Mark 7:31-37

Ears to Hear

Trinity 12

September 3, 2017

Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID

No audio

Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in Your sight, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Out of all the miracles that Jesus does, the one where He heals the deaf and mute man in our Gospel reading from Mark 7 has to be one of my favorites.  It’s for the simple fact that this miracle is so very incarnational, that is to say, it is very physical and earthy.  Jesus doesn’t just speak, He doesn’t stand far off and do these things.  He touches, He gestures, He sighs, He speaks.  Jesus uses these ceremonies to show that He is a true man. His shows power over humanity, over bodies broken and not working right. He stood in the place of all people and at the same time took an interest in the sickness of this man and all people.

Jesus is not just a man, He is true God. His authority over His creation is demonstrated here. He is not a God who stands far off, but one who interacts with His creation in a very real and personal way, again, very incarnational.  Yes, He is the Son of God who could have healed the man with a mere thought or word, but gets very personal with this man.

Jesus often healed others with a word or drove the devil out of them with a word. But here He uses specific gestures. What a sight that would have been to see. Imagine what this would have looked like from one of the onlookers.  Jesus takes this man aside from the crowd.  He places His fingers in the man’s ears, spits, and then touches the man’s tongue. He looks to heaven, to show where help comes from, and speaks a single word, “ephaphtha, be opened”, a word that the deaf man’s ears would not have heard.  And Jesus commands the silence. The man’s ears are opened according to the word of Christ, and his tongue released.

Christ’s sympathy is proportionate to our needs, and not merely to our prayers. His grace seeks even when not sought, gives where it was not asked, knocks where no door was opened. Jesus is concerned about more than just this man. His sighing was that over all humanity. He looks not only at two ears, but all people from Adam onward.

Outward need is sad: need of money, of clothes, of food, the necessities of life. But the real need as those that are inward, and the lack of these are spiritual poverties. The deaf and mute man is a figure of the spiritually poor who are deaf to the voice of conscience, to the call of God. By nature all are deaf. By nature, then, we are also mute, averse to prayer, confession, and praise. We are mute to God, for God, and about God. And it is only Christ who can make us whole, only Christ who can bring healing, as the Psalmist declares in Psalm 51, “ O Lord, open my lips and my mouth will declare Your praise.”

Jesus is especially occupied with the ears and the tongue. Because the kingdom of God is founded upon the Word of God, which cannot be comprehended or grasped other than through these two organs, the ear and the tongue. He rules in the hearts of people only through the Word and faith. The ear grasps the Word, the heart believes it, and the tongue speaks or confesses what the heart believes.  These two organs make a difference between the believer and the unbeliever. Your ears are made to hear God’s Word. Your tongue formed to speak His praise.

Zion Lutheran Church, do you have ears to hear?  St. Paul tells us in Romans 10 that faith comes by hearing the word of Christ.  Yet how are we to hear if our ears are deaf? How are we to speak the Lord’s praises if our tongue is tied?  In this miracle, Jesus is not providing this man with a hearing aid, but He is taking what is broken because of sin and making it work rightly. We should learn here that Christ our Lord takes sincere interest in us; we should pay attention to keeping our ears and tongues the way He gave them to us.  We should keep our ears open to His Word, our tongues open to speak His praise. 

It is a shame that ears that have been opened too often want to listen to nothing than else such false tongues.  Ears itch to hear what would please the sinful self. Paul writes to Timothy in his second letter, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander off into myths” (2 Timothy 4:3-4).

One of the greatest harms to the kingdom of Christ comes from the tongue. James writes that the tongue is a fire, a world of unrighteousness, set among our members, staining the whole body, setting on fire the entire course of life, it is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (James 3).  The worst is the false preaching, speaking a different Gospel than that of Jesus Christ and Him crucified.

How do you know?  How do you that what you hear is God’s Word to us? How do you know the words of your mouth reflect that truth? You know because of Christ. Through faith in Christ, in His breathing out of Scripture, in His fulfillment of prophecy, in His miracles, most importantly that He who was crucified was raised upon the third day never to die again. God’s Word sometimes cuts like a knife to expose our sin. But after the Law comes the Word of the Gospel, a word of peace and healing, binding up the wounds of sin, proclaiming nothing but Christ’s forgiveness for all our sins.

What you listen to and what you speak actually matter. Fill your ears with good things, things that are from God. Avoid those which would feed your sinful desires. Use the words of your mouth to glorify God, to build up people in faith, not tear down; to praise Him, not yourself, to make a good confession of your faith in Jesus Christ; to pray, O Lord, let us not seek preaching that satisfies sinful desires, but give us ears to hear that Word of Christ that will continually return us to the forgiveness of sins.

Having hear the Word of this morning, let us be attentive in the rest of the Service, hearing Him, responding with praise. Let us begin by speaking His Word by singing our Offertory, Psalm 51, Create in Me…