Trinity 12
Mk
7:31-37
8/23/15
“Keep your hands to yourself.” It is an instruction; a command; even a plea
that parents and teachers say all of the time.
I think it has even been said in the Surburg house. It’s a basic reality that when children and
youth put their hands on one another it often devolves into problems. When things start to get physical they get
carried away, people get hurt, and there are tears, yelling and angry words.
“Look, but don’t touch.” This too is an instruction; a command; even a
plea that parents use all the time. We
use it when we are in stores, or when we are visiting another person’s
home. It certainly has been said by
parents whose children have come down to the basement to see my model
railroad. It acknowledges the fact that
children inherently want to reach out and touch things. They want to pick them
up and hold them. They don’t just want to see something. They want to touch it.
In the Gospel lesson this morning,
Jesus is not content just to speak. When
people bring to him a man in need of healing he touches the man. In this miracle we see that Jesus is God in
the flesh who brings salvation that is the complete answer to sin. He is the
One who still touches us in order to give us forgiveness and life.
In our Gospel lesson this morning we
find that Jesus has been in pagan territory north of Israel. In the area of Tyre and Sidon he had cast out
a demon from the daughter of a Gentile Syrophoenician woman. Now he had headed
east into the area of the Decapolis.
Decapolis is simply Greek for “ten cities” and this name described the
fact that the area was noted for the Greek cities that had been founded there.
It is not as if there were no Jews here, but it certainly was an area that was
more Gentile than Jewish.
Mark tells us, “And they brought to
him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay
his hand on him.” We don’t learn
anything about who these people were. We
know that the reports about Jesus had spread throughout Palestine. Clearly they had heard of Jesus’
miracles. We don’t even really learn
anything about their attitude towards Jesus.
Did they come in faith, believing in Jesus? Or did they come because they had heard that
this guy does miracles, and maybe he can help?
We aren’t told.
We can, however, say two things for
sure. First, they cared about this deaf man who had difficulty speaking. When they heard that Jesus was in the area
and so there was the possibility of help, they brought the man to Jesus. And second, they did the right thing. They brought the man to Jesus.
Both of these give us pause as we
think about ourselves. First, are we
people who care about others and seek to help?
Are there times when we pretend not to notice because helping may
require effort and cost on our part? Is
it merely a convenient excuse when we tell ourselves that we “just mind our own
business?”
And at the same time, do we see
Jesus as the answer? This goes for us
and the concerns in our own lives. Do we
see in Jesus the source of comfort and assurance that we need for every
situation? Is he the One we trust in the
midst of the circumstances that come our way?
And then also, do we see Jesus as
the answer for others? Do we see him as the answer to sin in their
life, and so seek to bring them to Jesus?
Do we see Jesus as the answer to the hurt they are experiencing?
The man’s friends brought him to
Jesus. We learn that he was deaf and had
some kind of speech issue. We don’t know if this was caused by the deafness
itself or whether it had some other source.
What Jesus did was to take the man aside, away from the crowd. Mark tells us, “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 touched the man. Our Lord put his fingers into the man’s ears. He touched the man’s tongue. Jesus’ touch is something that Mark’s Gospel
emphasizes. On several different
occasions Mark describes how Jesus touches a person as part of his ministry.
Jesus is the God who can touch us.
He is God here in our world. He is God
in the flesh. He is God in the flesh because of what sin has done to us. In our text Jesus looks up to heaven and then
our translation says that he “sighed.” It can also be translated as “groaned.”
Jesus stands in the presence of what sin has done and he sighs; he groans.
We cannot understand Jesus’
miraculous healing ministry unless we grasp that all illness is caused by sin.
Sin is the root cause of all that is wrong in the world. Illness points towards death, and sin is the
cause of death. Jesus sighs because he
stands in the presence of what sin has done, and it is not very good. It is not what God intended when he made his
creation.
Jesus is the Son of God there in the
flesh because of this fact. He is there because he brings the kingdom of
God – the reign of God – that is reversing all of this. He is freeing people and creation itself from
Satan, sin, and death.
In fact the very act of healing the
deaf man who can’t speak demonstrates this.
Mark describes the manner in which the man has difficulty speaking using
a very rare word. It occurs only twice
in the whole of the New Testament and the Greek translation of the Old
Testament that was used by the early church.
The
only other time it occurs is in Isaiah chapter 35 where the prophet writes: “Strengthen
the weak hands, and make firm the feeble knees. 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.’ Then the eyes of the
blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame
man leap like a deer, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” Isaiah describes the end-time salvation that
God will bring. Jesus’ act of healing
the deaf man who can’t speak shows that he is the presence of this
salvation. In him God’s saving reign has
arrived.
Jesus
was the presence of God’s saving reign as he went all the way to the
cross. There he provided the answer for
sin by being punished in your place.
Jesus says in this Gospel, “The Son of Man came not to be served, but to
serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” As Paul told the Romans, “By sending his own
Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the
flesh.”
God
condemned sin as Jesus bore the consequences of sin for us and died. But then
on the third God the Father raised Jesus up.
He began the resurrection of the Last Day. Because of Jesus, the ultimate and complete
reversal of all that sin has done to us has begun. It may be that in time the illness with which
you are afflicted causes death. But that
death cannot end your life – the life you have in and with Christ. And it cannot change the fact that because of
Christ you will enjoy the triumph over that illness and all of the other ways
sin has brought hardship into your life. For on the Last Day Jesus Christ will
return in glory and give you a share in his resurrection as he transforms your
body to be like his.
The
saving reign of God was certainly present as Jesus healed the man and gave him
the ability to hear and speak. Jesus
reversed the ways that sin had warped this man’s existence and made him whole.
But before our text is done, things take an odd turn. Mark tells us, “And Jesus charged them to
tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed
it.”
Jesus
orders the people not to tell others about the miracle. Now this seems weird. Doesn’t Jesus know anything about
evangelism? What’s the deal? Actually it’s not the first time Jesus has
done this in Mark’s Gospel. And like the
other occasions, the people don’t listen
to him. They do things their way.
Jesus
commands the people not to tell others about the miracle because he wants to define his ministry. As we are learning in Bible class, Jews at
the time of Jesus had a variety of idea about what the Messiah would be
like. But one thing that tied them all
together was the notion of power, victory and success. Jesus hadn’t come to do things that way
because it was not the Father’s will. He
had come to walk the way of service and suffering. He had come to walk a way that first led to
the cross, and then led out of the
tomb.
Jesus
touched the man in our text and brought the reign of God to him. He has done the same thing for you. He touched you with water on your head in
Holy Baptism as he made you a forgiven child of God. Through this touch you shared in his saving
death. Through this touch you received
the saving reign of God. And now, he
calls you to do things in his way. He
calls you to serve and help your neighbor, just as he served you. This way of service doesn’t make sense to the
world. It is only when we view life
through Christ’s loving service that the foolish extravagance of love and
service towards others becomes clear.
This
understanding of life is not something that comes naturally. Quite the opposite. Earlier in this chapter Jesus had described
what comes naturally. He said, “What
comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of
man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness.”
Because
this sin is still there as the old man battles against the new man Christ has
created in us through baptism, we need support.
And so Jesus touches us yet again.
The One in whom all the fullness of God was bodily present gives us his
true body and blood in the Sacrament of the Altar. Through this touch he gives you
forgiveness for it is his body and blood given and shed for you. And through his touch he strengthensyou in faith
so that you can live life in the Jesus way.
We can trust him to do this because after all, he is the One who has
done all things well. He even makes the
deaf hear and the mute speak.
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