Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
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How do we read and understand the accounts of miracles that Jesus performed in his ministry? In the seventies our synod experienced a crisis because forty-five of fifty professors at the St. Louis seminary were teaching that the miracles of the Bible did not actually happen as written. Of course, Jonah was not swallowed by a whale. And Jesus did not turn water into wine. That’s a metaphor for something else. Likewise, opening the ears of the deaf simply meant that Jesus had somehow opened their hearts or minds to the truth.
Thanks be to God, this devilish teaching was rejected by the faithful members of our synod, and we reaffirmed our confession that every Word of God is true. The miracles literally happened, just as they are recorded. Jesus did indeed change water into wine, raise the dead, and give sight and hearing to the blind and deaf. Every word in Mark, chapter 7, actually happened, just as it has been recorded. This shouldn’t be hard for Christians to accept. After all, God created the universe from nothing. Every other miracle seems minor in comparison with that.
Having accepted the literal, historical account we find that there is usually more to the story. There is something significant about this miracle where Jesus opens the ears of a deaf man. God had done many miracles in the Old Testament through the prophets, even raising the dead on two occasions. But he had never yet given sight to the blind or opened the ears of the deaf. These miracles were reserved for coming of the Messiah. Isaiah had prophesied about the signs that would herald the arrival of Christ, saying, “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see” (Is 29:18).
Jesus’ miracles also have a spiritual significance: Ears were made to hear the words of a book. Which book? The one that imparts the saving knowledge of Christ. That’s the most important reason God gave you ears: To hear the Scriptures. And the devil’s design, from Eden until now, has been to stop up your ears and steal away your salvation. To be clear, we’re not really talking about being physically deaf. You could have two ears that work perfectly well, and yet never have heard the Words of Jesus. And as we see with people that are physically deaf, if you can’t hear, then you can’t what? You can’t speak.
Your ears were made to hear the Word of God, and your mouth was made to confess it. If you can’t hear rightly, you can’t confess rightly. The Greek word for a right confession is “orthodox.” “Ortho” means “straight.” That’s why if you have crooked teeth you go to the orthodontist. “Dox” means “praise” or “confession.” I’m sure you’ve heard of the Doxology, a hymn of praise that confesses our faith in the Triune God. So to be “orthodox” means to have right praise or a right confession of God. The opposite of orthodox is heterodox, or heretical. We are, by the way, the true orthodox church, just not Eastern Orthodox, in the same way as we are the true catholic church, but not Roman Catholic.
When Jesus opened the man’s ears, he began to speak orthodoxly—that’s the Greek word Mark uses. Now perhaps you can see more of what Jesus is up to here. Yes, he wants the man to have physical ears that work. But Jesus is engaged in a spiritual battle. He came to earth to undo the works of Satan, including unstopping our spiritual ears.
There was an Aramaic word in the gospel reading today, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” Where does this word appear in our liturgy? Perhaps you remember: In the rite of Holy Baptism. Part of the orthodox teaching that we believe and confess is that we are born with ears that are unable to hear the words of Jesus. Yes, your physical ears could hear soundwaves, but you were born spiritually dead, that is, incapable of hearing or believing the life-saving message of Christ. You, just like this man, needed a miracle. That’s why when we baptize a baby, we say, “Ephphatha.” We recognize that Jesus is among us, opening the ears of the deaf once again. That’s what happens in every baptism.
If you think about it, there’s a bit of a Catch-22 when it comes to healing the deaf, because Jesus heals by speaking. He said to the blind man, “Receive your sight.” He said to the lame man, “Stand up and walk.” These people heard Jesus’ words and were healed. But what if you don’t have ears to hear his words? Then what? Not a problem for Jesus. He says to ears that can’t hear: “Be opened.” And they are. In fact, He says to dead people: “Live!” And they hear him and live. The words that Jesus speaks creating hearing. His words create faith. His words create new life in hearts where there was nothing but sin and unbelief.
And because the man could hear, he than began speaking rightly. Previously his speech was heterodox, that is crooked and confused, or heretical, altogether wrong. His confession about Christ and what he has done was all messed up. But after hearing the words of Jesus, he began to confess the faith rightly. It has been a great blessing for me, as your pastor, to witness this change of speech in many of your lives. More and more often in Bible study, someone will speak out and I will think, “Wow. That is an amazing statement of faith. That is an orthodox confession. This person has been hearing the words of Jesus. It’s a miracle.”
This is true for every Christian. God has and continues to perform this miracle in each one of our lives. Faith comes by hearing the Word of God. As we hear, so we believe. And as we believe, so we speak. The same principle applies to the liturgy and hymnody of the church. There is an old Latin phrase that expresses the relationship between the way we worship and the way we believe: Lex credendi lex orandi. The way of worship is the way of belief. It’s called the law of worship because it has been proven true so many times in the church’s history: When a congregation sings orthodox hymns full of rich meaning and scriptural truth, they come to believe and confess the true faith. On the other hand, when Lutherans sing shallow, sentimental hymns, they turn into shallow Christians with a confused confession of Christ.
Our Lord Jesus wants his church whole, with ears that hear the gospel, hearts that believe, and tongues that confess the saving truth. This is the purpose for which he came to earth, to break the bonds of Satan, to undo his works, to loose his captives, and to ransom with his own blood a people of believers. Perhaps this is why Jesus charged the man to tell no one of his healing. Miracles do have the potential or danger of distracting fallen human beings from what Jesus is all about, what he came to do. Ultimately, Jesus had not come to fix merely to fix our failing hearing and eyesight, or to give our broken bodies a few more years of earthly life. He had come to give us eternal life by his death on the cross.
Where are the ears that Jesus physically healed on that man two-thousand years ago? They are moldering in the grave. But all who hear and cling to the words of Jesus by faith will live forever, even though they die. Yes, “the hour is coming,” Jesus says, “when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and live.” This is a promise to you. On the Last Day, our Lord Jesus will say to your grave and that of every believer, “Be opened.” It won’t matter that graves don’t have ears. The opening of the deaf man’s ears is but a foretaste of the miracle that God has in store for his children. And then with rightly confessing tongues, we will praise and glorify God, saying, “Truly, he does all things well!” Amen.