Imagine
what life must have been like for the poor man described in
today’s Gospel reading. He was completely deaf. He couldn’t hear
the voices of his family and friends. He couldn’t appreciate the
song of birds. He couldn’t listen as the Word of God was read and
explained in the synagogue. The sounds you and I take for granted
– the splash of running water, the wind in the trees, the bang of
a door slamming shut – all these had been lost in the silence in
which this poor man lived.
But not only couldn’t he hear. He also couldn’t speak plainly.
He could probably produce a few guttural noises, and you could
tell from his pitch and expression whether he was happy or sad.
But that was it. His ears didn’t do what God designed ears to
do. His mouth and tongue couldn’t say a word anyone could
understand. And so he lived a life of isolation, cut off from any
real interaction with other people, trapped in a world without
sound and without speech.
Imagine being in his shoes. Imagine, for a minute, that your
hearing and speech had been stolen from you. Imagine that you sat
there in your pew, unable to hear as I preach Christ to you,
unable to lift your voice in praise to the God who gave you life
and redeemed that life through Jesus Christ. Since your deaf,
speechless condition left you unable to participate in the
liturgy, you might as well be at an auction, or in an airport
terminal, than in the house of God. Unable to hear God’s Word,
unable to sing His praises -- what would be the point of being
here?
This man’s sorry lot was a result of sin. His afflictions and
impairments had their source in the curse God placed upon creation
after Adam’s disobedience. Romans 8 explains
the diseases, handicaps and infirmities that afflict our human
race when it says that because of Adam’s sin, all creation was
subjected to futility.
And what’s the result? Ears that can’t hear.
Tongues that can’t form intelligible words.
Hearts that don’t work. Lungs
that become cancerous.
Limbs that are left powerless and immobile by
accident or disease or stroke.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, pestilence. The whole
creation subjected to futility – to vanity – because of Adam’s
rebellion against his Creator. The curse affected Adam. It
affected the man in today’s Gospel. And it affects you and me as
well.
Despite what many people think, sin is not some childish prank
that God acts stern about but secretly finds rather amusing. To
the contrary, sin destroys God’s good creation. It destroys us.
Because of sin we grow old, and as our days increase our strength
fades away. Our minds become clouded and don’t work as they once
did, and in cases like advanced Alzheimers,
don’t seem to work at all. You’ve seen the wasting effects of our
fallen condition in your family and friends. You’ve seen it in
yourself. The inevitable decay that’s part of our life in a
fallen world isn’t because the universe hasn’t sufficiently
evolved. No, it’s a result of sin.
However, it’s not always been this way. The sin, decay, disease
and death with which we’re all too familiar had no place in God’s
original creation. Genesis 1:31 tells us that when God completed
His work of creation, He pronounced it
very good.
It all worked together the way God intended. No
sickness, no stubbed toes, no accidents, no death – because there
was no sin. Adam and Eve perfectly trusted God and delighted in
doing His will. It was all very good – Adam and Eve included.
I don’t need to go into the particulars of Adam’s fall into sin.
But I do want to emphasize that because of sin, disease and death
came into the world as tokens of God’s judgment. These things are
evidence that
all have
sinned and fall short of the glory of God. All of
us came into this fallen world separated from our Creator by the
sinful nature Adam passed down to us.
And so in today’s Gospel we meet a man grievously injured by sin,
unable to hear and unable to speak. It wasn’t merely that his
ears and mouth didn’t function. His whole being had been marred
by sin. Likewise, those who brought this poor man to Jesus had
been grievously injured by sin too – for they too experienced the
afflictions of body and soul, emotions and mind that sin leaves in
its wake. The same is true for Jesus’ disciples who were there to
see the miracle of healing and restoration Jesus was about to
perform.
But not our Lord Jesus Christ. As the Creator of all things He is
holy and righteous in all His ways. As the Second Person of the
Godhead become true Man, he is
completely free of the sin that troubles our fallen race.
Who of you can
convict Me of sin? Jesus
asked His enemies. As God in the flesh, Jesus was absolutely
without sin. If that weren’t the case He could not have saved us,
and we would still be in bondage to sin.
And so we have the encounter St. Mark describes in today’s
Gospel. The holy Creator meets one of His fallen sinful creatures
suffering under the afflictions sin had brought upon him. The
poor deaf, mute man finds himself gazing into the face of Jesus
and perhaps wondering, What in the
world is He going to do?
And what does Jesus do? Does He say,
Serves you right, sinner, for
disobeying God’s commandments? Does He turn aside from
the man as a hopeless case for whom nothing can be done – someone
who would be better off dead? Does He try to find a way to
encourage him, to tell him to be brave and don’t despair?
No. Instead Jesus makes him new. Jesus restores him – recreates
him, you might say. What the Triune God will one day do on a
large scale for the entirety of creation, Jesus does on a small
scale for this man who can’t hear and speak.
Behold, I make all things new!
the One who sits on the throne exclaims in the book of
Revelation. That’s what Jesus is doing for this man – making him
new.
So Jesus takes him aside, away from the crowd, and ministers to
him individually. The Creator who designed and made the ear
places His fingers into the man’s deaf ears in order to restore
them. The Creator who fashioned the mouth and tongue spits and
then touches the man’s mute tongue so it can work again. And then
Jesus sighs, looks up to heaven, and says to the man:
Ephphatha,
that is, Be opened. And
Mark tells us that his
ears were
opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.
His affliction and impairment were no more. Jesus had
taken them away. He could hear. He could talk.
This miracle of healing shows that Jesus is the One who came to
make all things new. He came to undo the disastrous consequences
of Adam’s sin, and to remake the creation that groans under the
curse of sin. I mentioned how this deaf and mute man had been
grievously injured by sin, and how his friends, and the disciples
had likewise been grievously injured. Indeed, all of us bear the
marks of this injury.
But there was one Person present there in the region of the
Decapolis
who hadn’t been injured by sin. And that was our Lord Jesus
Christ. Jesus, who was free of sin, repaired the sad consequences
of Adam’s sin for this deaf and speechless man. And He’s done the
same for us, by His death on the Cross and His resurrection on the
third day.
Jesus did it by taking the world’s sin to Himself, as though it
was His own sin, and being punished so He could bear the guilt of
sin away.
Surely, He has
borne our griefs and carried our
sorrows, the prophet Isaiah says.
He was wounded
for our transgressions; He was crushed for our iniquities; upon
Him was the punishment that brought us peace, and by His stripes
we are healed. The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.
To cure the symptoms, you’ve got to cure the disease. That’s what
our Lord Jesus Christ came to do – cure the disease of sin and
death and condemnation. But what a strange Physician this is! He
cures us, not by writing out a prescription and then forgetting
about us. No, He cures us by taking our disease on Himself. He
who is uninjured by sin of His own is wounded by our sin. St.
Paul writes that
He became sin
for us so that in Him we could become the righteousness of God.
He takes our sin away and makes it His own. He
takes our guilt away and makes it His own. He takes our death
away and makes it His own. He takes away the condemnation we each
deserve and makes it His own.
And then, having died for the sin of the world, He’s raised again
to prove that His sacrifice was acceptable, and that God has
reconciled the world to Himself by Jesus’ sufferings and death.
Jesus did all this to make us new creatures, children of God,
heirs of righteousness, through faith in His Name. He did it so
we could believe in Him and receive forgiveness and life eternal.
In your Baptism, the Holy Spirit came to you and your Savior said,
Be
opened, and gave you ears that hear God’s Word and
a new heart that believes the Gospel. You were made a new
creation in Holy Baptism, for the sake of Jesus’ holy, precious
blood that He shed on the Cross for your healing. He made you a
Confessor of His Name, for He is your only Savior from sin and
death and the condemnation of hell. And He promises that at His
return on the last day He will raise you up from your grave, and
will make your body anew. And you nevermore shall experience
weakness. You nevermore shall experience suffering and sorrow.
You nevermore shall experience death. The One who promises to
make all things new has forgiven you and will make you completely
new as well.
In the services of Matins and Vespers the Church sings,
O Lord, open my lips, and my
mouth will show forth your praise. That’s the way it
works. Through His Word Jesus opens our ears to hear and our
hearts to believe. And He opens our lips to show forth His
praise. Think about it. When Jesus enabled the man who was deaf
and speechless to hear and to speak plainly, I’m sure this man
didn’t waste his time talking about the economy and the winners
and losers of the chariot races in Caesarea Philippi.
Undoubtedly, he used his renewed gift of speech to praise the God
who in Jesus Christ had touched and healed him. That’s what the
crowd which heard this man speaking did. Mark says the crowd was
astonished beyond measure, saying, He has done all things well.
He even makes the deaf to hear and the mute speak.
Jesus does do all things well. And by His holy life, His death,
His resurrection, and His return in glory, He will make all things
new. Things shall again be what they were at the original
creation.
Very good.
No more sin, no more disease, no more suffering and
death. All things will once again be very good because of Jesus.
We too will share in this perfection. That’s why we ask the Lord
to open our lips so we can show forth His praise.
Out of thanksgiving to Jesus, and to praise
Him for His work of making all things
In Nomine Patris. . .
