St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am
Grace, mercy and peace be to
you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
His ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
Prayer: May the words of my
mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord,
our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
In our Gospel reading today, we have a wonderful parable about Jesus healing a man who both couldn’t hear and couldn’t speak. These two things often go together, especially if people are born deaf, because if they can’t hear, they are not able to learn how to talk. It seems as though something like this was the case with this man in our reading.
So let’s go through this passage, verse by verse. First of all, we read: Then [Jesus] returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. Mark makes a particular point of telling us a bit about the geography of where Jesus was going and where he had come from. All this might not seem so important to us, but for some reason, it was important for Mark to tell us the exact place where this event happened. Just before our reading today, in the same chapter of Mark, we read about how Jesus had gone to the region of Tyre and Sidon. Tyre and Sidon are cities which are in modern day Lebanon. Jesus had travelled a long way north. Actually, the region he grew up in, Galilee, and the town of Nazareth, were also quite a long way north of Jerusalem. But if you still keep going further, you reach what is now today Lebanon, and what the reading calls, the region of Tyre and Sidon. In that place, Jesus met a woman who pleaded to him to heal her daughter who had an unclean spirit.
In our reading today, we read that Jesus had returned from the region of Tyre, and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. The Sea of Galilee is also in the northern part of Israel, close to Nazareth, and also when Jesus grew up, he spent a lot of time in Capernaum, which is also on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. Here Jesus travels onto the other side of the Sea of Galilee, into the region which is called the Decapolis. Today this area is part of modern-day Jordan.
Now, sometimes it’s helpful for us to look these places up on a map, and see where they are. Often our bibles have maps in the back of them. We might not think that all this geography is very important. However, it teaches us something important, and that is, that Jesus didn’t just walk around aimlessly. He actually visited specific places, specific towns, and met specific people, at a specific time and place. The Gospels claim that the life of Jesus is actually history. There was a time when Jesus was actually born, in the town of Bethlehem. You can visit Bethlehem even today. It still exists. There was a time when Jesus actually rose from the dead, from a tomb outside of Jerusalem. You can visit Jerusalem today. It still exists. These are not made-up places, but Jesus actually went there and did things there.
And this is of great comfort to us too, because we here in Australia, as far as Mark probably thought when he wrote his Gospel, are at the end of the earth. At the beginning of Acts, we read that Jesus said to his apostles that they would be his witnesses to the end of the earth. So, just as Jesus visited this man in this particular region, which today is part of Jordan, so also Jesus even visits us, in our particular gathering of Christians, in our particular city, in our particular country, in our particular part of the world. Just as this man who was deaf and unable to speak met Jesus, so also do we, when we hear the word of God, read and preached, but also in the sacraments. We are his baptised children, and Jesus promises to be with us and to walk with us through our lives. He also gives us his divine food for the journey, his body and blood, given and shed for us for the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is just as much here, but invisibly, as he was there healing that man in the region mentioned in our Gospel reading.
So, we also read: And they brought to [Jesus] a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. And 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 and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
It’s a very interesting way in which Jesus heals this man, quite unlike anything he does for anyone else. We know that this man was both deaf and unable to speak. Everything then that Jesus does from here, he does for the specific benefit of this man. So Jesus takes him aside from the crowd privately. Why does he do this? Well, when there is a crowd all around this man, and he’s not able to hear or speak, then it’s very difficult to know what’s going on. Jesus takes him aside by himself, and then the man knows precisely who it is that is dealing with him. Jesus doesn’t want the man to think that it was the crowd who worked this miracle, or someone else. He wants him to realise that this is He, Jesus, who is dealing with him, and Him alone.
Then we read: He put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. The man who can’t hear or speak can still Jesus what Jesus is doing. We know that there were blind men, for example, who came up to Jesus and asked to see, on a different occasion. They would have been able to hear Jesus’ voice, and then when they were able to see, they would have been able to recognise whose voice it was when they were able to see Jesus with their own eyes. Now, this man who can’t hear or speak sees Jesus put his fingers into his ears and touches his tongue. Jesus is using a kind of sign language that makes it very clear to the man what is going on.
Then we read: And looking up to heaven, [Jesus] sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened”. Here Jesus speaks His word, and the man is healed. But first, Jesus shows to the man a gesture of prayer. He looks up to heaven and sighs. He wants to show to the man that the power he has to heal him is from heaven itself and from God himself. It’s not simply a human power. Of course, we know that Jesus Himself is true God, and actually has no need to pray to the Father for this power, because He has this power already in Himself. But Jesus always prays to the Father, and always asks for things from His Father, because he wants to show us that He and the Father are one, and that their will is always united together.
Jesus here, also shows us a wonderful example in prayer for us. He simply looks to heaven and sighs. We read in Romans: Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. He who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. This is a wonderful comfort for us. Often, our minds are so muddled and so “all-over-the-place” that we sometimes don’t know how to pray. We just can’t find the words. I think a lot of Christians feel like this at the moment with everything that is happening in the world at the present, with all the unrest and unease. However, Jesus gives us a great example: He simply looks to heaven and sighs. It’s like the people who were bitten by the serpent in the Old Testament, when Moses made a bronze or brass serpent, and put it on a pole. All the people needed to do was simply look at it and they were healed. So also, Jesus simply looks to heaven, to the place where he would soon be seated in glory, after he was to be crucified and risen from the dead.
There’s also those wonderful words in Psalm 121, which also convey a similar thought. I lift up my eyes to the hills, from where does my help come? My help comes from the Lord, who made heaven and earth. Here in prayer, we simply raise up our eyes a little bit. We raise our eyes from whatever is going on in life, whatever trouble, whatever suffering, whatever sin we are wrestling against, whatever sadness, whatever it is—we lift up our eyes to the hills, we look to heaven, and God recognises this prayer for what it is. He hears the sighs we make, and He recognises it as the Holy Spirit’s prayer for whatever is troubling us. If God even hears our sighs, and recognises our prayers when we just even lift our eyes up a bit, how much do you think he really loves to hear us when we open our mouths and speak to him and tell him what is troubling us? So we should be encouraged by this simple small gesture of prayer that Jesus demonstrates to us, simply to lift up his eyes to heaven and sigh.
Then we read that Jesus says: Ephphatha, which means, “Be opened.” In the Gospel of Mark especially there are a number of places where we hear Jesus say something in his native language, which was Aramaic. Aramaic was a kind of more modern Hebrew dialect that people spoke at this time, and people still speak it today in parts of Syria and Iraq. When Jesus goes to raise up Jairus’ daughter, a twelve year old girl who had died, we read that he said: Talitha cumi, which means, “Little girl, I say to you, arise.” When Jesus was in the Garden of Gethsemane, we read that he prayed: Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will. Here we see Jesus say, “Abba”, the word for Father in his native language, Aramaic. Also, when Jesus was on the cross, we read that he said: Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani? Which means, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Here in the Gospel of Mark, we have a few of these little instances where we hear Jesus speak in his native language.
Of course, this makes us wonder: why wasn’t everything in the Gospels written in Aramaic? Actually, the whole New Testament was written in Greek, and Jesus didn’t speak Greek. Why didn’t they write everything in the language that Jesus actually spoke? Well, just imagine, for example, that Jesus was an Aboriginal person in the South Australian desert, who spoke a language like Pitjantjatjara. And he had twelve disciples up there in the desert who all spoke Pitjantjatjara. Then Jesus was going to send out all of these disciples, and tell them to speak the Gospel to everyone in the region, and to the whole of Australia, and to the ends of the earth. Could you imagine what would have happened if they all went out and spoke Pitjantjatjara to everyone? Nobody, even in Adelaide, would have understood them! So, if they wanted to be understood, they would have had to have spoken English, because it is commonly understood, not just here in Australia, but all throughout the world.
So also, in Jesus’ time, that language was Greek. It was the most widely spoken language of the Roman Empire in that part of the world. Jesus’ native language was just the local language of that area, and outside of that region, people wouldn’t have understood it. However, St Mark, often likes to remind us that these things took place in a very specific part of the world, in a specific language, which Jesus would have learnt as a little boy from listening to Mary and Joseph. It was Jesus’ mother tongue.
Now, you see, this man, whom Jesus heals in our reading, certainly had a mother, but not a mother tongue. He wasn’t able to learn it from his mother, because he couldn’t hear her. Now, Jesus speaks a powerful word of healing, causing the man’s ears and mouth to be opened, and he gives him his own mother tongue, his own native language, to speak.
The same goes for us as people who live in this world. We human beings have fallen into sin, and as a result, we are completely deaf to the Word of God, and we are completely unable to confess that word back to him, completely unable to pray, to praise God, to speak the Word to others, without the gift of the Holy Spirit. Last week, when we were reading about the Pharisee and the Tax Collector, we were talking about the way in which Tax Collector recognised his own sin, and recognised that only God could atone for his sin and do something about it. Here in our reading today, we learn that we are completely unable to recognise these things without the gift of the Holy Spirit. There are many people in our world, and sometimes in the church, who cannot hear the Word of God. It just doesn’t make any sense to them. The Gospel just sounds like Law to them. Everything that points up, they hear in a kind of downward way, and everything that points down, they hear in a kind of upward way.
I remember going to a music concert with a friend once to hear St John’s Passion, by Bach. Now, if you don’t know what this is, it’s a three hour piece which sets the history of Jesus’ suffering and death to music from the Gospel of John. There was an old lady sitting next to me, who said at the end, “And to think that they’re still killing each other in the Middle East!” I couldn’t believe it. After all of that, the only thing she could say was that the suffering of Jesus was just another example of Middle-Eastern violence.
But we are all deaf to the Word of God, and we completely misunderstand it, and get it backwards, and upside down, and all over the place. The Holy Spirit is the author of the Scripture, who inspired the biblical writers to write down what they did. And so, when we read the Scripture, we need to ask the Holy Spirit to help us understand what it is that we are reading. And even so, before we even think to do that, it is the Holy Spirit who comes to us through the Word, and converts and changes our hearts, so that we can pray and so that we can speak to God. Martin Luther says this very nicely in the Small Catechism, where he says: I believe that I cannot by my own reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to him, but the Holy Spirit calls me by the Gospel, etc.
In the baptism ceremony of the church, for many centuries, these words: “Be opened”, have often been said to the person who is being baptised, so indicate that it as a baptised person, it is the Holy Spirit who opens our hearts and ears and mouths to hear and speak the Word of God.
We read in the reading: And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.
This is such a strange thing. Jesus doesn’t want to draw attention to himself. What he did, he did for the benefit of this man, not so that he could gather fame for himself. Jesus opens the mouth of this man, but commands the people to keep their mouths shut. But they get everything backwards! They do the opposite of what Jesus says. Jesus is the obedient one, the one who prays to his Father, and opens the man’s ears and mouth. But all people are disobedient and do the opposite of what we are commanded by God. They were amazed by Jesus, but were completely unable to keep his command.
The same goes for us. We believe in the wonderful things that Jesus has done, his miraculous birth, his miracles, his death, his resurrection, his ascension, but we are completely unable to keep his commandments. If we do what is right on this earth, we are only just making a small beginning. When we show Christian to love to people, we are only just making a beginning to what that love really should be.
In the last part of the reading, it says: And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Of course, there’s something worth mentioning about these miracles of Jesus, which I’ve mentioned before. Often we look at a miracle of Jesus like this one, and we think what’s the purpose, or what’s the point of it. But the most important thing about it is simply the fact that it happened. It is a wonderful thing that Jesus healed a man of his deafness and his inability to speak. And we should stand in awe, first of all, in the simple fact that Jesus did this.
But the crowd also say here: He has done all things well. This reminds us of those wonderful words which are written about God right at the beginning of Genesis, when God created the world, and it says: God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good. Here Jesus also has done all things well. It was very good. It was a wonderful thing that Jesus had done.
And so, just as God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, at the beginning had created all things by his Word, so also, Jesus here—the true Son of God, praying to his Father, and working with all the power of the Holy Spirit—speaks the healing of this man into existence through his Word. He does the same for us with our faith: he speaks it into existence through his Word. He does the same in Baptism: he washes us into his kingdom through the speaking of his Word. The same happens in the Lord’s Supper: he places his body and blood upon our altar through the elements of bread of wine, simply through the speaking of his Word: This is my body, this is my blood. Everything that happens in the church that is of any lasting value happens through the speaking of Christ’s Word. The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the Word of God endures forever. That’s the way it always is with Jesus. So let’s listen to his Word, with ears that have been opened by Him, and speak this Word and pray to him, with mouths that have been opened by Him. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds safe in Christ Jesus. Amen.
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