“TRINITY 12 2024”
Saint Mark 7: 31-37
12th Sunday after Trinity: August 18 Anno Domini 2024
Fr Jay Watson, SSP
And that Name is “The Saving One.” The God, the Man (God/Man) you worship—fear, trust, and love—saves you. This presupposes that this is much to be saved from.
Some of you are a bit “hard of hearing,” but none of you is stone-cold deaf. Some of you are maybe not as articulate, loquacious, and mellifluous in speech, but none of you is a mute.
The first and last words of this morning’s Introit (the antiphon) are: “make haste, O God, to deliver me; make haste to help me, O Lord.”
Those words, their intent, are the words spoken by the friends of the deaf man in the area of Decapolis. Yes, they brought him, but the text also says “they beseech Him…to put His hand upon him.” They had no idea how much more active God’s hand would be. Not history, though 100% historical, but you—your lives. Did you not sing the Kyrie: “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy?” You did because you need mercy, you need salvation.
But I am a Christian you intone. I have faith by Grace in Christ. Yes! You are Redeemed—one of the greatest Scriptural words ever. So, how is your life going? Are you and everybody in your life, your family/circle as healthy and vibrant and “at peace” as is possible; all physical, spiritual, emotional, psychological conditions at Edenic levels? No. The world is sinful and decaying. So are you. Life under the cross is filled, your lives are still filled, with pain, brokenness, loss, sadness, and tears. Your daily sins, and your old sinful self keep you in many and various ways “closed” from all that God wants you to receive. Pleas hear, remember, and believe The Good News—where there is Holy + Absolution (which you have; you are saved!), there is also life, and salvation. Life—life in Christ is freedom from the ravages of sickness and decay—either now, or int Resurrection. But the hope of what is coming nonetheless does give a life that the non-believer suffering from the same maladies will never know.
The word of God that animates this Gospel text is Ephphatha. That is the Aramaic word for “be opened” which Saint Mark translates for his Greek reading audience. It is one of the few words that Christ The Word made flesh, utters in the Gospels (Eli, Eli lama sabacthani; talitha koum, siopa, boanerges, and possible Abba). Its meaning is virtually the same as the great word LUO and its variations—be loosed, be freed, be unshackled, etc. Be what Jesus has made you to be by His perfect life of obedience to the Law and by His perfect suffering and death for your sin(s); for all that has kept you un-loosed, imprisoned, and un-opened—captured and bound in “closedness.”
You know that God is love as Saint John writes. For God, Who is One to be love means that God was One even before Genesis 1. To be love necessitates The Trinity itself for love is always outgoing and giving. The Father loves The Son from before eternity. The closedness is always obliterated and transformed by His opening: Ephphatha! It is always The Lord “Ephphatha-ing.”
The perfect, if you will, closed-system of The Trinity was “opened” in Genesis 1 when The Word spoke “let there be” and all that is was first created—opened to receiving The Lords gifts of light and life. The Lord opened again, “Ephpha-ed” the ground, earth, soil, mud, when He created Adam and opened inanimate creation to spirit-filled creatureliness. The closed side of Adam’s flesh was opened [Ephphatha] to extract the rib to make woman. Again, love moving outward in action; the only way love works; how you love God in worship and praise and how you love your neighbor in deed.
Your own individual ephphatha’s that matter more than anything else, were when your dead and enemy ears and tongues were opened at the Holy + Font in Baptism. There, yes, He put His hand upon you, but, in a Sacramental insertion of His wet fingers (watery and bloody) into your ears and upon your tongue you were opened to the outpouring of God’s love. From the moment of your Holy + washing you can speak and sing with David “O Lord, open Thou my lips and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise.”
That is such good news. The greatest good news is how this came to be. For it was the true Ephphatha, opening, of Christ’s work. He permitted His own precious, pure, and immaculate Body to be opened by slaps, punches, whip, thorns, spikes, and spear-point, to allow free flow of mercy and love in His Blood shed for you. The same Blood which you will son drink. Jesus entered the ultimate closedness, and impediment—death and the grave—to sanctify it and make it holy through His resurrection on the third day. The earth tremble, Satan trembled in cowardly fear, the cave-side tomb rumbled and shook as the stone was thrust aside—even as the graves of many Saints were Ephphatha-ed during the Crucifixion. And on early Easter morning the ultimate opening occurred as Life incarnate stepped into the cool of the eternal ever-morning. This opening, this loosing, I now publish to you. Be astonished. Be grateful. Be joyful. For though not all of your trials and tribulations will be healed the exact same way as the deaf mute, you have the same God and Lord as your friend and guarantor of eventual “opening” and restoration, and peace. Soon. Very soon. Ephphatha—Jesus! Jesus—Ephphatha!
For “He does all things well; He maketh the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak.”
In The Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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