“SIN LOOSED”
Saint Mark 7: 31-37
12th Sunday After Trinity: 23 August Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
The Rev’d Doctor Kenneth Korby said there were only two ways to talk; two modes of speech. Either one is praising and thanking The Lord, and sharing His Evangel, or one is cursing Him and His Name. This is a corollary of Franz Pieper’s truth that there are not a legion of “religions” but only two—Satan’s lie and The Holy Trinity’s revelation in Christ Jesus.
You are not pagans. You are Christ’s brethren. You with the “12” witness His mercies. You hear yearly His healing of the deaf mute near the Sea of Galilee. This truth from Truth Incarnate is also a daily reality as your drown your own old Adam and seek to curb a sinful tongue proceeding from sinful thoughts.
The devil is the originator of “no.” He tempted Eve to doubt The Lord’s goodness and providence. She and Adam said “no” to The Lord’s Word and from that time forward all men without Jesus are deaf mutes capable of only animalistic grunts, squeals, and beastly “no’s” to God.
Even the Saints struggle with the inclination to capitulate to this heathenish babble of inanity. You show others by the things you say, or don’t say, that you do not fear, love, and trust in God above all things. Instead of only opening your lips to call upon His Name in trouble, pray, praise, and give thanks, you curse, swear, lie, and deceive by His name. You also listen with donkey ears to false doctrine and worldly atheism and antitheism. Constant indulgence in the devil’s dark howlings will deaden your appreciation for the salvific symphonies of the Seraphim. He has given you ears, tongue, and all your senses…and still preservers them. And you have not used them to constantly hear His preaching and His Word—holding it sacred—but have stuffed your ears with garbage and allowed your tongues to spew forth feculent bile. Repent.
No one was ever supposed to gossip and backbite and hurt their neighbors with a tongue of consuming fire. Christians are never supposed to speak ill, whine, and complain. No one was ever to have evil bombard their eyes and consciences. Christians are never supposed to look at sinful images, tableaus or situations. You are little lights reflecting He Who is The Light and Life of the world. You are salt bringing the preserving and filling bread from Heaven in His Word of Peace. He who has ears let him hear!
A baby is conceived without his help or participation, born without his decision, hears without choosing to do so. It is only sin and brokenness of creation—man caused—that allows for deafness from birth, miscarriage, and still birth. It is only demonic baal worship that countenances abortion.
As a baby hears because The Lord gives it hearing, so too Jesus gifts the deaf mute with forgiveness and life—free, without any work or cooperative effort on his part. No one was ever healed from deafness or muteness in the Old Testament. Christ’s miracles were true signs that He was Messias! What a scandal this was to an unbeliever yes, but also a stumbling stone to the Pharisee and works-righteous Judaizer in all of you. Jesus is here today not for the confessional scholar or life-long Synodically-sodden Lutheran elite, but for His children, His family, who have gotten so dirty, smelly, tired, tear-stained, and lost this past week. Jesus is here not open your ears and cut the string of your bound tongue—He did that when you were + baptized—but to put Himself into your ear canals that your soul would feed on Him. He puts His Water of life, His saving spit in Holy Absolution on your sore and parched tongue that you might declare His praise. You are freed to praise God!
Jesus’ ears stopped hearing when they were filled with the earth of death, with the weight of all the foul clods of your trespasses. Jesus had the string of His divine tongue cut with not just the whips, thorns, and nails, but when He hung His head with the last and first Gospel from the crucifix: “it is finished!” He was loosed from life that you might be loosed from death. Jesus looked up to heaven, groaned within Himself, and then said to the devil, the fallen flesh, and death itself “Ephphatha, that is, Be opened.” His Word was performative and creative: it did what He said. And as He would later kick the stone away from the tomb’s door, the serpents’ chains were all cut like strings and the man’s tongue was free. The man’s ears were open because Jesus forgave him all his debts and canceled out all of his crimes. “O Lord open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise!” Mark says the man “spake plain,” and uses the Greek word “orthos.” When Jesus comes into one’s ears it is orthodoxy which comes out of one’s mouth.
He comes from the coasts of Missoura, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Kansas to the glassy sea of this font, this altar, and this pulpit through the coasts of man’s cities and your sins. He puts His fingers in your ears with Holy Word and His spittle on your tongue with Holy Supper. His tongue is filled with the honey of peace and love and He speaks plain: “your sins are forgiven; go in peace; hear My mercy; sing toasts to your freedom in Me; eat and drink life…”
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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