Trinity 12
Mk
7:31-37
8/23/26
The Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod
has a long history of high expectations for the men who are going to serve as
pastors in her congregations. The founders of the LCMS arrived in Perry County,
Missouri. And the first thing they did was to build a log cabin and start
teaching Greek and Hebrew there in order to train future pastors.
If you are going to be a pastor in
our church, you are going to have to learn Greek and Hebrew. Sometimes this is
done in college before going to seminary such as with James Peterson or in my
own experience. Often the languages are learned in summer Greek or Hebrew, and
in an intensive class during the school year such as was the case with Josh
Schiff and Joe Musolino. Sometimes it’s
a combination of these such as Chris Atlee who learned Greek at college, but
did Hebrew at the seminary.
When learning to read Greek or
Hebrew there is one thing that every student dreads: the hapax legomena. This
is a Greek phrase that means “being spoken once.” It is a term that is used to
describe a word that occurs only once in the entire Bible. These are the
hardest words to know – the ones you often have to look up – because you never
see them.
Not surprisingly, the next worst
thing for the same reason is a word that only occurs twice. It turns out that
we have one of those in our Gospel lesson today. It is the word translated as “had a speech
impediment.” It only occurs twice in all of the New Testament and the Greek
translation of the Old Testament known as the Septuagint. This unique word in
these two places in Scripture leads us to recognize that Jesus is the
fulfillment of God’s promised end time salvation.
In our Gospel lesson this morning we
learn that Jesus had been in the area north of Galilee along the coast of the
Mediterranean Sea. He had been in the
region of Tyre and Sidon – an area that had historically been pagan. Now he had returned to the Sea of Galilee and
was in the area on its east side – a region known as the Decapolis. This name
is Greek for “ten cities,” and these were cities that had been founded under
very strong Greek influence.
The Lord Jesus engaged in a ministry
of teaching and healing. In the previous chapter we learn about how when he had
sailed across the Sea of Galilee the people immediately recognized him and
ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on
their beds to wherever they heard he was.
Mark tells us, “And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or
countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that
they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as
touched it were made well.”
Jesus had arrived in this region of
the Decapolis and so once again people brought individuals in need of help to
our Lord. 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. The man is described as being deaf and having difficulty speaking. We
don’t know the exact relationship between these two physical issues, but being
deaf and having difficulty communicating was obviously a great hardship in this
man’s life.
We note that the people had a
specific request. They begged Jesus to lay his hands on the man. They
asked Jesus to touch him. Jesus’ touch brought healing during his ministry. It
did for the leper who knelt before Jesus and asked to be made clean. People
wanted to touch Jesus in order to be healed. And they came and asked Jesus to
touch those in need. Jairus had approached the Lord and said, “My little
daughter is at the point of death. Come and lay your hands on her, so that
she may be made well and live.”
In our text they asked Jesus to lay
his hands on the man. The Lord did this … and more. Mark tells us that Jesus
took the man aside from the crowd privately. Then he put his fingers into man’s
ears. After spitting he touched his tongue. Looking up to heaven, he
sighed and said in Aramaic “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” The man’s
ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he began to speak plainly.
Jesus charged them to tell no
one. We’ll talk about that in a moment. However, the more he told them not to
do so, the more they proclaimed what he had done. Mark tells us, “And they were astonished
beyond measure, saying, ‘He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf
hear and the mute speak.’”
The crowd marveled because the deaf
man heard, and the one who had been mute spoke. These concluding words point us
back to the description of the man that Mark had used: he was deaf and had a
speech impediment. As I mentioned earlier, the latter is the translation of a
very rare Greek word – a word that only occurs twice. It is found here in the New Testament and it is
also found in Isaiah chapter 35 in the Greek translation of the Old Testament –
the text that was essentially the Bible of the Greek speaking Church of the
first century A.D.
In the previous chapter Isaiah had
spoken about the judgment of destruction on the nations. But in chapter 35 he
speaks encouragement to Judah as he says, “They shall see the glory of the
Lord, the majesty of our God. 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 described God’s end time
salvation that would arrive. The Hebrew word for “mute” in this text was
translated into Greek using the exact same word that is rendered “speech
impediment” in our Gospel lesson. The only place it occurs is our text and Isaiah
35. And so we are being told that Jesus’ healing miracles are a fulfillment of
Isaiah’s words. We learn that Jesus himself is the presence of God’s end time
salvation.
Jesus heals the man. But then he
does something that seems strange. We learn that our Lord charged them to
tell no one about what he had done. In
fact we get the picture that he engaged in an ongoing effort to get them to
stop, but to no avail. Why doesn’t Jesus want people to hear about the miracle
that he had done and the manner in which he had helped the man? Isn’t this good news about Jesus that
everyone should learn?
The answer is to be found in the
nature of the ministry Jesus was here to carry out. Our Lord announced that he was the presence
of God’s reign that was coming into the world. He began his ministry by saying
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent and
believe in the gospel.” Jesus’ miracles like the one in our text today were the
demonstration of this fact. It was the reign of God overcoming the ways that
sin has harmed life in this world.
But the miracles were easily
misunderstood. They made people think about victory, glory, and greatness. And
Jesus had not come to be that kind of Christ. He didn’t want people to be
spreading a message about him that was misleading. Instead, he wanted to define the ministry on
his own terms. For Jesus had come to bring victory by going through the
cross.
In the next chapter at Caesarea Philippi Jesus
will ask the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They will reply with
answers that identify Jesus as some kind of prophetic figure: John the Baptist,
Elijah, or one of the prophets. Then he will ask them: “But who do you say that
I am?” Peter will answer, “You are the Christ.” Immediately after
this Mark says, “And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer
many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the
scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again.”
Jesus was the presence of God’s end
time salvation described by Isaiah. But his great action to free us from sin
did not take place through things that looked like victory, glory, and
greatness. Instead, it occurred through his suffering and death on the cross.
There Christ received the judgment against your sin. There he won forgiveness
for you.
In our text Jesus touches the man as
he gives healing. As Johann Gerhard
commented, this action shows us that for the incarnate Son of God the assumed
flesh is a life-giving flesh and an instrument of salvation. Jesus’ body was
nailed to the cross as the means by which God has saved us from all sin.
On Good Friday the dead body of
Christ was taken down from the cross and buried. But God’s saving reign was
present in Jesus to free us from death itself. God raised Jesus from the dead
with a body transformed so that it can never die again. Now as the risen Lord
he is the first fruits of our own resurrection.
In our text Jesus gives the man ears
that hear and a tongue that speaks. Now through his Spirit he has done this to
you. He has given you ears that hear the
Gospel in faith, and a tongue that confesses Jesus as Lord. When he preached on
this text Martin Luther commented, “Only these two organs make a difference
between Christians and unbelievers, because a Christian speaks and listens
differently and has a tongue which praises God’s grace and preaches that the
Lord Christ is the only Savior.”
The Spirit did this through the
Word. Paul told the Romans, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing
through the word of Christ.” He did it through the water and the Word of
baptism by which the Spirit works new life. He continues to strengthen you in
faith for the Word he inspired is the Word through which the Spirit is still at
work. It is through his Word that he enables you to believe, confess, and be
saved. As Paul told the Romans,
“if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in
your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with
the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and
is saved.”
In our text Jesus touches the man as he brings God’s end time salvation described by Isaiah. This salvation has arrived by Christ’s death and resurrection. It is now. And it will reach its consummation when the Lord Jesus returns in glory to raise and transform our bodies to be like his own. As 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.”
The Lord Jesus continues to touch us
as he brings the end time salvation described by Isaiah. He will do so in the
Sacrament of the Altar this morning. In our text Jesus touches the man’s
tongue. He will touch your tongue with his true body and blood. He will do so
with the promise, “given and shed for you for the forgiveness of sins.” It is
his body given into death on the cross and his blood shed on the cross – the
very price he paid for your forgiveness and salvation. He gives it to you –
into your mouth – so that there can be no doubt that it is forgiveness and
salvation for you.
The Sacrament is for those who have
been baptized into Christ. It is for those who believe in Jesus and confess
that he is Lord. It is for those who
believe that his word does what it says – that he gives his true body and blood
to eat and to drink. And even as it is received in faith, it is the gift that
strengthens faith. It is food for the
new man by which we are sustained in faith so that we can go forth and live in
Christ.
The Sacrament is the miraculous
touch of Christ. And just as Jesus’ touch in our Gospel lesson brought bodily
healing to the man, so also Jesus’ touch in the Sacrament provides the
guarantee that we will receive the full and complete healing of our bodies. In
the Sacrament we receive the body and blood of the risen Lord. Christ gives us this gift with the promise
that that bodies which receive it will be raised on the Last Day. Jesus said, “Truly,
truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink
his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks
my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
In our Gospel lesson Jesus touches
the man’s ears and tongue as he provides healing. This action demonstrates that
Jesus is the presence of God’s reign which brings his end time salvation. By
his death on the cross and resurrection from the dead Jesus has rescued us from
sin and death. Sustained in faith by his Word and Sacraments we eagerly look
for his return in glory on the Last Day. For on that day the words of Isaiah
will be fulfilled completely in the resurrection: “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.”
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