Mark 7:31-37;
Rally Day; September 26, 2012;
Trinity
Evangelical Lutheran Church, Creston, IA;
31Then he returned
from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the
region of the Decapolis. 32And they brought to him a man who was
deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. 33And
taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears,
and after spitting touched his tongue. 34And looking up to heaven, [Jesus]
sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” 35And his ears were opened,
his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. 36And Jesus charged
them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they
proclaimed it. 37And they were astonished beyond measure, saying,
“He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”
Mark 7:31-37 (ESV)
Grace and peace
to you from Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
Did you hear
that little word about Jesus? You know
the one that shows his compassion, his care, his love, his humanity? And looking up to heaven, [Jesus] sighed… Jesus signed. It’s such a tiny point right in very middle
of the text, and yet very important.
Jesus signed. The Greek word is “στενάζω.” And it means just that, to sigh or
groan. You understand from the text what
it means. Standing before Jesus was this
deaf man. He couldn’t speak correctly
because of his hearing. It is an out in
the open showing of the effects of sin on the world. That is, not what a particular sin has done,
but exactly what the curse of sin on the world is. You know all about this, you know it every
time you run into a situation that make you say, “This is not the way that
things should be.” You’ve given this
very same sigh. You’ve had standing in
front of you out-in-the-open things that are not the way they should be. Your child, suffering from a scraped knee,
crying for you to do something to make the pain stop. Your spouse, breathing the last shallow
breaths as death claims them. Late night
in the ER hoping against hope that the accident was not fatal, that there is
something the doctors can do. Sitting in
the nursing home, disappointed that your loved one doesn’t recognize you again
today. This is the sigh of Jesus. This man has been affected by sin. He can’t hear. He can’t speak clearly. His friends beg Jesus to do something to make
it stop.
St. Paul describes the sigh to us saying in his letter to the Romans
that creation was subject to “futility.”
That is bound to the sin of its most important creature. God created the world for people. They were bound to it as a perfect place to
live and work and grow and multiply. He
put the first people in a beautiful garden called “Eden.” They had everything they could ever
want. And yet, they desired the one
thing God told them they could not have.
So they took the fruit from that tree and ate it and subjected
themselves, and you and me, and indeed the whole creation to “futility.” That is, death and decay, and pain and
sorrow. They were given the garden as a
place where work would be rewarding and pleasant. I’m sure the first sighs were heard when the
first thorns appeared. Thorns and hard
work are a part of the curse that the first couple brought to the land. Adam and Eve lived some 900 years. Imagine all they saw, imagine the depth of
their signs as the perfect world they knew began a steady spiral into “futility.” Imagine the sigh as they discovered the body
of Abel, their son, murdered by his own brother. Imagine their sighs as their “many other sons
and daughters” spread across the world taking with them the rebellion against
God that they started.
And all these years later, generations and generations we’ve suffered
and sighed. Although Adam and Eve began
it all they are not solely to blame. Cain
killed Abel in a fit of jealousy. The
monstrous, selfish nature of sin was revealed very clearly with Abel’s blood
soaking it to the earth. Every person
since Adam and Eve has the same capacity for that kind of evil. Sin is a selfish turning into oneself,
holding yourself as more important that all else; believing that you are the
final judge of right and wrong. This is
the only real gift we give to our children.
It is the only real gift we received from our parents. It spoils our world. Generation after generation the perfect
creation is subject to our sin. Generation
after generation our bodies and minds are subject to our own selfishness. Death and disease and suffering, thorns and thistles
and hard work, cancer and pneumonia and gout, droughts and tornados and floods,
the “futility” of the curse is right at hand for us to see. And we sigh.
But don’t blame Adam. Don’t blame
Eve. Look at your own heart and see what
you know is there. Sin crouches in
you. You want what you want, and you
want it now. You put yourself above all
else, even those you love most dearly.
When you see all of this, the dangerous world around us, the blackness
of sin in our hearts that’s when the sigh reaches is apex. That’s because there is nothing to be
done. No human struggle can end the “futility.” You can’t prevent death, even if the cancer
subsides. It is the curse of the
Garden. We know it well, and we sigh.
But, into this sin filled futility steps Jesus. I said no human effort can do anything, but
Jesus is more than human. That’s what he show us. That’s what we hear in his Word, Ephphatha.
Ephphatha, does what it says. Jesus
makes signs to the deaf man. He pokes
his ears and spits on the ground. “I’m
going to open your ears!” He looks up to
heaven, from whence he came and sighs. It’s
a prayer. “Father, This is why You sent
me. They have done this to
themselves. But I am about to set everything
on the path to redemption.” He says to
the man, “Be opened! Ephphatha!” It
works. The deaf man hears and speaks
clearly. The “futility” of his ears is
reset. He sings praises to God, praises
to Jesus, God in human flesh standing in front of him. That’s when we know our sigh has an answer
not in our effort but in Jesus.
But there is more that Jesus
has to do. That formally deaf man is
dead. In fact, Adam and Eve are dead,
too, and all their children, grand children, great grand children all the way
to you and me. That wasn’t the only
person Jesus healed. And yet they are
all dead too. The futility goes
deeper. Death is the enemy. Death is the final result. If we sigh about anything we sigh most deeply
over death. We know that it is not the
way things should be. What does Jesus
sigh, what does Jesus healing, what does Jesus have to do with death? That is the whole question of life on
earth. What about death? If Jesus did nothing more that open a deaf
man’s ears, and a few other miracles, the futility remains. And our sighs have no answer, and we may as
well go home.
That is not all that Jesus
did. All his miracles and teaching in
fact, point to another greater, futility ending, sigh answering miracle. It is also what Jesus’ sigh is about. Way back in the Garden under the first signs
of sin, God answered the sigh of Adam and Eve with a promise. Humans subjected the world to futility that
cannot be undone by humans. God promises
he is the one, who would himself, answer for their sin. He would pay the penalty, the just sentence,
the forever punishment that would make everything right again. He would make a new creation, like the first,
that was perfect without sin’s corruption.
God is in Jesus Christ, reconciling the world to himself (2 Corinthians
5:19). That is, removing the futility. Jesus is God born in human flesh. Man and God bound together in a way that only
God can understand and accomplish. He is
fully, completely human subject to all that humans are subject to, with one
exception. Jesus is without sin. He is who Adam should have been. He is who you and I should be. He lives and speaks and heals and feeds. But he also dies. He subjects himself to that futility for
us. He allowed his enemies to hang him
on a cross. This sinless, perfect,
God-man suffers a humiliating, brutal execution (born out of the sinful corrupt
human heart!). He hangs naked, beaten,
bleeding out on the ground, stretched out toward heaven. And guess what, he sighs…
And when the sixth hour had come, there was darkness over
the whole land until the ninth hour. And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a
loud voice, “Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?” which means, “My God, my God, why
have you forsaken me?” And some of the bystanders hearing it said, “Behold, he
is calling Elijah.” And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it
on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, “Wait, let us see whether Elijah
will come to take him down.” And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his
last. (Mark 15:33-37 ESV)
There he hangs in futility, rejected by God. There he hangs suffering what is ours to
suffer. There he hangs and sighs out his
last breath.
And again, if this is all that Jesus does we may as well go home and
weep for him, and sigh again for ourselves.
There is more. The life that
Jesus gives up is the life that he once again takes up. In a way that only God can do and understand,
three days after he was laid in his grave, Jesus lives again. This is no wives tale, no vain hope
either. There is ample, tangible proof
that it happened. Jesus sighed out his
breath on the cross and breathed it in again in the grave. He makes the futility of death empty. His death reconciles human sin with God, that
is pays the punishment. The answer to
our sighs is in his death and resurrection.
It is the answer to the promise in the Garden. The answer to the deaf man’s friends. The answer to Jesus sigh. It is a promise to us. Death is coming but Jesus can and will breathe
life into you again. You will live in a
perfect, newly created body in a new creation, a perfect creation, a creation
where there will be no sighs saying “that’s not the way things should be.” Again I direct your attention to the
Font. In ages past the word Ephphatha was used in the Rite of Holy
Baptism. It emphasizes that through the
work of God in this washing, deaf, dead, sinful, futile ears are opened and
hear the promises of God. Jesus word
does what is says. The promise in the
Garden, the promise of the Cross and resurrection is made personal here. The sigh is answered for those who have had
their ears opened, have heard and hold on to Christ in faith. In light of the promise made by God in
the resurrection St. Paul sighs for us:
For the creation was subjected to futility, not
willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation
itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom
of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has
been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the
creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan
inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.
For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who
hopes for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it
with patience. (Romans 8:20-25 ESV)
Amen.
The peace of God
that passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
