Let your ears be opened!

Sermon for Trinity 12

2 Corinthians 3:4-11  +  Mark 7:31-37

We come to this Gospel every year of the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment. And the simplicity of it could lead us to conclude, there’s not much here worth spending sermon time on year after year. Clearly this account teaches the same two basic things as every healing miracle recorded in the Gospels: first, that Jesus is the promised Christ, the Son of God, sent by God into the world, and, second, that Jesus, and therefore, our God, is not only all-powerful, but full of compassion—compassion for sinful human beings in our misery, as we live with the consequences of our sins, whether they’re specific consequences for specific sins, or, as in the case of the deaf man, the general consequences of being sinners in a world that remains under God’s curse.

Jesus’ identity as the Christ and His compassion for sinners in their misery is certainly on display in the account before us today. But there is more for us to notice and to learn, too. Let’s walk through the text together one more time and hear what the Holy Spirit is saying.

They brought to him a man who was deaf and had trouble speaking; and they urged him to put his hand on him. This deaf man had some people who cared about him enough to bring him to Jesus, since Jesus was the only One who could help with his infirmity. What might we learn from that? Well, who else can help our unbelieving friends with their sin? Who else but Jesus can heal the breech between the sinner and God and save a person from eternal death? No one, of course. And knowing that, as you do, take the example of these friends of the deaf man and do what you can to bring the people in your life to Jesus. You do that by bringing them to church with you, if they’ll come, or by bringing them with you to talk with the pastor, or by encouraging them to watch one of our services online. You also do that by living as such lights in the world, as such good examples of Christian people, filled with the hope and joy and peace of the Gospel, that the unbelievers around you come to recognize that you have something they need.

And Jesus took him aside from the crowd by himself and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit and touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened!” There we see the compassion of Jesus and His willingness to help anyone who is brought to Him. There’s no charge, no fee, no demand. All that’s necessary is already there. A needy person who recognizes his need and who looks to Jesus for help. So it is whenever sinners are brought to Jesus for spiritual healing. There has to be a recognition of need on the sinner’s part, an acknowledgment that you’re not “doing just fine” before God. You haven’t lived according to His commandments, not really. You haven’t worshiped Him as He ought to be worshiped, nor have you loved your neighbor as He commands you to love. You regret having sinned against God. You know you deserve only His wrath and punishment. But you’ve heard that Jesus can help, that He wants to help, and so you look to Him for the help He’s promised. We call that repentance and faith. That’s all it takes for Jesus to work the healing of the forgiveness of sins.

For the deaf man, Jesus went through some visual steps to heal him personally, placing His fingers in the man’s ears, visibly spitting and touching the man’s tongue, looking up to heaven, sighing, and speaking that word that any lip-reader of Aramaic could easily understand: Ephphatha! Be opened! —all motions and signs that communicated to the deaf man that Jesus was the One sent from heaven to have mercy, not just on those sinful men out there, but on this very man who has Jesus’s fingers in his ears and on his tongue. So God has sent His ministers out into the world to preach the Gospel, not just to a general audience out there, but to individuals, to baptize individuals, and to pronounce forgiveness to individuals, and to give individual Christians the body and blood of the Lord to eat and to drink in His Sacrament. The ministry of the Spirit is carried out personally, even as Jesus performed this healing miracle personally.

And immediately his ears were opened and the bond on his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly…And the people were utterly astounded, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf to hear and the speechless to speak.” And there it is, one more piece of evidence that this Jesus, who was traveling all over the land of Israel, was the promised Christ, the Son of God, one more divinely given indicator that they should, therefore, listen to Him, take His words seriously, believe Him, believe in Him, and do what He said.

The same goes for you who have believed in Jesus. He went on to do far greater things than healing people’s deafness, using far greater sign language than He did with the deaf man. He gave Himself up to those who hated Him, allowing Himself to be tortured, unjustly condemned, and hung on a cross. He went willingly to His death and then rose from the dead. And, as if that weren’t enough, He sent and continues to send His Holy Spirit to give power to the Gospel when it’s preached, so that people actually believe it and are made children of God by it. Recognize that listening to Jesus and believing what He says is a far greater miracle than the healing of deaf ears, a miracle performed by God the Holy Spirit.

Look at the world we live in! Being a Christian in the western part of the world became “normal” for many centuries. If you lived in Europe, if you lived in the United States, you were almost expected to be a Christian. Believing and quoting from the Bible was considered normal. Going to church every Sunday was considered normal. Living according to God’s commandments was considered normal. Not that everyone did, of course, but there was nothing striking or strange about being a Christian. That’s not the case anymore. Now to do any of those things makes you the strange ones, and in some cases, can even make you enemies of the state. So if anyone actually believes the Gospel and is ready to lay down life and limb to live according to it, then recognize that for the miracle it is. It’s God who has opened that person’s ears and heart to believe with the heart and to confess with the mouth.

Likewise, if it seems impossible that anyone in this world of ours should come to faith in Jesus, should recognize the demonic lies that fill our society and turn away from them to the truth of the Christian Gospel, know that nothing is impossible with God. Faith may be rare in these last days, but the Gospel is still the power of God for salvation to all who believe.

So don’t take the miracle of faith for granted, for yourselves or for others. If you allow your own ideas, your beliefs, your earthly goals to drown out God’s Word, then you will lose the gift of hearing that God has miraculously given you. And you can’t confess clearly the righteousness of God with your mouth if you aren’t living according to the righteousness of God with your life. You need to keep hearing the Word of God, keep praying, keep reading and studying and gathering around Word and Sacrament as often as you can, because the miracle of faith is not a “once given always there” kind of miracle. Faith requires sustenance, and God will provide what your faith needs, but you need to use the gifts He provides. And even as faith has enabled your tongues to sing God’s praises here in church, so let your tongues keep speaking His praises when you step out from these doors. Let your hands and your arms and your feet and your legs also behave in a way that’s consistent with what your mouth confesses. Then the world will be amazed at what the Gospel of Christ was able to accomplish with someone like you or me.

You’ve come here again (or tuned in here from afar again) this morning because you believed that Jesus could help you. He can. And He will. Let your ears be opened to hear His Word! Let your tongues be loosed to sing His praise and to confess Him as Lord! Let the healing of the forgiveness of sins be yours! And let it produce the ongoing healing of sanctification in your lives! Amen.