12th Sunday after Trinity + Mark 7:31-37 + August 19, 2018
Grace and Peace be unto you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Today’s Gospel lesson shows us Christ’s compassion on a deaf mute. The man is brought to Jesus and those who bring him ask Jesus to put His hand on him. They had heard how Christ had touched others and healed them. Christ takes the dead mute away from the crowd and touches him, though probably not in the way that the man’s friends intended. Jesus sticks His fingers into the man’s ears. He spits and touches the man’s tongue with the spit. By doing these things Jesus communicates to the man that He intends to unstop his ears and loosen his rigid tongue. He then looks up to heaven since “ every good gift and every perfect gift is from above ” (James 1:17). Then He speaks one word. “ Ephphatha ,” and with that word commands the man’s ears and mouth to be open. The man is healed at once because the One who has commanded the ears and mouth to open is the one whom formed man’s ears and tongue in the beginning...