St. Mark tells us today about an occasion on which Jesus healed a man who was deaf and head a speech impediment. Even today, we understand that hearing and speaking are related, and so it’s no surprise that the man had trouble with both. Nor is it a surprise that Jesus bothered to help the man, and that he healed him and restored him fully. It’s Jesus, after all, and he has compassion on those who are in need.
What lessons can we take from this miracle, what application for our life and faith in this day and age?
We can perhaps sympathize with the deaf man. We don’t know exactly when his deafness began (perhaps it was even from birth). But we do know that hearing is a valuable human sense and this man was without it. While many helps and accommodations have come in modern times to help the deaf, even a whole sign language, sadly none of these would have existed in Jesus’ day. The deaf man just had to make the best of his condition, such as it was.
Perhaps almost as bad, he had a speech impediment. Apparently he could speak some, or with some great difficulty. But it surely also served as a source of frustration and made it hard for him to communicate with those around him.
When Jesus takes him aside in order to heal him, Mark tells us that as part of it Jesus sighed. It’s kind of an unusual detail to mention. What did that sigh of Jesus mean? Martin Luther suggests that it was a sigh of Jesus’ reaction to the havoc sin and death cause in our world. Sort of similar to Jesus’ reaction at the tomb of Lazarus, where it says he was “deeply moved in spirit, and troubled”.
We can sympathize with the deaf man, even if we are not deaf. We can feel for him even if we don’t have a physical disability of our own. Because we, too, groan under the effects of sin and death in our lives. The details may be different, but the circumstances are the same. We are broken, and we are dying. Nothing in this fallen creation is exactly as it should be. Some things are entirely lost. Some things are not lost, but are ruined. And some things are a polluted or corrupted version of what they are meant to be.
Of course, there’s also the spiritual condition of deafness. Or that we might think of our sinful condition as being unable to hear, or listen, to God’s Word. Just as sometimes we speak of being spiritually blind, spiritually dead, and spiritually enemies of God. So, too, our fallen state makes us deaf to his word, and unable to either do what his law commands or believe what his Gospel promises. It is only with the intervention of Jesus, by his Spirit, that we are restored and made new. The Holy Spirit calls us by the Gospel, and that word that we couldn’t and wouldn’t hear, that word itself opens our deaf ears and closed hearts to hear and believe.
You see, the Word of God has such power. It doesn’t just say things, it does things!
Hebrews says, “For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword” Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life!” And of course we all know the performative power of God’s word even from the beginning, in the creation, when God spoke, “let there be…” And, of course, there was.
God’s word does what it promises to do. When the words of absolution are spoken, “I forgive you your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit”, then you know that your sins are forgiven. When God speaks such a word, even through the humble mouth of a pastor, reality is changed, sins are forgiven, and heaven itself is Ephphatha – opened – to us.
When Jesus died on the cross he spoke, he declared, “It is finished!” And so it was. Death was finished. Sin was finished. All the power of the Devil was undone. The divine verdict of condemnation on us was overturned as Christ himself served the sentence of death. And just as when a judge pronounces those words, “not guilty!” , so too with the Word of God it becomes a reality.
So Jesus says to the man, or rather, to his ears, “Ephphatha! Be opened” And those deaf ears simply must obey. They must hear, because the one who created them, created us, created all is speaking. And he will be heard.
This is how faith itself works, too. God speaks, and that Gospel creates the very faith that believes it. His word supplies all that is needed, even what is needed to believe that very word!
And then, let us not forget that Jesus also restored the man’s speech. As we said, speech and hearing go together. Even today we notice that hearing loss or a hearing problem can delay the development of speech. And if someone is deaf from birth, it is only with great difficulty that speech is learned.
But Jesus restores his speech fully. He doesn’t just set the man to zero, so that he can learn to talk again. Jesus doesn’t do things half-way like that. And so just as Adam was created whole, and had enough command of language that he could speak with God and even name the animals, so the deaf man’s tongue was loosened, set aright, and his speech restored to fullness.
Here, too, a spiritual application comes to mind. Just as we are unable to hear God’s word until faith comes, so also can we not confess that faith unless and until he enables us. But faith must speak. Faith must confess. The person who has heard the good news delights to tell the good news when given opportunity. And so do we.
We confess with the crowds who observed such miracles, that Jesus “has done all things well.” If they only knew the fullness of such a claim!
He opened the eyes of the blind
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;
He made the lame man leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the mute sing for joy.
He brings forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert
He brings life from death, righteousness from wickedness, and makes saints out of sinners. He brings down the mighty from their thrones and exalts the lowly.
He opens that which is closed – your ears to hear and believe – he opens heaven itself to receive your soul when you die – and he will open your grave in the final “Ephphatha” on the last day when he calls you to resurrection.
He has done all things well! So we have heard with our ears, so we confess with our mouths, even Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.
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