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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
As I this past week spent time with our member Paul Kuehn, both in the holding area before his surgeries Thursday at Longview Regional and in the Intensive Care Unit afterwards, and as I yesterday was at the Willows of Kilgore to conduct its weekly church service, I reflected on humankind’s outward needs, like those of the man in today’s Gospel Reading, who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Of course, we do not have to be in I‑C‑U or a nursing home to have such outward needs, physical or material. We see others around us in society in need of jobs, money, clothing, food, and shelter—the so‑called “necessities” of life. We may know better our own material needs, and we also may know better our own physical needs. Whether young or old, we can and do have trouble seeing, smelling, tasting, and touching, if not hearing and speaking. Yet, our greatest needs are inward, spiritual needs, and, as we reflect on the Gospel Reading, we realize that Jesus ultimately meets all our needs, both our outward and our inward needs, for “Jesus does all things well”.
Today’s Gospel Reading continues our relatively continuous reading of St. Mark’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account, although, since last week’s Gospel Reading, our series of Readings, as followed, skipped over St. Mark’s account of the Syrophoenician woman’s faith, which we heard about last year from St. Matthew’s account. And, today’s Gospel Reading has advanced an indeterminate amount of time, as Jesus made a circuitous journey to the region of the Decapolis, ten cities to the southeast of the Sea of Galilee, where the people previously had marveled as they heard about the Lord’s mercy and what He had done for a demon-possessed man (Mark 5:19-20). There, on this occasion, as St. Mark uniquely reports with vivid details, people brought to Jesus the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged Jesus to lay His hand on him. They perhaps knew that the man’s and our outward needs relate to his and our inward needs.
We do not have to look very far to see the effects of sin either in society around us or in our own lives. We may be more comfortable discussing society’s increasing racial hostilities’ taking us towards anarchy, but our own brokenness in our families’ and personal lives are no less real, and they are more serious. As the Rev. Dr. Scott Murray noted Friday in his daily email devotion, our choices are either to deny the existence of God, as the atheists do, or to confess a complete breach between God and humankind, as faithful Christians do (“What Does Christ Die for?”, 2015/09/04). That original sin and the actual sins it brings about are “the deepest poverty” we face by nature (Lindemann, III:187), a lack of righteousness before God. By nature we are deaf to God’s Word and impeded in our speech that should confess Him. Our specific physical afflictions may not be linked directly to any specific sin, but even we who believe certainly continue to sin in any number of specific ways. As today’s Epistle Reading reminded us, whoever fails in one point to keep the whole law is accountable for breaking all of it (James 2:1‑10, 14-18). And, the wages of such sin is death, both physical death now in time and physical torment in hell for eternity (Romans 6:23).
In teaching on Genesis’s account of Joseph’s brothers, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther refers to today’s Gospel Reading, specifically to Jesus’s word “Ephphatha”, that is “Be opened”, saying that Joseph’s brothers and all the rest of us cannot confess our sin and trust God to forgive our sin until God opens our ears and releases our tongues (AE 7:277). Like the disciples after Jesus’s resurrection, God opens our minds to understand the Scriptures’ teaching of repentance and forgiveness of sins (Luke 24:45-47). When we so turn in our sorrow from our sin and trust God to forgive our sin, then God forgives our sin, all our sin, whatever it might be, for Jesus’s sake.
“Jesus does all things well.” Today’s Gospel Reading may even make intentional connections to God’s perfect creation in the beginning, when the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters, when God spoke, and when everything God made was very good (Genesis 1:1, 3, 31). Humankind corrupted God’s perfect creation, but God promised to restore it by sending a Savior. God detailed that promise, such as in today’s Old Testament Reading, saying that the ears of the deaf would be unstopped and the tongue of the mute would sing for joy (Isaiah 35:4-7a). The people of the Decapolis in today’s Gospel Reading certainly recognized that Jesus fulfilled those promises, saying Jesus “even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” Jesus likely charged them to tell no one about Him at that time so that He could die when the time was right. And, He did die when the time was right! God in human flesh, Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross for your sins and for mine. There, on the cross, Jesus bridged the complete breach between God and humankind. Jesus suffered the separation from God that we deserved, and so, by grace through faith in Jesus, God forgives our sins, in the somewhat unexpected ways He gives in order for us to receive that forgiveness.
In today’s Gospel Reading, the people of the Decapolis begged Jesus to lay His hand on the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. Jesus arguably did so, putting His fingers into his ears, spitting and touching His tongue, sighing, and saying to him, “Ephphatha”, that is, “Be opened”. Perhaps the actions were a sign‑language of a sort indicating specifically what Jesus would open, but the actions and words also seem to be specifically how Jesus opened them. In His ministry, Jesus acted through means, and He continues to do so now (Scaer, CLD XI:187 n.17). From its earliest days through the time of Martin Luther, the Christian Church has connected today’s Gospel Reading with Holy Baptism, using saliva and the command to “Be opened” in its baptismal rites (see Taylor, 355; AE 53:99; TLSB, 1672). There, at the Baptismal Font, the Holy Spirit works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe. There, at the Font, in the words of today’s Old Testament Reading, waters break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert, the burning sand becomes a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water. Those who are so baptized, whose ears are opened to the Word and whose tongues are released to confess their sins, confess them privately to their pastor for the sake of individual Holy Absolution, forgiveness from the pastor as from God Himself. Those so instructed, examined, and absolved are received at this Rail to receive from this Altar bread that is Jesus’s body and wine that is Jesus’s blood, given and shed for you for the forgiveness of your sin. Whoever receives His body and blood believing His words, that they are given for the forgiveness of sins, has exactly what He says, the forgiveness of sins.
What, if anything astonishes us beyond measure? What fills us with fear, wonder, and joy? Are we so cynical and jaded that nothing negative does? Are we so blind to the miraculous that nothing positive does? In the Gospel Reading, Jesus’s miracle, even done aside from the crowd privately, astonished the people beyond measure and so led them to proclaim it zealously (despite Jesus’s command not to!). The Holy Spirit would also so move us (who no longer have the command not to!), that we bring others here for God’s deliverance, beg Him to touch them through His Word and Sacraments, and proclaim His miraculous power so demonstrated in our and their lives. Such good works, as we heard in today’s Epistle Reading, give evidence to the faith God has worked in us. The same faith that daily brings us forgiveness when we fail to do such good works and repent of our failures!
Truly, “Jesus does all things well”. On the cross Jesus met our inward spiritual need for the forgiveness of sin, and, through His Means of Grace, He gives us that forgiveness, keeps us faithful to Him, and enables us to endure the afflictions that He permits us to face. We may wish that God likewise would immediately meet our outward physical needs. We may wish that people such as Paul Kuehn and those at the Willows would experience the same kind of miraculous outward physical healing as the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment did in the Gospel Reading. Yet, we know that God will provide all of us who believe an even greater outward physical healing on the Last Day, with the resurrection and glorification of our bodies. As we sang in the Introit, blessed be the Lord, for He has heard the voice of our pleas for mercy (Psalm 28:1-2, 6-7; antiphon v.8).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +