“JESUS EPHPHATHAS YOU”
Saint Mark 7: 31-37
12th Sunday after Trinity: 8 September Anno Domini 2019
Father Jay Watson SSP
Adam was made perfect. He and his help-mate could hear perfectly. He heard the Word of The Lord. They both heard the creative loving word of peace. “Let there be light!” Their dead inanimate eyes and souls were opened and loosed by The Word. Dirt became living soul. Bone became breathing spirit. That which was not became is!
One can only give what they have. If one starts with nothing, as all do, one can only give what they’ve been given. One can only speak what has been placed in one’s ears.
Sin breaks everything. Sin condemns everything. The perfect becomes infected and the rot sets in. Things begin going wrong. Sickness and death, change and decay in all around we see becomes the new garden—not Eden, but desert.
The rebellion, treason, and assault to kill God, is what ever single sin is. You are to blame. It isn’t that one particular sin you committed, say, on Tuesday, is the direct proximate cause of someone dying or contracting meningitis (etc.), but rather that you being a daily sinner is part and parcel of an unraveling world where everything and everyone sooner or latter becomes deaf…or blind…or crippled…or senile…or infected with this and that. You are the participating cause that the man St. Mark writes about was deaf—YOU. You are the originating reason, with original sin, that causes you yourself to be deaf, or whatnot.
Oh, who will come to your “coasts,” to your “Tyre and Sidon…through the midst of Decapolis” to heal you?
The deaf man did not choose to be healed. He didn’t do his best or pray extra hard. He didn’t memorize a bunch of Deuteronomy or give more of his time to Synagogue projects.
Your hearing comes from God. Your speech, your confession and testimony of Who He is and what He’s done, comes from God’s gift of faith.
Free Grace is Jesus.
“All things were made by Him—The Word.” He spoke His promise to come as Messiah to Eve, and then to Abraham…and others. He spoke His Name to Moses. He spoke His Law and most especially His loving forgiveness, His Good News, to all His people. “Ephphatha, that is, be opened,” is His constant refrain from the beginning to Genesis to His return at the final Advent. Every time The Lord had Aaron and all the other priests pour out the blood of the sin offerings The Word was speaking Ephphatha. The word is “be opened” or be loosed, or be forgiven, or be absolved, or be loved—and “at one” with The Father, The Son + and The Holy Spirit. Elijah and Elisha “spoke” an Ephphatha over the corpses of the two dead children that were resurrected by The Word.
And make no mistake about it. Though God as God could always fix, restore, heal, take away pain and aging, forgive, and resurrect from the dead by simple will—Divine assent—power as power, He chose rather to “open” by letting The Son be closed. Jesus may have only been “beseech(ed)” to put His hand upon the deaf mute. But it was the Hand that would have a nail driven through it in few short months. A Holy right Hand (of absolution) that still bears the imprinted scar of sacrificial love. Jesus did not forgive sins by power and might, but by working and sweating and doing the Law’s Commandments. Jesus forgave sins and healed all corruption by becoming corrupt as a “lawless” “blasphemous” “treasonous” “criminal” “worm” on the Cross; by suffering and dying on the tree that Adam had closed and poisoned at the garden. By Jesus being closed in death and the tomb—death’s dark bands, the tightly wound shroud, meant to cover all nations—you are this day, and every day from the opened womb + of The Font to the opened tombs at the resurrection of all flesh—"Ephphathad.”
Spitting and touching of the tongue—that day. Dying with spittle on His holy bruised mouth and face and blood and water flowing from His torn heart and side on Calvary’s day. Flowing in love and strength and joy this day—onto your tongues from His Christ Chalice. Your lips are loosed. Your tongue is opened—with your heart, mind, soul, spirit. And soon, very soon, your caskets will be ripped apart, liberated, and opened forever, as you rise from the dead to live under Him in His kingdom in everlasting innocence, righteousness, and blessedness, even as He has risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.
In the Name of the Father and + of the Son and of The Holy Ghost
Email the webmaster.Contact Augsburg Lutheran Church: (913) 403-6194