“HE MAKETH TO HEAR AND SPEAK”
Saint Mark 7: 41-47
12th Sunday after Trinity: 19 August Anno Domini 2018
Father Jay Watson SSP
“He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.” Before you were baptized, before you were given faith by The Holy Ghost through The Word to BELIEVE The Word, you too were deaf and dumb. Even worse, you were dead. All those not in Christ are dead even if they’re not quite rotting yet.
Jesus goes to Tyre and Sidon: Home of lots of Gentiles as well as Jews. North east Kansas, home to lots and lots of non-believing Gentiles needs a similar visit. Today it happens. Jesus comes through the coasts, that is, the regions, of Shawnee, Lenexa, Overland Park and Olathe…to this place!
Even as Galilee was a step-down from the Pharisee’s Judean triumphalism, so too a humble and modest parish such as this would also be looked down upon by the hypocrites who covet a fake religion of glory, business, and numbers.
The Deaf man does not find Jesus or decide to become a Jesus follower—he is brought! You do well to thank God for all those who “brought” you The same Word of God—parents, Sunday School teachers, Baptismal sponsors, pastors, and catechists.
When Saint Mark tells you also about the man’s “impediment of speech” this is so that you can know he was both deaf and did not speak. Little children learn to speak by echoing, repeating, saying back the words that their parents first speak to them. Christians can only “speak,” that is, love, worship, and do “Christian things,” by voicing back to Jesus that which He first plants, speaks, and pours into them. In the words of the Psalmist “Lord, open Thou, my lips…and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.”
What do they ask Christ to do? To give him money, clothes, food? To draw out on a tablet Proverbs or the Torah? NO! They want The Rabbi to “put His hand upon Him.” This is Sacramental is it not? The actual hand of Christ still touches His lambs does it not? Yes, Jesus through the “Means of Grace”—Preaching, Absolution, Baptism, Eucharist, still touches your ears and thus your souls!
Though The Lord did perform “signs” in front of large numbers of people, He also did miraculous healing in more private settings--Jairus’s daughter, the “man of the tombs,” and here. Is Jesus respecting the man’s privacy or simply showing the man that He cared about him and not about what others may see or witness? Yes. Jesus “took him aside.”
Now you get dirty, earthy, fleshly, now you get “hands on God stuff.” From the God/Man who was bruised, lacerated, and hung on the Tree in sweat, spittle, and blood, smelling as bad as He looked, His followers are not surprised how He restores the deaf mute. There are no large screens, drum sets, coffee courts, antiseptic germ-free plastic jiggers, or Lysol shining floors with modern stainless-steel kitchens and restrooms. Jesus gave the man a messy, well-felt encounter with The Incarnation! You get “fingers in ears” and “spit.” From a parallel account you are shown that Jesus actually puts His own spit on the deaf man’s tongue. And God actually “sighs”…not in futility or exasperation, but in empathy and deep personal care and love for this poor soul.
The Word of God “be opened” is declarative, creative, efficacious, powerful, and does what it says. “Let there be light!” “Be still” (to the Sea of Galilee) “Lazarus come out” to the corpse. BE OPENED. The man no doubt heard those very words, or the echo of those words, so fast was his deafness healed; “straightway his ears were opened.” The crooked man was made straight and placed on the way of life by He Who is THE WAY! And “the string of his mouth was loosed” i.e. his dumbness, inability to speak, was also cured. The word Saint Mark uses is “loosed,” the theological “word of art” used repeatedly to describe Jesus freeing one from the results of sins and from SIN, i.e. “being forgiven,” being “absolved.” That’s what this is all about. Physicians can reverse many hearing problems. Modern science can do wonders for young children who have difficulty in hearing, or speaking. From surgery to “hearing-aids” the lives of many are enhanced and improved. Only God can forgive sins…sins…flowing from sin. Sin is the true cause of all deafness, dumbness, sickness, and disease. The wages of sin is death. Death has been overcome and its symptoms have started to be reversed by Christ’s death and resurrection.
And though Jesus tells them, the healed man and his benefactors, and anyone else from the crowd privy to this act of mercy, to keep it amongst themselves (for now) “the more he charged them, so much the more a great deal they published it;”
Singing comes naturally to the soul that is given back a voice. Sharing the joy of liberation and freedom cannot be silenced to the prisoner finally set free: loosed.
The same one that astonished that crowd is here this morning for this crowd. The size of the multitude never matters. Your particular or peculiar illnesses or sinful trespasses do not stop up or resist His mercy. He makes the dead of Augsburg + alive. He makes the deaf of this parish, and of all His sheepfolds, to hear His words of Peace and Forgiveness. And He makes your tongues, un-strung, so that you can rise and sing with King David and all the host of Sabaoth the Offertory…
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
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