“MUTE NO MORE”
Saint Mark 7. 31-37
The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity: 3 September Anno Domini 2006
Fr Watson
The opening words of the Introit are: “Make haste, O God, to deliver me.” Only one with a tongue can speak those words. Only one with sight can see ones deliverer. Only one with hearing can listen to the sweet words of absolution. Only one who is alive can be picked up and nestled into the bosom of the loving Father; place into the secured sheepfold of the Son.
Without the Christ, everything is closed up tight; sealed shut against light and life. Without the Word, everything is locked, imprisoned, buried in a crypt and mute. Without the Grace of the God/Man, all is deaf, blind, dumb, and tasteless; “change and decay in all around I see.”
The deaf mute was you, you before you were baptized, you before the Christ came into the midst of your corpse bringing not the Sea of Galilee but the Water with the Word from the Holy Font. Ever since the woman spurned the Good Shepherd of Eden’s Garden, and instead listened to the lies of the Demonic Dragon, mans ears have been plugged with the sticky sap of sin. Ever since your first parents turned a deaf ear to the Lord’s commandments they have become your tombstones: “do them and live, break them and receive your deserved wages of sin: death.”
As a deaf man cannot enter into dialog with the Creator and opine with his own opinions, decisions, choices, and elections, so too all men are born spiritually deaf, dumb and blind. Even as Nurse Annie Sullivan came to Helen Keller, the Good Physician came to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Jesus’ path through the Decapolis, the land of the Gentiles to the Sea of Galilee, typifies that though salvation came first to the lost “children of Abraham,” redemption spread to all nations through His abiding presence in the word of His sent Apostles.
The friends of the mute served as his own “baptismal sponsors” bringing him who on his own could not come. They begged that the “hand” of the healer be placed on the “impediment,” which was their friend. Knowledge didn’t save the deaf man; memorization, membership, and emotions didn’t cure his tragic life, the Flesh of God did!
Note well, dear ones, “How” the Lord restored that which was lost. Christ didn’t just “imagine” the healing or “think” the recovery, or “lecture” the restoration; the Lord used “means,” instruments, that is, He united Himself, the “Word” to human elements: spittle, finger-tips, and spoken word.
“He took him aside from the multitude,” which shows sensitivity on the part of the Healer to be sure, but also is the definition of what it means to be holy, “set aside, apart, designated for a particular purpose,” and also is the very definition of the word Church, “ecclesia,” that is, “called out from.” No one can remain walking with the multitude of the world, the flesh, and self, and be numbered among the flock of the Shepherd. You are separated not only from the heathen (culled from the “goats”), but are also to conduct yourselves as fitting for those called into the Way of Righteousness. You are to mark and avoid false teachers, sects, leaders and synods (“wolves” in sheep’s clothing).
But it won’t be “you” doing anything of yourself or on your own. The true Christian definition of sanctification is “Christ active in you.” A branch can produce nothing if it is not in the tree and the tree in it.
Christ descended onto and into the mute. He Who would have His sacred fingers twitch and jerk in agony as spikes were driven through the wrists, placed these “fingers of God,” into the ears of the man. The same fingers which had formed Adam from the mud, which had written on the Tablets atop Horeb, now wrote faith and healing and family onto the mute. Jesus took water from His mouth, the same water which gushed from the Rock in the Wilderness, which would soon gush from His lacerated heart while He hung from the Tree lifeless, and uniting it with His Word touched the mans tongue. The Word was “Ephphatha, that is, ‘be opened’” The Word of Jesus does what it asks; it IS what it requires. Spoken by Jesus then, to be spoken in a slightly different way from Calvary—“tetelestai” [that is, “it is finished”] and spoken today into you “katharistheti” [“be cleansed”] for I forgive you in the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost.
Paul is correct; the Word is power, dynamite, the energy of the wielder, the Word Enfleshed. Christ the Word is the power of your salvation, and of your hearing with spiritual understanding.
You have been washed in His Spittle and His Blood. In a moment He will place His pure Body and His precious Blood on your tongue. You will confess Him to all, and declare that He does all things well. He has made haste. He has delivered you. Your tongue is loosed and your grave is unshackled and open.
In the Name of The Father and of The Son + and of The Holy Ghost