Sermon for Trinity 14 on Christian Marriage [Hebrews 13:4] (1-Sept-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am), Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (3pm), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm, 8-Sept-2013) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm, 8-Sept-2013).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Hebrew 13:4)

Let marriage be held in honour by all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled.

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen. 

In the book of Genesis, we read: Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. Our whole Christian understanding of marriage comes from these words. Even when Jesus was asked about marriage he pointed back to this verse in Genesis. He said that God who created them from the beginning made them male and female and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife and the two shall become one flesh.’ So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.

Christ builds his teaching on marriage on the book of Genesis. There are three things that happen here: leaving father and mother, holding fast (or cleaving) to each other, and becoming one flesh. Each marriage involves these three parts, and without each of these three parts there’s something missing. It’s like having a three-legged stool with only one or two legs, or a three-sided tent with only one or two stakes. Leaving father and mother happens when people have a wedding. A wedding is where the community acknowledge the fact that these two people leave their parents and join together into a new family. It is God who joins them together, and who brings them together. That’s why Christian young people often pray to God for a good, devout husband or wife—because God is the one who creates marriages and gives the people to each other. Psalm 127 says: Unless the Lord builds the house, those who build it labour in vain.

So marriage is the public and lasting union of a man and a woman in the closest fellowship of body and life. It’s public: weddings can be small and informal, but there needs to be a public recognition of it. Simply deciding to move in together is not a marriage, and couples who live together outside of marriage know that what they have is not a marriage. They know this because at a wedding the couple promise to live together and love each other until they die—and unless people say this with witnesses, both the man and woman know that they are not bound to that commitment. They know that in theory they can always just leave. That’s not a marriage – that’s just an informal arrangement.

Also, marriage is between one man and one woman. It is not between two men and it is not between two women. It’s also not between one man and two women, or one woman and two men. Even if governments change their definitions of marriage, God does not change his definition of marriage. What we call “gay marriage” today is simply an oxymoron. The relationships between men and women are completely different and work and function completely differently to those between men and men and women and women. This has not always been clear in every culture, and today it is certainly not clear in our own. Christians also believe that this understanding of marriage is good and beneficial for everyone: it is good, it works, it is a beautiful and lovely thing.

Marriage is so good because God Himself instituted marriage in the Garden of Eden. He came up with the idea.

We read: the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man.

We also read: [God] created them male and female. And God blessed them.

Notice that the woman is not simply made from another lump of clay just like the man. The woman is made from the side of the man, and when God brings her to him, Adam says: This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh. What a great miracle! Here is someone who is just like me. She is a woman! St Paul puts this beautifully when he says: in the Lord, woman is not independent of man nor man of woman; for as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God. So man and woman need each other equally, and have an equal dignity in marriage. Men and women are equally precious in God’s sight.

God instituted marriage, because, we read that God said: It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make a helper fit for him. Marriage is the basis for all human community. In fact, marriage is the closest fellowship where couples share their bodies and their lives. They share a home, and their possessions, their money, their bed, their whole lives. Married men and women have a particular fellowship which only they can share, which no other relationship can imitate.

Also, God says in Genesis 1: Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth. Marriage is the basis of family life. Christian couples should be open to having children. Everywhere in the bible children are always called a blessing, never a curse. It is not just the task of Christian parents to have children, but also to raise them and bring them up in the Lord. Psalm 127 says: Children are a heritage from the Lord. St Paul says: Bring [your children] up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Now, it’s true, some couples can’t have children, and this is a great sadness for many people who have this struggle. God still blesses these people in their cross and promises to strengthen them with his grace and Holy Spirit in their suffering. It is not an excuse for a person to get divorced because their husband or wife can’t have children with them. Some couples also get married too late to have children. God still blesses these marriages too.  This is quite different from couples who refuse children to be given them from God. In Genesis 38, we even have an example of a man who refused to allow his wife to conceive children, even though he was happy to use her for his own gratification in bed. We read in Genesis 38:10: What he did was wicked in the sight of the Lord, and he put him to death. Each child is created by God, and is precious in his sight, and especially once a child is conceived, we must remember that it is a precious creation of God, and cannot be killed.

There is also another reason for marriage, which St Paul talks about. He says: Because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. Marriage is a help against sexual sin.

Now, God has glorified earthly marriage—he has made it particularly special—by making it a kind of picture on this earth of the highest and eternal marriage, the marriage between Christ and his church.

St Paul says: A man shall leave his father and his mother and be joined to his wife and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church. Christ is our bridegroom, and all of us Christians who are part of his church, who have been born again by water and the Spirit, are made Christ’s bride. We are not Christ’s individual brides, we are one bride together. Christ only has one wife. And we share our bodies and our lives, like a marriage, with Christ. We present our bodies as living sacrifices to Christ, and Christ says to us: Take, eat and drink, this is my body and my blood given for you. The Lord’s Supper is a kind of wedding banquet, week after week, which we share with our bridegroom, our husband, Jesus Christ. Christ was not married to Mary Magdalene as some people imagine—Christ is married to his church.

At the beginning of every marriage, a husband and wife promise each other that they will love each other as Christ loves His church and the church loves him.

We read in Ephesians: As the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.

There is no place in a marriage for wives running down their husbands and talking and gossiping about them to their friends—that’s completely sinful and shameful. The best thing a woman can do for her husband is to respect him, and to show honour to him, just as we Christians submit to Christ, and respect him and love him and honour him. That’s what “submission” means here. It doesn’t mean that husbands can beat their wives. St Paul says to husbands: Do not be harsh with your wives. St Peter says: Live with your wives in an understanding way, showing honour to the woman as the weaker vessel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life. “Weaker vessel” here doesn’t mean intellectually weaker, it means: “husbands, keep your muscles to yourself and use them on your workbench, not on your wife.” And in Ephesians: Husbands, love your wives as your own bodies. The Qur’an allows a man to beat his wife, the bible does not. Muslim husbands can beat their wives, Christian husbands cannot. Christian marriage is built on mutual love and forgiveness, not on force.

And “submission” is not talking about sex as if husbands can rape their wives, and force them. St Paul says: The husband should give to his wife her [conjugal] rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer, but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. You can see that St Paul gives fair and good advice: both men and women need to be considerate to the other.

Now in the heavenly marriage, Christ loves his church perfectly so that He gave up heaven and earth to seek her and hold fast to her. He loves her exclusively and will exchange her for no one else. Christ loves the church in a holy way and in order to make her holy. St Paul says: He gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendour, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.

The Church also seeks to loves Christ perfectly, exclusively, indissolubly, just as He loves the church. The church also submits to Christ and reveres him. Husbands and wives should also love each other in the same way as Christ loves his church, and as the church loves him. Christian husbands are called to imitate Christ in the way he loves the church and cares for it. Being a Christian husband does not mean dominating and oppressing your wife, just as Christ doesn’t behave like that towards us.

The difference between human marriages of a man and a woman and the marriage of Christ and the church is that human marriages are only for a time and are ended when one person dies. St Paul says: A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. But the marriage of Christ to the church is eternal and is perfect, because Christ is perfect. The marriages of men and women are imperfect.

We sin against marriage when one is not loved exclusively, or unchangeably, or when our heart thinks of or seeks another or gives itself to another, or when the bond of marriage is broken through adultery, or when one forsakes the other. Divorce is a sin, but the bible does allow divorce, but only in certain circumstances, when a marriage is broken by sexual immorality, or by desertion. In these cases, the innocent person is free. (Now divorce is a complicated issue, and is perhaps the topic of a sermon on another day. If you have some questions about divorce, please don’t hesitate to talk to me about it.)

In most cases, what leads to adultery is an unchaste heart and putting oneself in bad company. Luther summarises this in the catechism: We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do.

Jesus says: You have heard that it was said, You shall not commit adultery. But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

So not only married people are called to a sexual purity and a decent, chaste, and modest life, but also those who are single too. Sexual purity in marriage is where a husband or a wife hold fast to each other alone. But sexual purity in single people is free from every man or woman.

Sexual purity inside or outside of marriage is no better than the other. Single people and married people are both treasured by God, and marriage is not better than singleness or the other way around. Also nobody should be forbidden to marry, and forced to remain single. St Paul says in 1 Tim 4 that it is a false teaching of demons and deceitful spirits to forbid marriage.

It all depends on the person as to whether it is easier to remain single or get married. Marriage is a gift from God, and also singleness is a gift from God. St Paul, who was single, says: The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. So there’s a blessing in remaining single, and there’s nothing wrong with being a 40-year-old virgin, even if Hollywood producers want to make stupid movies mocking single people. There are plenty of people who have lived long celibate lives and have accomplished great things in God’s service. Virginity is a precious thing and is not to be thrown away on the first thing that moves that comes along. That’s simply not Christian love.

So, it is possible to live a sexually pure and decent life by the grace of God, but our sinful nature and evil thoughts often resist God’s grace, as they do in every aspect of our life.

It is a great help to people who are married not just to love each other, but also to honour and respect each other. Martin Luther summarises this in the catechism: We should fear and love God so that we lead a sexually pure and decent life in what we say and do, and husband and wife love and honour each other.

When honour and respect dies, loves dies too. Respect feeds love. Marriage without love and respect can never prosper.

Let's rejoice in God's word to us today about the topic of marriage. For many of us this will mean a call to repentance, and for everyone it will be in a different way. We might even think of some friends of ours whose marriages or relationships have many problems. Treat their sins as if they were your own, and bring them to your loving bridegroom Jesus Christ, who treated your sins as if they were his own, even though he had no sin. Christ is our loving husband, who loves us more than even the best Christian husband or wife on earth. Week after week, he invites us to his marriage banquet, before that time when we will enjoy that same heavenly banquet forever and ever. And he gives us his body and blood to eat and drink and even has made us part of his body in baptism, and members of it, not through silver or gold, but with his holy and precious blood.

Amen.

Lord God, heavenly Father, send us the Holy Spirit so that we may lead sexually pure and decent lives in what we say and do, and may all husbands and wives everywhere love and honour each other, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Trinity 13: Audio Sermon (25-Aug-2013)

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Trinity 13 [Luke 10:23-37] (25-Aug-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am, lay reading), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (10am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Yarram (2pm) and St John's Lutheran Church, Sale (4pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

Text: (Luke 10:23-37)

Which one of these three, do you think, proved to be a neighbour to the man who fell among the robbers? He said, “The one who showed him mercy.” And Jesus said to him, “You go, and do likewise.”

Prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

 

Two weeks ago in our Gospel reading, Jesus told a parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector. This parable told us about one men who exalted himself into the place of God, and made himself the judge, in such a way that he treated the tax collector who was praying in the temple with contempt. He even thanked God that he was not like that tax collector.

Jesus says: I tell you, [it was the tax collector who] went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

Notice this parable and this reading is about justification, being justified. That means, this man was declared forgiven by God, he was sent back to his home with life and salvation in his pocket. And Jesus is both true man and true God – he is able to speak God’s judgment upon these two men and tell us which one was forgiven and which one was not. And what a comfort it is that Jesus promises forgiveness to all those people who have nothing—the poor tax collector is just like other people, he is probably an extortioner, his might be an adulterer, he might have been unjust. He probably didn’t fast twice a week like the Pharisee and probably didn’t give a tenth of all that he got. And despite all this, he still has a Saviour who is happy to be with him. He still has a Jesus who died for him and made atonement for him and rose again from the dead for him. He still has faithful high priest, Jesus Christ, who scoops him up like a rusty old can of a junk heap and exalts him, elevates him to the position of one of God’s children, a son of God, together with him, so that this man can pray together with Jesus to his Father in heaven. There such a stern, strict warning in this reading for all the proud and arrogant people in the world, but such wonderful comfort for poor tax collectors!

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Our Gospel reading today is the Parable of the Good Samaritan. And this parable, like the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector, has to do with being justified. This parable has to do with God in his throne-room pronouncing judgment on sinners, it has to do with entering into eternal life.

And so a lawyer wants to test Jesus. He says: Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?

In answering this question, Jesus gives him a little test like a Sunday School teacher. He says: What is written in the law? How do you read it? In other words: Which passage in the bible do you think is most relevant to this question? How were you taught in Sunday School? How did you learn it in the catechism?

So the man replies: You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind, and your neighbour as yourself. Jesus replies: You have answered correctly; do this, and you will live.

The lawyer is an expert in God’s law. Sometimes lawyers have the problem that they think that everything can be solved by legislation. But also a good lawyer is also someone who knows how to use the law properly and get out of it. If someone has to go to court, and the court case is a tricky one, or if it looks like the jury or the judge would give a hard sentence, the person might like to have a “good lawyer” in order to get them off the hook! They need a lawyer who is a good slippery fish who can get around all the corners of the law, and use the law to their advantage. They say things like: “Even though you’re innocent, you should plead guilty, because the judge thinks your guilty anyway, and you’re much more likely to get a lighter sentence if you just plead guilty.” There’s enough TV shows about courtrooms for us to understand the sort of thing I’m talking about.

But this lawyer is an expert in God’s law. And as a good lawyer, when he is on trial before God in his courtroom, he wants to get out of the law. He wants a lighter sentence. He wants an ace of spades up his sleeve that he can pull out in front of God and get himself off the hook.

Jesus says to the man: You have answered correctly; do this [love God and your neighbour] and you will live.

But the man’s not satisfied. He knows that he hasn’t loved God with all his heart, with all his soul, with all his strength, and with all his mind. He hasn’t loved his neighbour as himself. God has not been enthroned in his heart at all times. He forgets to pray when he is trouble. He has made no effort in loving God. He has dedicated his mind to loving other things than God. And he hasn’t been a good neighbour to people.

So what does this lawyer do? We read: But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbour?”

He thinks he’s got it all worked out! He’s got the perfect question to get him off the hook. But do you hear the words: desiring to justify himself. That means, he wants to turn God’s perfect law into his own law. He wants to dumb down God’s perfect, strict law of complete total obedience and love, and he wants to make his own version of it. He says, “Obviously God doesn’t really mean what he says. Surely there must be some caveat, some disclaimer, some way out!”

No – there’s no way out. So instead of letting God judge him and instead of putting himself under God’s righteous judgment of pronouncing him guilty, he actually demonstrates that he doesn’t love God at all. He would much rather kill God off and throw him off his throne, and set himself up there instead. He desires to justify himself. He wants to make himself his own God. He can’t distinguish between God’s heart and his heart. He thinks that everything that comes out of his own over-educated, lawyer’s heart is the same as that which comes out of God’s heart.

But why does he want to wriggle out from under God’s law? The same reason as the rest of us: He doesn’t want God to find him guilty.

This man wants to love God, but outside of real human life. He only wants to love God in such a way that he doesn’t have to love the people God himself created. But if he doesn’t love them, then he hates not just them, his neighbours, but he testifies to the fact that he hates that loving hand that formed and created his neighbours.

If this man wants to be justified, he is going to need a Saviour. And so Jesus tells him the parable of the Good Samaritan.

This lawyer is stuck in a corner by the perfect, strict law of God. There is no way that he can enter heaven because of the way he has lived and kept the law. He knows it. He needs a neighbour to come and save him. He needs Jesus to die for him and rise from the dead for him.

The lawyer is just like a man going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, who fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him and departed, leaving him half dead. This lawyer, just like us, has vicious accusers: Satan and all the demons. They come to beat us with God’s law and leave us half dead. If we want to be saved by our own works, our consciences, together with the devil, will beat us. They will strip us and rob us of all our dignity, all our purity. They will beat us and pound us with accusation, and then they will depart and leave us half dead. They will abandon us and leave us desperate.

Every person born into this world who wants to be saved by God’s law is like this man on the road, stripped, beaten and abandoned.

This man needs a friend. He needs a Jesus. Not a priest or a Levite who is too afraid to touch him in all his filth, but a real friend, a Saviour. We need a Jesus who will bend down to meet us in the mud and the blood, and have compassion on us. We need Jesus to come and bind up our wounds and pour on soothing oil and wine. We need Jesus to come and put him on his own animal and bring us to a safe place where he can take care of us. We need him to pay for our welfare, and to charge everything to his account.

Maybe that road was a dangerous road between Jerusalem and Jericho, and the man was a bit stupid to have walked down that road by himself. It doesn’t matter! It’s Jesus who is our Good Samaritan. He looks after us, he pays for us, he binds up our wounds, and he has compassion on us. When we are brought into God’s courtroom, when we stand under God’s law and his judgment, on the last day as we do every day in our hearts, we will be completely helpless, stripped, beaten and abandoned. We need a Saviour. We need a Jesus.

This is why St Paul says in Ephesians and similarly in other places: By grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

We still have one more question we need to ask. What about good works? What use is the law? What about loving God and our neighbour?

Well, St Paul says in the same place in Ephesians: For we are God’s worksmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.

Firstly, we have no idea what God’s love looks like, if it weren’t taught to us. And we can’t even fathom how much Jesus loves us, how often he has had to rescue us from the roadside, how much wine and oil he has had to use, how much money he has had to pay the innkeeper for our night. He knows just how much help we need, and he knows so deeply how much we need him. If only we knew how much we needed him, instead of trying to justify ourselves.

So our good works in this life are always a “work-in-progress”. There is always an inbox on our table with things that need doing, but in this life we will never be able to front up to God and say that we’ve done everything that was required of us.

Jesus has given himself to us as an example, and he tells us, “Go and do likewise.” For us it is only baby steps, and even our best work is not seen by us. Most of the time, we don’t know how much we are really appreciated. People are thankless sinners—they don’t thank us for everything good we do, and so most often we don’t know. But also, our best work is not even seen by us or other people, but is simply seen by our Father who is in secret, who so often even keeps our good works secret even from us.

And there’s a sense from our Gospel reading, that if someone were to thank us for our help, we would simply say, “I only did what any Good Samaritan would do.”

But just before we finish, one last point: We often forget who Jesus is talking to. He is talking to Jews, Jewish lawyers even – and Jews have no dealings with Samaritans. But here Jesus compares himself to a Samaritan, and tells a group of Jews to go and do likewise, just like a Samaritan.

A Samaritan is a foreigner and also a heretic. A Jewish priest and a Levite—the people who should be following God’s law—walk past the man on the other side of the road. And now here Jesus takes out a knife and he cuts right to the heart of all their racism and prejudice.

Maybe you are racist towards certain people. Maybe you think that certain people from that country are like that. Or maybe you think people from different religions are like that. And so you justify yourself, and say I don’t have to associate myself with people from Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, South America, or even from other states and towns and cities in Australia. You justify yourself and say: I don’t have to associate myself with atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Jews, Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses, or whoever presses your buttons.

Because what you have to understand is that Jesus is so compassionate to people in their bodily needs, that if all the people from his church who read his word and partake of his sacraments walk by on the other side of the road, Jesus will even use atheists, Muslims, and Mormons to do that sort of work instead. He lets his sun shine on the just and the unjust.

How much more should we be merciful to people not just in the bodily needs and but also in their spiritual needs?

And so when you do help someone, and they thank you, then say, “I’m only doing what any good Samaritan would do.” “I’m only doing what any good person from whatever religion and whatever country would have done.” The gospel goes out to all nations, and all people are called to receive salvation from Jesus, our Good Samaritan. And Jesus died for the sins of the whole world. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Jesus is the one who shows us mercy, and may all praise and glory and honour be given to him!

Amen.

Lord Jesus Christ, pour the comfort of your word and Holy Spirit into all of our wounds and over everything in us that is sinful, and give us everything that we need from day to day. Give us hearts full of compassion to serve each needy person in body and soul that we come across in our life. Amen.

Trinity 12: Audio Sermon (18-Aug-2013)

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Trinity 12 [Mark 7:31-37] (18-Aug-2013)

This sermon was preached at St Paul's Lutheran Church, Darnum (9am), Good Shepherd Lutheran Church, Traralgon (11am) and Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Bairnsdale (3pm).

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

 

Text: (Mark 7:31-37)

And looking up to heaven, [Jesus] sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.”

 
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, send us all the Holy Spirit so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, in the name of your dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
 
 
Sometimes you can get a bible which has all the words of Jesus in it written in red. This can be very useful, but we also need to remember that all the words in black are also the eyewitness account of the apostles whom Jesus sent to preach to all nations. On the day of Pentecost, we read that all the newly baptised converts devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. Jesus said to his apostles: He who hears you hears me. St Paul also says that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone. So we need to remember all the black writing is just as much the word of God as the red writing. 
 
But there is something special about the particular words of Jesus that the apostles and the evangelists record. In our Gospel reading today, there is only one word that is written in red, only one word spoken by Jesus: Ephphatha. This is a word in Aramaic, the language that Jesus spoke and learnt from his mother and father. And the word Ephphatha means: be opened.
 
In our Gospel reading today, we learn first of all about a man who is both deaf and mute. He is unable to hear. He was unable to hear his own mother and father speaking to him as a child, and so was unable to learn how to speak. Isn’t it wonderful, then, that in our Gospel reading today, St Mark lets us in on Jesus’ mother tongue, and writes out the word as this deaf and mute man would have heard it?
 
It’s strange that the whole New Testament is not written in the language that Jesus spoke. Only every now and then we hear a little snippet of Jesus speaking in Aramaic. You might remember especially how Jesus said on the cross: Eloi eloi, lema sabachthani? My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We might ask the question: Why wasn’t the whole New Testament written in Aramaic? The New Testament was actually written in Greek, the language of the Roman Empire, not the language that Jesus learnt from Mary and Joseph.
 
When Jesus rose from the dead, he said: Go and make disciples of all nations. Go and preach the Gospel to the whole creation. If the St Mark, and the apostles and evangelists had written in Aramaic, the only people who would have been able to read it would have been the Jews who lived in the area of Palestine and nearby. But the Gospel was going to have a much wider audience. It was going to go to all nations. At the time of Jesus, the whole of Judea was under occupation by the Romans. Pontius Pilate was a Roman, and he was in charge of the area at that time: he was the man who sentenced Jesus to death. We mention this Roman man every Sunday, and if you say the creed every day, then every day, when we say that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate. The Gospel was to be preached not just to Jews, but to people like Pontius Pilate, to other nations, to foreigners. At the time of the New Testament, the most common language was Greek. And so the apostles and evangelists wrote what they did in Greek. The only way we know about a Jewish family with a Jewish boy, Jesus, is from a Greek text, not an Aramaic one, not a Hebrew one. This is because the Gospel was to go out to everyone, and so they wrote it in a language that the most number of people could understand.
 
On the day of Pentecost, there were all sorts of people who heard the apostles speaking in their own native language. Eventually, the Gospel would be preached in the English language, and even come to a country like Australia that St Mark and St Paul and St Peter and all the apostles never knew even existed. What a miracle it is that we are even part of that same church today that has been moving into the darkest corners of the earth right from its very beginning!
 
And today, we even get to hear Jesus speak in his own native language. He says: Ephphatha. Be opened.
 
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Now, the obvious thing we learn from this text today is about a man who is healed of his deafness and inability to speak. But I would like to focus today particularly on the way in which we are healed spiritually of our spiritual deafness and our spiritual muteness. And this is especially relevant as we baptise some children at Traralgon today.
 
When it comes to the faith, every single person who has ever lived, except Jesus himself, is deaf to God’s word and we are completely unable to speak God’s word. We have a spiritual deafness—we can’t hear the Gospel. We are deaf to it. It makes absolutely no sense to us. We also have a spiritual muteness—we can’t speak the word of God. We can’t pray. Prayer is completely unnatural to us.
 
Jesus says: Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God. Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.
 
Everyone who is born of a mother and father, who is a member of the human race cannot see God’s kingdom or even enter it, unless God gives birth to that person all over again.
 
Some people think that being born again is a feeling that they get. They think that one day they feel the Holy Spirit come upon them, and they have a wonderful religious experience and then they are born again. They say: I have decided to follow Jesus, and there’s no turning back, and now I’m born again. That’s not what being born again means.
 
Being born again has nothing to do with your feelings, your experiences, your decisions for Jesus. We have good feelings, good experiences and we make resolutions to be better Christians and follow Jesus all the time! How do you know which was the one where you were actually “born again”? Maybe you’ll have a better religious experience later! Does this mean that the earlier experience wasn’t the real one? People who put their trust in their religious feelings, experiences, and decisions get caught up in all sorts of traps and bad conscience. When the devil wants to get you when your sad and lonely and depressed, he’ll kick over your feelings, experiences and decisions over one by one, and he won’t spare the expense or the shame!
 
No…. being born again means that God himself will give you a new birth. And he does this by water and the Spirit in holy baptism. Holy Baptism is where we are born again. And in the bible, to be born again means nothing except to be baptised.
 
When a mother gives birth, she gives birth with lots of tears, lots of pain, lots of blood. But when we are born again into the kingdom of God, when we are born again by water and the Spirit, it’s easy for the mum. It’s easy for a mother to bring her child to the church. The pain and the labour and suffering is done by Jesus – he’s the one who does all the hard work in our new birth, and gives us his death and his resurrection to us when he comes and pours water over us and speaks his words to us: I baptise you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. All the work belongs to Jesus.
 
But Jesus doesn’t baptise us in silence. He uses two ingredients to baptise us: he uses water and he uses his word. The word of God in this water, and used together with this water, is what creates faith in us.
 
In our Gospel reading today, let’s look at the different things that Jesus does. We read: Taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed.
 
Do you see all the different gestures? Jesus uses his fingers, his mouth, his hands his eyes, his lungs, his heart. He uses his fingers and puts them into his ears. He uses his mouth and spits. He uses his hands and touches his tongue. He uses his eyes and looks up to heaven. He uses his lungs and sighs from the depths of his heart.
 
In Baptism, we also have many gestures and actions. The pastor puts his hands on the children to bless them. He uses his finger to make a sign of the cross. He uses water to wash the child on the head.
 
But what Jesus does in our reading, and what we do in the church, is not done in silence. It is connected to a word. And this word is spoken into our ears and through this word the Holy Spirit creates a living faith in us.
 
In our Gospel reading today, Jesus says: Ephphatha. Be opened.
 
This man is closed. He needs to be opened.
 
We too are closed. St Paul says: You were dead in your trespasses. Not hard of hearing, not a little bit deaf, but dead. There’s no one in this world who’s more deaf that a corpse!
 
When Jesus comes and speaks his word to us, and sends his Holy Spirit to us so that we believe it, he comes to give life to dead bodies. It’s like the valley of the dry bones in the book of the prophet Ezekiel. God says to the prophet: Son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel says: O Lord, you know.
 
Well, Jesus has promised to make us live. He knows. He speaks a word which is true, loving and powerful. It is a powerful word, so that a living fear of him is created in us. It is a loving word, so that that same love for him is also created in us. It is a true word, so that a living trust in him can be created in us. And so it is the Holy Spirit who opens our ears so that we can hear this word and speak it, and fear, love and trust in our Lord Jesus Christ above all things.
 
Sometimes we try very hard to convince people to believe the gospel. And many times people don’t listen and they don’t want to listen. Sometimes the people who don’t listen the most are people who call themselves Christians. They want to be like the Pharisee who goes into the temple and wants to be better than the tax collector. No—a person who despises other people, a Pharisee who despises tax-collectors is not a Christian yet. They have not heard the forgiveness of sins. They are still dead in their sins.
 
No—what we need is for Jesus to come and speak his word to us. Jesus needs to come and speak the word: Ephphatha, be opened, to us, and raise us from the dead. A person who doesn’t know their sin thinks they are alive but is actually dead. But it is the Holy Spirit who makes us aware of our sin, and it is the Holy Spirit who creates the faith in the forgiveness of sins in us, given to us through the water of baptism, so that we believe in it, trust in it, and be saved.
 
Being saved does not mean that we look down on other people who are saved. The forgiveness of sins is only given to sinners. There are people who believe they are forgiven, but don’t believe that they are sinners. There are people who believe they are sinners, but don’t believe that Jesus died for them and forgives them. Both of these people are not Christians yet.
 
But the knowledge of our sin and the sure promise of our forgiveness is given to us, purely through the working of the Holy Spirit, who takes the words of Jesus and opens us up to hear these words. Ephphatha. Be opened.

And when our ears are opened to God’s word, then we can listen to our heavenly Father, and learn to speak once again, and learn to speak to him. We have to hear and learn the language of the Scripture one word at a time, before we can mumble our prayers back to him. Prayer always starts with baby talk. And all our prayers are helped along and strengthened by our older brother Jesus who translates our baby-talk prayers to the Father for us! “What this little baby is trying to say is that he wants this!”
 
And so let’s also be opened up again, afresh, anew, by Jesus through his word. Let Jesus speak his powerful word to you: Ephphatha. Be opened. Open our ears, Lord Jesus! Open our mouths, Lord Jesus!
 
Amen.
 
 
Lord, open Thou my heart to hear,
And by Thy word to me draw near;
Let me Thy Word still pure retain,
Let me Thy child and heir remain. Amen.