Sermon 090609 Mark 7:31-37
When I was in California for our family reunion had a great time playing with my Nephews. It ended up being a walk down, “memory lane” for me because the toys they were playing with were toys that my brothers and I played with growing up. My Nephew Gabe picked as his favorite, a toy that had been one of my all-time favorites as well. My James Bond car. It was a model of the car used in the movie Gold-finger and it was awesome. It had the revolving license plates, the rear bulletproof pop-up shield, the forward machine guns hidden behind the headlights, and best of all, the passenger ejection seat.
I was trying to explain James Bond to my nephew and found that there was indeed a generational gap. Try telling a kid who was born in the 21st century how awesome all of James Bond’s gadgets are. “In one movie he had a shoe that was actually a tape recorder, in another he had a transmitter hidden in a lint brush. He has watches that are actually two-way radios and all kinds of stuff like that.” Gabe just kind of looked at me blankly. He wasn’t amazed like I was. Because he lives in an era where people carry phones in their pockets, have GPS units in their cars, listen to iPods full of week’s worth of music, and I’ll bet he’s never used a record, or a rotary phone, or maybe even a cassette tape.
It’s not his fault that he wasn’t amazed. I think it’s pretty hard to find something to be amazed at these days. Technology seems to be forging ahead more and more rapidly, and it doesn’t stop to ask us how we feel about it. Two years ago, my dad had a number of surgeries that were the stuff of science-fiction novels just a couple of decades ago. Is there anything left to be truly amazed at!
The answer, we will find in our Gospel Lesson, is a decided YES. We have always had the ONE thing that is more amazing than any technology, or human achievement, or development. What is TRULY amazing in our lives is the Cross. It’s Jesus and his love for sinners. If we aren’t amazed and standing in awe of God’s grace. The problem isn’t with God, it’s with us. My prayer for us today is simply that God would remind us of all that he has done for us, and how amazing his grace is in our lives.
God is amazing. He does amazing things. Before we even get into our Gospel lesson, I want us to go back to our Old Testament reading (Isaiah 35:4-7a), so we can get a sense of how striking the promises of God are. The prophet Isaiah relates the word of God to the Israelites – a group of people who were and would be suffering persecution, and living under constant threat and oppression as they were exiled in a foreign nation. They had a deep and profound sense of hopelessness. And then Isaiah raises his voice with these promises of God:
4 Say to those who have an anxious heart,
“Be strong; fear not!
Behold, your God
will come with vengeance,
with the recompense of God.
He will come and save you.”
5 Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
6 then shall the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
For waters break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;
7 the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water;
Amazing promises. Bold expectations from God. But true. God did free his people from their oppression and give them a reason to rejoice, and open their mouths, and leap like a deer. He set them free. But these words of rejoicing in hopeless times carry with them meaning that goes beyond the ancient people of Israel. They point to an even greater freedom from oppression that God has in store for all who call on him. They are words meant for our eyes and ears and hearts as well. The ultimate fulfillment of these verses would be rooted in the coming Messiah, in Jesus Christ.
In our Gospel lesson, we find Jesus and the disciples on the move by the Sea of Galilee in a region that was filled with mostly non-Jewish people. And even in this area, where people don’t exactly know all the details there are to know about Jesus, they know that Jesus is powerful, and that he can do miracles. So a group of people, “brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him.” And that is exactly what Jesus does. But what I find intriguing is HOW Jesus went about doing this miracle, he took this guy “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.”
Jesus wants this guy to understand something important. He takes the guy away from the crowd, so we know Jesus isn’t doing this to get attention. And then, I love this, Jesus essentially talks to the guy using a sort of sign language. He lets him know that he is going to cure his deaf ears by placing his fingers into his ears. He lets the man know he is going to loosen his tongue by drawing attention to his own mouth my spitting, and then touching the mute man’s tongue. And then he looks up to heaven to let this guy know where the power to cure these hopeless ailments is coming from. Jesus looks to heaven and sighs deeply, showing the man where his focus and gratitude should be.
And then with a word, this man’s life totally changes. Ephphatha - “And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly” (verse 35). The man was disabled, Jesus cured him, and the man begins to speak plainly, and even goes on to speak boldly about what Jesus had done for him, so do lots of other people. We read in verse 37 - And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” How many of us would be happy to stop reading here? This is a great story about Jesus
There’s just one thing. We know that there is something that comes between verses 35 and 37. Namely verse 36, which really, would make this passage much easier if is wasn’t in there: And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. Why is it that Jesus tells them to keep quiet about this healing? Why did he do it privately away from the eyes of the public? Why would he tell them more and more, not to talk about this incredible miracle that he performed? The answer is right there in the reading. You go ahead and re-read verse 37 and you tell me what the people were astonished beyond measure at, and what it was that they kept talking about. What was it? Right! The fact that Jesus can make the deaf hear and the mute speak. The only question is, are these two miracles the things that Jesus wants the people to focus on, or is there something even greater? Is there something more significant? Is there something more to the ministry of Jesus than even these amazing physical healings?
Let’s go back to the Old Testament reading for a second. Isaiah speaks about the great rejoicing that goes on because the people will be returned to their homeland, to Jerusalem, once again. And this is not small miracle! It is a total reversal of fortune for them. They who were slaves in a foreign land are now FREE in their HOMELAND! It’s like the Blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame leaping, the mute singing, the desert getting flooded, the burning sand turning into a swimming pool. But the people returning to their homeland isn’t the biggest miracle going on here? God sees something else as being the most significant thing to celebrate. Not lost people returning to their homeland, but rather lost hearts returning to their God. Sick souls healed with the balm of grace and forgiveness.
Later in Chapter 35 we read these powerful words of the Lord: “But only the redeemed will walk there, and ransomed of the Lord will return. They will enter Zion with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.” The point is that the main reason for celebration isn’t just that the people are going back to Jerusalem. God could have brought that about by uttering one word. No, the real celebration centers on the fact that these people had turned away from God, but now are reconciled to him. They were once condemned, but now they are the “redeemed,” the are those who have been “ransomed,” from their sin and given the, “everlasting joy” of the crown of God’s grace. The feet dancing into the city were only a sign of hearts that had been healed, souls that had been saved, of amazing gracing having done it’s hard work in people’s lives.
And we can say the same thing is going on with Jesus and the man who was deaf and had a hard time speaking. Jesus is literally fulfilling the promises God made all the way back in Isaiah: “He will come and save you.” “… the ears of the deaf unstopped… and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” It is an incredible miracle, but Jesus didn’t come to simply make people physically better, he came to offer something more. You see, the people in Isaiah’s time would return to Israel, but they would turn from God and be oppressed again. It wouldn’t last. This man who was healed of his speech problems and his deaf ears would talk and hear. But one day his body would degenerate again, and he would have problems again, and eventually die.
The most amazing thing that God came to do was to offer this guy forgiveness, life, and salvation through the blood that he would shed on the cross. Amazing because it is a gift that no one could take from him, that has no limits placed on it, it is a gift that will last for all times. God comes to offer sinners, who have no business even thinking about being in God’s kingdom, the blessing of eternal life in heaven with him. It’s the most amazing thing that God has ever done. It the most amazing gift that you have or ever will receive.
But sometimes we don’t treat this gift like we should. Sometimes it’s because it is so easy to focus on the other things that we want God to do. How often do we start our prayers with, “God Please…” (help me get this job, heal me from this disease, help my spouse, work a miracle in my life…). These are all great prayers, but what are we focusing on? What God can do for me, how He can help in my earthly life, what my needs are that He can meet. Like I said, it’s good to lift up all kinds of concerns and requests to God, he wants us to do that.
But here’s the challenge, how often do our prayers reflect (to use Mark’s phrase) our “astonishment beyond measure?” How we talk to God is helpful with this. This week try starting off your prayers by saying, “God you are Awesome, God you have done so much for me, God you saved a wretch like me, God THANK YOU!” or something like that. I think you will find that you are reminded of the biggest blessing in your life, that God loves you, and dies for you, and rises for you, and will call you his child for all eternity. Now that IS amazing!
Sometimes our appreciation of God grows cool because of how much we focus on what is going on all around us. We run to share good news of the birth of a child or grandchild, or an engagement, or a great win by our favorite team. I remember awhile back when Boise State beat Oklahoma in the 2007 Fiesta Bowl in overtime using a series of trick plays, I went nuts. I was on the phone with a buddy of mine screaming into the phone I was so happy that the underdog won. I don’t often pick up that same phone and call a friend and shout, “God saved a wretch like me, God is awesome!” But maybe I should.
You see, you and I were the ultimate underdogs when it came to the race to get into heaven. We had no chance. We were dead in our transgressions and sins. Destined to be cast into hell, to be forever separated from God, to be punished for our sins for all eternity. It’s not like we didn’t have much of a chance, we were hopeless. We were to be the objects of God’s scorn and wrath, and rightfully so. But God did the unthinkable. He sent his very own Son into this world. He was born sinless, and lived a sinless life. But at just the right time, he made a trade that forever changed you and me. He took all of our sin upon himself, and took his perfect life and placed it on us. And then he died a horrible and shameful death. He paid for all of your sins, and my sins and gave us the Life, the Eternity we had lost.
This Brothers and Sisters is the real miracle in your life. There is nothing else that even comes close. I know we forget. I know we think about other things. But we need to be reminded over and over again what is most important. We need to be come to the cross again and again to rediscover the pure joy of knowing we have a God who forgives us and loves us in spite of our lack of gratitude, and amazement, and spiritual near-sightedness.
This is why it’s so important that we feed on the Word, that we fill up on the Sacraments, that we talk to God, and that we share our joy in the Lord with one another. My prayer is that God would say to us through his means of grace, “Ephphatha,” and open our ears to hear the message of his great love for us, and open our mouths to plainly and zealously proclaim it. Because there is nothing more significant in our lives or for us to point to with our lives.
I helped put the toys away before I left to come home and I smiled as I thought about how my nephew and I shared a love of that James Bond car. One day, he’ll outgrow it just like I did and it won’t amaze him anymore. I thank God that we never outgrow him, and that he never wearies of us, even in those time when our hearts don’t burn like they should. My prayer for him, for me, for all of you is found the first two verses of our Psalm for the day (Psalm 146). That in God’s grace our lives would be a testimony to these words: Praise the Lord! Praise the Lord, O my soul! I will praise the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.
AMEN
