Sermon - Trinity XII 2020 - Mark 7:31-37

 In the Garden of Eden God created man in His image. Thus Adam and Eve were able to converse with God, just as freely as you and I might chat with our friends. God would speak and Adam and Eve could hear Him and then respond right back! 

I can hardly imagine strolling along and having a conversation with God, but that’s how it was, at least until the Fall into sin. At that time Adam and Eve chose to listen to Satan and each other rather than God. Henceforth all of their descendents from Cain, Abel, and Seth, to you and me, all have been born deaf and mute like the man in the region of the Decapolis. Like that man, Christ opens the deaf ears of our hearts to believe the Gospel and loosens our tongues to rightly declare His praise.

Let me ask you a question: why do humans have ears and mouths? Is it just so that we can converse with one another or hear danger coming and run away? If that were the case then we would be no different than the beasts of the earth. Animals have ears and mouths so that they might eat food, find mates, flee danger, and attack threats. Is that all we are, a bunch of brutes and beasts?

We’re humans and God created us with ears and mouths, not just to converse with each other (though that is a good thing) but that we may converse with God! God has created us with ears to hear His voice and listen to Him! God created us with mouths to open so that we may declare His praises! But in sin, Satan has made us by nature both deaf and mute.

When we have the opportunity to hear the Word of God, we would rather listen to all of the other noise around us. Our ears are more attuned to the sounds of a stadium or a campground, than the Divine Service. We can listen to the talking newsheads on TV all day, but can hardly spare 10 minutes for the scriptures. We can listen to the oldies, the classics, or the new stuff for hours in the car, but can’t stomach one 6 stanza hymn about Christ’s sacrifice once a week.

When we have the chance to open our mouths and declare God’s praises, we’d rather join our voices with the racket of noise. We can jaw all day gossiping and slandering our neighbors, but we can’t stomach the idea of confessing Christ even in our homes. We know all the lyrics to Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, but we can’t sing even one stanza of our supposed favorite hymn. Such is Satan’s work to deafen our ears and mute our lips to God.

But in Christ, God makes us hear and speak! He heals us similarly to how He healed the deaf/mute man. “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.””

I know we hear this today and our first thought is: That’s disgusting! He’s gonna make people sick if He touches them; He even purposefully puts His spit in the man’s mouth! He sighs, breathes heavily, speaks right in the man’s face! Gross! Even in 1 BC, one year Before Corona, we thought this kind of thing was nasty.

But it’s not gross; it’s intimate. Jesus, God, formed Adam like a potter out of clay. He created Eve by taking a hunk out of Adam’s side. He knits each of us together in our mother’s womb. Jesus speaks of Himself like a mother hen, protecting her brood beneath her wings. Jesus spit in the dirt and healed a blindman’s eyes with the mud. On Maundy Thursday Jesus washed His disciples’ feet. After the resurrection Jesus breathed on His disciples and Thomas put his fingers in Jesus’ side. All of this shows that God loves us very deeply and intimately, like a father changes his child’s diapers or a mother washes dirt off her child’s face with her spit.

“O love, how deep, how broad, how high, beyond all thought and fantasy, that God, the Son of God, should take our mortal form for mortals’ sake!” This deeply intimate love drove God to take on our human flesh in the person of Jesus, bear our sins in His body, and suffer the punishment of the cross for us and our salvation. 

Jesus loves us very deeply and intimately. This beautiful story reminds us of how God heals us in baptism. Jesus took the man aside from the crowd privately, like the pastor takes a newborn baby up in his arms away from the parents to the font. Jesus put his fingers into his ears, like the pastor makes the sign of the cross on the infant’s forehead and heart. After spitting Jesus touched his tongue, like the pastor pours water from the font with his hand upon the child’s head. Jesus spoke to a deaf man in his own language that He couldn’t yet hear nor understand, saying, “Be opened.” Just like the pastor says to the baby who doesn’t yet understand, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”

When all was done and said, “his ears were opened, his tongue released, and he spoke rightly.” Likewise with the newly baptized babe, the ears of the heart are opened to the Gospel and the mouth is opened to declare the praises of God! 

Since “no one can call Christ Lord but by the Holy Spirit,” God has generously poured out His Spirit upon you in the waters of baptism, dear children! God has opened your ears to His voice and by the power of the Holy Spirit your tongue is loosened to confess Christ as your Lord and Savior. So the whole of Christendom prays with King David, “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise!”

But how is that God opens our lips to declare His praises? How is that we might speak rightly and plainly? God opens our lips the same way He makes bread and wine become His body and blood; the same way He makes tap water become a lavish washing away of sin; the same way He makes the deaf/mute man hear and speak. God opens our deaf hearts and mute lips by speaking to us.

Even when we can’t rightly hear or understand God’s Word as we ought to, His Word is rich in power to unplug our ears and loosen our tongues! It is really quite simple. Do you want to have faith? Do you want to boldly confess Christ to your grave? Do you want to go to heaven? Then simply listen to God speak to you.

How is it that our children learn to speak and communicate with us? It’s incredible, they just listen to their parents and siblings speak and then they know how to speak! Children learn to speak by how the parents speak to them. Thus, a child born deaf is also going to be mute because the child can’t hear others speaking. Similarly, someone who loses their hearing later in life, and goes a long time before getting it fixed, actually forgets how to hear and how to speak when it is fixed.

The same is true for us! We learn how to listen and speak with God by listening to Him. When we spend time reading the Bible, coming to church, singing hymns, reading devotions, God speaks to us through those things and our ears learn to listen to His voice and our lips to confess Him before the nations. But if we don’t raise up children listening to God’s voice, or we stop listening to His voice, then we will lose the language of God.

So let me encourage you to once again listen to God by taking up your Bible and reading it. Continue coming to the Divine Service as you’re doing now. Sing hymns with unabashed gusto. Because of what God has done for you, you can’t help but be like those who saw the miracle Jesus performed and zealously proclaim what God has done for you in Christ! “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” Each of us can testify about ourselves, “He makes me hear and me speak.”

Don’t be ashamed of the Gospel, don’t be ashamed of Christ and His Word, don’t be ashamed of living and believing weirdly like a Christian, but be bold and courageous! God has opened your ears and your mouths! Be unafraid of what the world says about you; it’s deaf and mute, of course it doesn’t understand our faith. Be steadfast and immovable in the Lord! Because whatever befalls us as Christians, our ears are opened to the Gospel and our tongues primed for plainly and rightly confessing Christ.