with ten plagues to deliver Israel out from slavery. The Egyptian magicians could replicate the first few plagues, the blood and the frogs, but after they failed to replicate the plague of lice, they relented and told Pharaoh, “This is the finger of God” (Exodus 8:19). The finger of God was powerful to execute judgment on the unbelieving Egyptians. Later, on Mt. Sinai, Exodus 31:18 tells us that Moses received “the two tablets of the Testimony, tablets of stone, written with the finger of God.” The finger of God was mighty to give the Law, what Paul calls “the ministry of death, written and engraved on stones.” The Ten Commandment’s ministry, its duty, is to condemn sinners, which makes it a ministry of death. But with the coming of Christ in the flesh, God now uses that divine finger to give ears to the deaf, tongues to the mute, and freedom to those who are captive to the sin, death, and the power of the devil. In another instance, when Jesus casts a mute demon from a man, He tells the unbelieving Pharisees, “If I cast out demons with the finger of God, surely the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Luke 11:20). Christ shows us by this miracle that He became flesh so “that He might destroy the works of the devil” (1 John 3:8) and restore what Satan had maligned and maimed.
3) This miracle teaches us about the compassion our Lord Jesus has on poor sinners who cannot help themselves. It shows us that He is a good God who desires our life and not our death, our joy and not our sorrow. But more so it shows us what He does for each of us spiritually. The miracles of Jesus are recorded for this purpose, to teach us about the spiritual benefits that Christ feely offers to all men. We see that like the deaf mute, we are by nature deaf and mute. Again, we may have our physical hearing, and praise be to God for that, but spiritually no one hears God’s Word gladly and willingly learns it. Since the fall into sin by Adam and Eve, the ears of all mankind are stopped up so that people don’t want to hear God’s word let alone rejoice in it and trust in it. Instead they will hear what they want to hear. St. Paul tells Timothy that people will “not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables” (2 Timothy 4:3-4). People will believe almost anything except for the Word. Because we are born sinners, we can’t hear the Word. We don’t understand it. I was reminded of this just this week when I spoke to an unchurched young man who had visited our church months ago. When I asked him why he didn’t return he replied, “I expected to hear something different.” Humanity does not have ears to hear what God is saying through His Word. Our ears our stopped up by our own expectations of what we think God ought to be saying to us.
4) Because we can’t hear God’s Word rightly we can’t speak correctly about Him either. God teaches us the faith the way parents teach their children to speak. Parents speak to their children, the same thing, over and over again. Repetition is the mother of all learning, the saying used to go. You’ve heard others, perhaps even yourself doing it. “Say Da-da.” “Say Mama.” We speak to infants, knowing they will hear and that by hearing they will learn to speak our words back to them. This is how God teaches His children to speak, no matter how old they are in years. He gives His Word and we are to hear the Word, and after enough repetition we begin to speak God’s words back to Him. That’s why the liturgy we use consists of passages of Scripture, arranged to weekly teach the essentials of the Christian faith. God has given us His Word. We speak it back to Him to embed it into our hearts and to praise Him for His great goodness and mercy towards us. But if humanity won’t and can’s hear God’s Word, it cannot learn to speak the truth. So many speak lies in God’s name, imagining their words to be God’s truth. Sinners will not pray to God if they have not heard God’s command to pray and His promise to hear prayer because by nature we are unsure if God even hears us. Mankind cannot praise God if they have not heard from His Word the reasons for which He deserves our praise. So many believe in evolution and deprive God of the glory due to His name as the Creator of us all. Sinners cannot open their mouths to give thanks to God if they have not heard and believed that the Triune God is the source of all their blessings and benefits.
5) But what do we see from the miracle? Christ opens ears that have long been stopped up. Not physical ears but spiritual ears. Jesus loosens tongues that do not know how to speak. Not tongues of flesh but the tongue of the soul. And He does it with His Word and finger. Through the preaching of the Gospel Christ cries out to those who have ears to hear, “Ephphatha! Be opened!” so that those ears open and receive the Word gladly and rejoice to hear that “Though their sins are like scarlet, They shall be as white as snow; Though they are red like crimson, They shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18). When Christ forgives sins through His called and ordained servant, so that your pastor pronounces absolution upon you after you have confessed your sins, Christ is present in that Word, truly forgiving your sins, blotting out your transgressions for Christ’s sake, so that He says “I will not remember your sins” (Isaiah 43:25). The Gospel purely preached does what it says because it is spoken by Christ though His humble servant, for He promised in Luke 10:16, “He who hears you hears me.” Like in the miracle, that Word which opens our ears is accompanies by the finger of God, which is the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is active through the Word to open men’s ears so that they hear it, repent of their wrongdoing, and believe the Gospel that in Christ they have a God who is gracious to sinners.
6) Opening our ears through His Word and Spirit so that we hear His Word and believe it, He then loosens our tongues so that we might use them properly: to pray, to praise, and to give thanks. He teaches us to pray by giving us the very words to use in the pages of the Scripture. He teaches us what things we should pray for in the Lord’s Prayer. He teaches us how to pray in times of affliction and hardship by putting the Psalms into our ears. The Psalmist says, “O Lord, open my lips, And my mouth shall show forth Your praise” (Psalm 51:15). So the Lord opens our lips and brings forth praise that is glorious to Him. He inspires us to give thanks to Him for all His goodness and His mercies, which are new every morning. Our praises are to be the morning and evening sacrifice we bring to Him, for Hebrews 13:15 bids us “continually offer the sacrifice of praise to God, that is, the fruit of our lips, giving thanks to His name.” Without the Holy Spirit none of this is possible, for “the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them” (1 Corinthians 2:14). But Christ graciously opens our ears so that He may fill them with His Word, so that His Holy Spirit may be active in our hearts, growing the New Man in us as we suppress the old sinful flesh by the Word of God.
7) Let us give thanks to God, dear saints of God, for He has graciously done for us what we cannot do for ourselves. He daily pulls us aside, out from the wicked world. He gives us the Holy Spirit through His Word and therefore does what we, by our own powers, could never do. He opens our ears and fills them with good words of the forgiveness of our sins and everlasting life. He opens our mouths so that we then speak His words back to Him, using our tongues for the very reason He created them in the first place: to pray in true faith without doubting, to praise Him for His mercy which endures forever, and to give thanks for the great love He has shown us in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.
May the peace of God which passes all human understanding guard your hearts and minds through faith in Christ Jesus our Lord. Amen.