Trinity 12
Mk
7:31-37
9/8/19
I think that many of you are aware that when Amy had surgery to
remove her brain tumor, she lost all hearing in her left ear. The type of tumor Amy had is known as an
acoustic neuroma. In this case, the
tumor grows off the acoustic nerve that carries the sound data to the brain. It was her rapidly diminishing hearing in
that ear that caused her to go to the doctor in the first place and led to the
discovery of the tumor. In Amy’s case,
there was no possible way to remove the tumor without also removing and
destroying the acoustic nerve. And so since the surgery, she is completely deaf
in her left ear.
Naturally, this has required some adjustments. I have learned
that I must always walk on Amy’s right side if I want to be able to have a
conversation with her. When we go to one
of the kids’ sports events, I have to make sure I sit on her right side,
otherwise there is really no way to comment to her about what is
happening. And of course, the adjustments
for Amy have been even greater as she gets used to being deaf in that ear. One
of the more interesting ones is that she still experiences a sort of ringing on
that side of her head, as her brain seeks out the signal from the acoustic
nerve that is no longer there.
In the midst of this, Amy has discovered one real benefit from
being deaf in that ear. She reports that
I snore when I sleep – something which I certainly contest because I have never
heard it. But Amy says that since the surgery this is no longer a problem for
her at all. She just turns her head,
puts her right ear down on the pillow, and with the deaf ear on the other side
she hears absolutely nothing. Problem
solved.
Humor aside, Amy’s experience has made me think more about
people who are completely deaf. And we encounter just such a situation in our
Gospel lesson this morning. Mark tells
us that Jesus had been north of Galilee in area of Tyre and Sidon. There he had just healed the daughter of the
Syrophoenician woman who had demonstrated such great faith in Jesus as she
implored that the Lord to help her daughter.
Now Mark tells us that “he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon
to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis.” Jesus went to an area that bordered the
southeast side of the Sea of Galilee. We learn that “they brought to him a
man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him
to lay his hand on him.”
This man was
deaf. From our text we also learn that
he had some kind of speech issue. The
man could not hear what others had to say.
And he could not communicate effectively with others. These were tragic circumstances in which he
lived.
We aren’t told who
brought the man, but obviously they cared for him. They had also heard about
Jesus and believed he could help. And so they begged Jesus to lay his hand
on the man – they begged Jesus to touch him.
Jesus’ touch – the
laying on of his hand – is something that is mentioned repeatedly in Mark’s
Gospel. In the first chapter Jesus’
touches a leper with his hand and cleanses him.
Jairus comes to Jesus and begs him to lay his hand on his little
daughter so that she will be healed. In
the next chapter people bring a blind man to Jesus and ask the Lord to touch
him. In fact we learn that at different
times people pressed in on Jesus trying
to touch him because those who did received healing.
This physical, tactile
aspect of Jesus’ ministry should catch our attention. Jesus Christ is the Son of God – the Second
Person of the Holy Trinity. As the Son,
he is eternal. He always has been one
God with the Father and the Spirit, and always will be. But in the incarnation he entered into our
world as he took on our human nature and lived a physical, bodily
existence. St. Paul told the Colossians
about Christ: “For in him the whole fullness of deity
dwells bodily.”
As true God and true man the Lord brought his saving power to
others through touch. In our text we
learn that he took the man aside by himself.
Jesus put his
fingers into the man’s ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. Then looking
up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” which
means, “Be opened.” Then, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. People were completely astonished by the
miracle and said, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and
the mute speak.”
The Son of God entered
into our world to bring us salvation.
But he did so as part of a very
specific history. He did so as the
fulfillment of very specific promises that God had made to and through Israel.
Several factors in our text leave no doubt that we are to understand
this action by Jesus as a fulfillment of these words written by the prophet
Isaiah:
“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.”
Jesus Christ was the
presence of God’s end time salvation. He
came to bring the kingdom of God – the reign of God – that addresses the
problem of sin in every possible way. In
his healing ministry, the Lord was reversing what sin has done. In our text, before healing the man Jesus
looked up to heaven and sighed or groaned.
He did so because he stood in the presence of what was not meant to be – he was encountering
something that was not very
good. He was standing before one way
that sin had brought suffering into this world.
But Jesus Christ was
here bodily in this world to do something about it. He showed this in his healing ministry
through his touch. But all of Jesus’
healing miracles pointed forward to the one great healing miracle he had come
to work through his own body.
In chapter ten Jesus
says to his apostles, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of
Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they
will condemn him to death and deliver him over to the Gentiles. And
they will mock him and spit on him, and flog him and kill him.
And after three days he will rise.”
And then in the same chapter he says, “For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve,
and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus Christ had come to
provide the answer to sin by means of his body.
He came to address the problem of every sin – every way that you place
God second in your life; every way that you hurt others with your words and
actions. He came to be nailed to a cross
– nails driven through the hands that had healed others. He came to give his life as the ransom for
you – as the sacrifice that covers your every sin. He came to win forgiveness for you before God.
And then, through his body, Jesus Christ began the renewal and restoration
that encompasses every believer, and even creation itself. Dead and buried in a tomb, just as Jesus had
said, on the third day God raised up Jesus’ body. Jesus Christ had no sin, yet his body was one
that could suffer and die as he received God’s judgment against our sin. But now in his resurrection, his body is one
that has been transformed so that it can
never die again. And in that body
the Jesus who is still true God and true man, ascended into heaven as the
exalted Lord.
Our Lord who has won this
victory still has compassion on us. And
he is still using his body to give us forgiveness, healing and salvation. He will do it in just a few moments here in
the Divine Service. In the Sacrament of
the Altar, Jesus Christ uses bread and wine to be bodily present with us. He gives us his true body and blood as he
continues to provide his healing touch.
He places his body and blood into our mouth to give us the forgiveness
of sins. He touches us in this way to strengthen us in faith as he gives us
food for the new man.
Jesus Christ touches us with
his body through the Sacrament of the Altar.
In doing so he gives us forgiveness and the assurance of healing. Jesus Christ’s bodily resurrection is the
beginning of our complete and total healing.
His bodily resurrection is the first fruits of our own resurrection.
During the last two years our
congregation has experienced many serious health problems – most of them due to
cancer. When we or our fellow Christian
are afflicted with something like this, we pray that God will work through the
doctors and medicine to provide healing.
And we have indeed experienced remarkable answers to those prayers –
answers that we earnestly desire. This
past week Charlotte Dollar’s scan results showed yet again that her lung cancer
is stagnant, and so the Lord continues to bless us with more days with
her. After drastic surgery for cancer
Anne Simmons, is once again here with us on Sunday in the Divine Service. We
pray for these things and give thanks and praise to God when he grants them.
But no matter how much we
pray, until Jesus Christ returns, every one of us will die. The timing may not be what we want or expect,
but the outcome will always be the same.
We will die. But because of Jesus Christ’s resurrection we know that
death cannot hold us, and it cannot hold our body.
It cannot hold us because to
die is to be with the Lord. The
eternal life we have in Christ cannot be ended by death. Death is impotent in
the face of the life Christ has already given to you. You have been baptized into Christ. You have been born again of water and he
Spirit. Death cannot separate you from life in Christ.
And death cannot hold your
body because Jesus Chris has risen from the dead. His bodily resurrection is the first fruits
of our own resurrection. In the
Sacrament, the risen and exalted Lord gives his true body and blood into your body. The early Church described the Sacrament as
the “medicine of immortality.” It is the
guarantee that your body too will be raised and transformed on the Last Day.
In the Sanctus, we sing
“Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord” because we are preparing for
our Lord to come to us in body and blood in the Sacrament. But each coming in the Sacrament points
forward to his coming on the Last Day. Each celebration of the Sacrament is a
foretaste of the feast to come.
For the Lord will come again. He will come, no longer hidden under bread
and wine, but he will return in glory and might. He will return, and he will
give us the full and complete healing that will never end. He will make our bodies to be like his
glorious resurrected body. For as St. Paul told the Philippians, “we await a Savior, the Lord Jesus
Christ,
who will transform our lowly body to be like his
glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all
things to himself.” On that day things
will be very good once again, because of Jesus who has done all things well.
No comments:
Post a Comment