↓ Our Savior Lutheran Church, Grants Pass, OR
↓ Faith Lutheran Church, Medford OR
Mark 7:31-37 STRANGE MEANS OF HEALING
STRANGE MEANS Can you imagine a total Stranger coming up to you, sticking His fingers in your ears, spitting and touching your tongue? And your own friends brought you to Him! It wasn’t’ quite what the people had in mind when they brought their friend to Jesus. All they asked was for Jesus to place His Hand on him and bless him! And here Jesus goes, sticking his fingers in the man’s ears and spitting on his tongue.
SAME TO US NOW And that’s what Jesus wants to do with us here this morning. He wants to stick His Words into our ears. He wants to loosen our tongues to sing and speak His praise. The One Who does all things well wants to do all things well with us, too.
NO DETAILS Mark doesn’t tell us anything about the man whose ears and tongue didn’t work. We don’t even know his name. He was one of the many hearing impaired, living in silence, struggling daily to communicate with people whose ears did work. He’d never heard the sounds of laughter or music or God’s Word. He also spoke with great difficulty. Even the most casual of conversations was a struggle.
GEOGRAPHY… He came from the region of the Decapolis, the “Ten Cities” in Gentile territory. Ten no-name towns across from the Sea of Galilee. It wasn’t the sort of place you would have expected a proper Jewish Messiah to make and appearance, but then Jesus never fit anyone’s profile of a proper Jewish Messiah. The Decapolis was the place where Jesus had cast a legion of demons out from a man and into a herd of pigs who subsequently jumped off a cliff into the sea. The people of the region weren’t too fond of that sort of thing in their community so they asked Jesus and His disciples to leave. But word had spread about Jesus’ power over demons and diseases, so the next time He showed up in the area, some folks there actually sought Him out.
REAL EVANGELISM That’s how Jesus and this man whose ears and tongue didn’t work got together. Some friends believed enough about Jesus to bring their friend. In our day we call that “evangelism” and assign it to committees and task forces. We talk a lot about it, about how we should be doing more of it. But in the end all it boils down to is bringing people you know to Jesus to have Him bless them. It’s really not any more complicated than that.
REQUEST “Won’t You please lay Your Hand on our friend? His ears and tongue don’t work. We heard what You did with the demons, and so we figured You might be able to help him.”
NO (TELE-)FAITH-HEALER Jesus takes the man aside, away from the crowds. He doesn’t want to make a show. This isn’t for the TV and the tabloids. What Jesus does is so different from the so-called celebrity “faith healers” of our day. Jesus never sought celebrity. And He doesn’t use the misfortune of others to draw attention to Himself. He is completely there for that man who couldn’t hear or speak. He has Jesus’ undivided attention.
SIGN LANGUAGE Jesus uses a bit of “Sign Language.” He reaches out to him in a way that acknowledges him personally. Jesus reaches out to the man where he was and deals with him in his language you could say.
THE HEALING TOUCH Jesus takes His fingers and sticks them in the man’s ears. Then He spits on His fingers and the touches the man’s tongue. He touches what is broken with the Creator’s touch. The Good Physician is at work. He is “hands on,” not distant and removed. Touch is vitally important to healing. We don’t do enough of it in our culture anymore. The stethoscope was the first piece of equipment that got between doctor and patient. Now the doctor could listen to your heart and your breathing without touching you. And we’ve become further and further removed from human touch. We get X-rayed and our body fluids get extracted and sent to labs and we get crammed into MRI tubes. But we are touched by few.
HANDS-ON GOD When Jesus touched someone, they were touched by the Hand/s of God. God is a Hands-On God, Who stepped down from His glory in Heaven, to step into our human flesh, to dwell among us and touch us through His own Humanity. Fingers in the ears, spitting and grabbing tongues. He is the God Who deals with us as the human creatures that we are. None of this out of body “spiritual” nonsense we hear about today. God deals with us in the grubby, ordinary, earthy, everyday way of our human existence. When Jesus stuck his Fingers into that man’s ears, they were the Fingers of God. When Jesus touched the man’s tongue, it was God touching his tongue.
EYES UP TO HEAVEN Jesus looked upward to Heaven. “That’s where your Help comes from,” He was saying to the man. “Your help comes from God, and I have come to bring God to you.” He is our Go-Between, the Mediator between God and man. He prays for us. He intercedes for us. He touches us with God’s touch. Jesus sighs. He groans. He knows how deep the brokenness is, and what price He will have to pay to fix it. He knows the cost of this healing: a Cross and His death. Jesus knows our human suffering and sorrow. He knows our weaknesses. When He groans on our behalf, they are the same groanings with which the Holy Spirit prays for us in our weakness.
“EPH-PHA-THA”! = OPEN Finally, Jesus speaks a Word. Mark gives us the Aramaic original: Ephphatha! = Be opened. (or) Be released. Jesus wasn’t simply speaking to his ears, He was speaking to the whole man. “Be released from your bondage. Be FREE.” Jesus was releasing him from everything that held him bound and captive. “Be released.” Jesus came to proclaim release to the captives. To those who are bound in sin and death, He came to speak a liberating Word.
ACTIVE, EFFECTIVE WORD The Word of Jesus is living and active, Spirit and life. His Words fall on deaf ears and cause them to hear. His Words fall on mute tongues and make them speak. At the sound of Jesus’ Word, “Ephphatha”! The man’s ears could hear and his tongue was freed and he spoke plainly and clearly. Mark doesn’t tell us what he said. But the attention is always ON JESUS, not on the miracles or those who receive them. All we know is that the man spoke plainly and coherently. His ears were opened. His tongue was loosed.
NOT (JUST) A MIRACLE WORKER And then Jesus ordered everyone not to speak, which may seem strange or even a bit ironic since He just loosened a man’s tongue. The man can now speak clearly, yet Jesus puts a gag
order on him and the others. Jesus didn’t want to be known as a Wonder Worker. If all that people saw in Jesus was a cure for their temporal problems, an (ENT) ear and tongue specialist, they missed the point. If all we see in Jesus is quick therapy, we have missed the point. Paul said that if our hope in Christ is only for this life, if all we look to Jesus for is a solution to our problems, we are of all people most to be pitied.
SO MUCH MORE… There was (so much) more to Jesus than miracles. The miracles were signs that God had come to us to touch us. Isaiah (today’s OT Lesson) spoke of it centuries before. He prophesied, “Your God will come to save you. The eyes of the blind will be opened. The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame will leap like agile deer. Mute tongues will shout for joy.”
NEW CREATION God came in Jesus Christ. He came to save us by absorbing into Himself all the sin and evil and brokenness, all that had gone wrong with us, all that had come into the creation because of our Fall. He came to take up our sicknesses and diseases into His own Body, to battle the demons that darken our lives, to take up the devastation that crushes us. He came to free us from everything that binds us, that imprisons us, that keeps us from being God’s free children. He came to unchain us from sin, from death, from the devil. He came to bring in a New Creation with His own dying and rising, a New Creation where blind eyes see, mute tongues speak and the lame leap.
(MUCH) MORE TO COME That’s why Jesus didn’t want anyone to say anything about what happened. It was too small, too soon. There was (so) much more of Jesus to come. His death on the Cross. His open, empty tomb. His Ascension to glory. The Holy Spirit outpouring at Pentecost. Then His disciples would speak openly and plainly.
THEY TOLD ANYWAY But the people of the Decapolis told everyone about what happened. The more Jesus tried to quiet them, the more they spoke. People were overwhelmed at the power of Jesus’ Words. With a simple Word Jesus did what no man could do, and yet He did it in such a human way. Through His Humanity came the Power of God to save, to set free, to release from bondage. And people just had to talk about it. “He has done all things well,” they said. “He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
SOMETHING TO TALK ABOUT We have even more to say about Jesus than they did. Greater things even than making ears and tongues work again. Jesus has died for us, risen from the dead for us, and now reigns over all things for us. He lords His death and Resurrection over our sin and death. Now THAT’S something to talk about, isn’t it?
DOES ALL THINGS WELL FOR US! He said “Ephphatha” to us in our Baptisms. He’s opened our ears to hear His Word. He’s anointed our tongues to sing His praises and to pray to Him and to proclaim Him. And He continues to put His forgiveness into our ears, His Body and Blood on our tongues, His Word on our minds and hearts, in the same earthy incarnate way of fingers in ears and spit on tongues. He’s the One Who opens ears. He loosens tongues. He forgives sinners. He raises the dead. He gives Eternal Life. He does everything well. Trust Him to do everything well with you.