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Trinity Twelve Sermon O, Lord, Open My Lips September 3, 2006 St. Mark 7:31-37 In the Matins and the Vespers liturgies we begin by praying the words of the psalm, “Oh Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth your praise.” Unless God enables us to speak, we cannot sing His praises. This is brought home in the Gospel account of the deaf mute to whom Jesus spoke His almighty and creative word: “Ephphatha! – Be opened.” As soon as Jesus commanded his ears to be opened they were opened. He could hear clearly and he could speak plainly. Christ’s miracles
recorded for us in the Gospels are called signs.
They signify who Jesus is. Jesus
reveals Himself by both word and deed.
Jesus claims to be God and Jesus shows Himself to be God.
During an argument with His opponents from among the Jewish
leaders, Jesus said, “I am who I am.”
He made a direct claim to be the LORD God of Israel who appeared
to Moses at the burning bush, delivered Israel from bondage, and led
them to the Promised Land. Jesus also signified that He was true God by the signs that
He did. Jesus’ miracles
were unique. By changing
water into wine, by creating thousands of loaves of bread, by stilling a
storm, and by raising the dead Jesus did what only God could do.
And He did so by His own power.
Read through the Gospels and you will not find Jesus praying to
the Father for the ability to do what He does.
On the contrary, He acts on the authority that He has had from
eternity. He is the
eternally begotten Son of the Father, God of God, light of light, very
God of very God. Christ’s
miracles show this. He
shows Himself to be the Creator and sustainer and Lord over all
creation. They brought a deaf mute to
Jesus, begging Him to put His hand on him.
Jesus did not do so. Instead,
He took him aside, away from the crowd and used simple
sign language to tell the man what He was going to do.
Jesus put His fingers in the man’s ears to tell him that
He would open his ears so he could hear.
Then, Jesus spat and touched the man’s tongue to tell him that
He would open his mouth so he could speak.
Then Jesus looked to heaven and sighed to tell him that He had
heavenly, that is, divine power. Then
Jesus spoke. He did not heal the man by putting His hands on the man.
He healed the man by speaking.
In the beginning God said “let there be” and there was.
Jesus said, “Be opened!” and it was so.
Moses records in Genesis 1:31, “Then God saw everything that He
had made, and indeed it was very good.”
The crowd that witnessed Jesus’ miracle said the same thing.
“He has done all things well.
He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” (Mark
7:37) The divine Savior, promised of old, had come into the world.
Hundreds of years earlier, the prophet Isaiah described what the
crowd witnessed that day: “Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf
shall be unstopped. Then
the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing.”
(Isaiah 35, 5-6) Deaf mutes are mute because they
cannot hear. Another word
for mute is dumb. The word
dumb is often used to mean stupid, but deaf people are just as smart as
hearing people. The biggest difference between deaf people and hearing people
is that deaf people cannot hear. Since
they cannot hear, they cannot speak clearly.
They cannot hear their own voices.
We learn how to speak by hearing others and imitating them.
But they cannot hear. We take for granted the ability
to hear. When you cannot
hear what others are saying, you never know just what is going on.
You may have a general idea, but you cannot be sure.
Information is power in just about every area of life.
Lacking the information that hearing provides puts you at a great
disadvantage when it comes to interacting with other people.
Whether it is buying something, selling something, getting a job,
or just carrying on a conversation, when you cannot hear what others are
saying you cannot be sure that you aren’t being cheated or deceived.
You see a world that you cannot enter.
You live in a world you will never really understand.
You live a life of silence. And if you
think you have something important to tell others it doesn’t matter
because you can’t do it. And
so they think you have nothing to say. It was to such a man that Jesus
came. He came to serve
those on the outside looking in. He
came into this world specifically to open that man’s ears and to
loosen that man’s tongue. The
man could not hear the word of God. There
was no ministry to the deaf in those days, with pastors or interpreters
there to translate what was spoken into sign language.
He could not hear the word of God.
Thank God for the sense of hearing that we may hear of His love
for us and His grace for sinners! The
man could not speak. Thank
God for the ability to confess the truth God has revealed to us!
We have no right to hear anything at all if we will not listen to
God’s word. We have no
right to say anything at all if we will not glorify God.
Until God opens our ears we
cannot hear His word. Until
God loosens our tongue we cannot pray to Him or worship Him.
In the Catechism we confess: “I believe that I cannot by my own
reason or strength believe in Jesus Christ, my Lord, or come to Him, but
the Holy Ghost has called me by the gospel.”
Jesus sends His Holy Spirit to us in the gospel and sacraments.
Because of the Holy Spirit, baptism is not just water, but a
washing of rebirth and renewal. Because
of the Holy Spirit, the preaching of the gospel creates faith. We live under grace alone.
I cannot hear anything of value to me spiritually unless God
Himself chooses to say it to me and God speaks to me only through His
Son. His Son speaks to me
only in His gospel and sacraments.
They bring to me the voice of the Holy Spirit, the Lord and giver
of life. He gives me life as He opens my ears to hear His saving
truth. He alone enables me
to confess that saving truth. Apart
from this gracious work of the Holy Spirit whom Jesus both promised and
sent, I remain deaf and I remain mute. In today’s Epistle Lesson St.
Paul contrasts the ministry of condemnation with the ministry of
righteousness. The ministry of condemnation is the letter.
The ministry of righteousness is the Spirit.
The letter kills. It judges, condemns, and kills.
It is the law. It
shows us our sin and gives us no way out.
It reveals what is wrong with us and chases us down to condemn us
for it. The letter kills. But the Spirit gives life.
He preaches the gospel to us.
When the letter of the law has shown us our sin, the Holy Spirit
speaks the gospel word to us. The
gospel does not tell us what we must do to make ourselves acceptable to
God. It requires nothing of
us at all. It is pure gift. It tells us that our sins are washed away by the blood of the
Lamb. It pronounces us to
be righteous, covered with the very righteousness of Jesus Christ. It is by means of this gospel word that our ears are opened
and our tongues are loosed. We
can praise God clearly and faithfully. Unless the Holy Spirit keeps on
talking to us about Jesus’ obedience all the way to the cross as He
fulfilled the law for us and suffered our punishment in our place, we
will stop looking to Jesus. We
will look somewhere else, anywhere else, but not to Jesus.
By nature we think that we can praise God on our own terms.
We can choose the holy signs God will perform. We can choose the holy words God will speak.
We can define and describe God according to our own fancy and God
will just have to go along with whatever religion we devise.
This is what we in our native spiritual arrogance actually think!
Just look at all the man-made religions surrounding us that do
precisely that! It is only
when the Holy Spirit drowns us and kills us in Holy Baptism so that we
die to ourselves and our carnal notions about God, that we can rise from
death to a new life lived under the shelter of the cross.
Only the Holy Spirit can persuade us that Christ’s suffering
for us is our true glory, for there is it that God takes off of us every
sin that besets us. There
is it that the God in the flesh fulfilled His divine compassion toward
the blind, the lame, the lepers, the deaf and others suffering from
physical disabilities. There He fully destroyed the cause of all physical suffering
and death. Jesus swallowed
up our death and utterly destroyed it when He drank to the dregs the
full divine vengeance against our every sin.
Absolution is more than mere words.
It is the almighty word of God.
Whenever Jesus speaks forgiveness to us it is always the
forgiveness that He purchased by His own blood.
This makes it certain. There
is no doubt that Christ’s absolution is valid.
It is sealed by His precious blood.
The devil’s head was crushed on the cross.
The devil accuses us. Christ’s
absolution silences his accusation.
It penetrates our hearts. It
changes our lives. It opens
our lips so that we can declare God’s praise. Imagine what the future of that
deaf mute would have been had Jesus not traveled through the region of
Decapolis on that particular day, had Jesus not touched the man’s ears
and tongue and said the almighty word, “Ephphatha”?
He would have remained deaf and mute.
This is a simple lesson, but a vital one to learn.
The hearing of faith comes only from the word of Christ.
The confession of faith comes only from the word of Christ.
This is why we treasure Christ’s words and this is why we seek
them out. To say that we need the word of
Christ is to say that we need the Holy Spirit.
To say that we need the Holy Spirit is to say that we need the
word of Christ. The Holy
Spirit does not fly blindly. He
sees only Christ. He shows
you Christ. Anything that
purports to be from the Holy Spirit yet directs you away from the
suffering and death of Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins is not
from the Holy Spirit at all. St.
John warns us of false spirits that would direct us away from Christ in
the flesh. There’s
something very ordinary looking about Jesus putting his fingers in a
man’s ear, spitting, and tonguing the man’s tongue.
This doesn’t look very divine, does it?
But then we aren’t the ones to decide that, are we?
It is God who chooses how to help us.
We don’t decide that for him.
He condescends to deal with us where He finds us in ways that we
can receive Him. If God
were to come to us without covering His glory in humble signs, we would
have to run away from Him. But
He became a little baby placed in a manger.
He became a man who suffered and died on a cross.
Today He joins Himself to water, to bread and wine, to the
speaking of a weak and fallible minister.
That water becomes the washing of rebirth to eternal life.
That bread and wine become the body and blood of Jesus given and
shed for the forgiveness of our sins.
The words from the minister are Christ’s own almighty words
that replace deafness with hearing and open our mute mouths to sing
praises to God. “O Lord,
open Thou my lips. And my
mouth shall show forth Thy praise.” Rev. Rolf D. Preus |