Sermon Manuscript:
If you have ever traveled to a foreign country, then you’ve
probably noticed how widespread the English language is. Signs usually have
their message written in the indigenous language, but right below it, the message
will have been translated into English. So if you go to far away places like
Asia or Africa, you should still be able to make your way around, at least
somewhat, because you know English.
The reason why English is so prominent across the globe is
because of the power of the British empire in the 1800s and the power of the
American empire of the 1900s and up to today. This acceptance of the langue of
the most powerful nation is something that has happened for a long time.
English is just the latest fad. Before English being the universal language it
was French. Before French it was Latin. Before Latin it was Greek. Which brings
us to the New Testament times.
Last week I mentioned how Alexander the Great conquered the
known world a few hundred years before Christ was born. Alexander the Great was
Greek. The rulers who ruled after he died were Greek. They spoke and wrote in
the Greek language. At Jesus’s time, therefore, Greek was to them what English
is to many people today. Jesus and his disciples did not speak Greek as their
first language. They spoke a language called Aramaic. But Greek was the
dominant language throughout that region of the world. When the apostles and
evangelists wrote the Gospels and the letters to the churches that we know of
as the epistles, they wrote in the Greek language. This made it possible for
many more people to read the Gospels than if they had written in Aramaic, which
was not known as widely as Greek.
There are a few instances, though, where the original
Aramaic that was spoken was preserved in the Gospels. The most well known message
is what Jesus spoke from the cross: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” “My
God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus was quoting the words of Psalm 22
from the Old Testament. The rawness of these words stuck fast in the minds of
the disciples who heard them.
There are two other instances where Jesus’s literal words in
Aramaic have been preserved without being translated into Greek, as it was with
all the other sayings of Jesus that our Gospels record. There was one time
where a girl fell sick and died. Jesus told the people who were mourning her
death that she was not dead, but sleeping. They all laughed at him with a
vicious angry laughter, but Jesus had them all escorted out of the house. Then
Jesus took the hand of the girl and said, “Talitha, koum!” which means,
“Little girl, I say to you, arise!” And she did.
The third instance where Jesus’s words in Aramaic have been
written into the Gospels is in our Gospel reading today. There was a deaf man who,
perhaps because of his deafness, also had a speech impediment. Jesus put his
fingers into his ears, spat, and touched his tongue. Then he looked up to
heaven, groaned, and said, “Ephphatha,” which means, “Be opened.” The
man’s ears were opened, his tongue was released from its fetters and he spoke
rightly.
So with these three instances of the Aramaic words being
preserved we have extraordinary things going on. The Christ, the anointed, the
beloved of his Father asking why God had forsaken him on the cross is striking
and memorable. The words by which he raised a little girl from the dead so that
she was returned to her grieving parents is also extraordinary. Compared to
these other instances, what happened in our Gospel reading for today might not
seem as noteworthy. While I can understand why someone might think that way, I
think that you might have a greater appreciation for the significance of this
healing if you yourself became deaf and/or mute.
Since I’ve been a pastor I’ve had a few parishioners who
have been stricken by deafness or by powerful speech impediments. This has been
an extremely bitter experience for all of them. Unfortunately, the proverb
holds true for us sinners: “We don’t know a good thing until it is gone.” If
only our eyes could be opened up to the tremendous kindnesses that God pours
down us every waking day. Then nobody would be able to stop us from singing
God’s praises. Unfortunately, as it is, it is only when something has been
taken away from us that we realize how good it was in the first place.
So why is the loss of hearing or speech such a hard thing?
The answer is that it is incredibly isolating. Someone who is deaf cannot hear
what someone wants to say to them. Perhaps if they knew sign language and the
other person knew sign language, then it wouldn’t be quite so bad, but the
people I’ve known have been struck with deafness in old age—too old to learn a
new language. Then the only option is communicating by mouth reading, by
gestures, or by writing stuff back and forth. This, however, is a chore for
both parties involved. Therefore, people don’t go to the trouble of getting a
message across unless it be of some importance. Otherwise the person is left
there in silence and loneliness—even if there be people around them.
Having a speech impediment is also terribly inconvenient and
isolating. When the message gets garbled to the point where the hearer cannot
understand it, the speaker is forced to repeat it, and then repeat it again.
The hearer, meanwhile, is focusing hard and using their imagination. They guess
at the message by one sound or the other that they think that they heard.
Sometimes it is so bad that both parties just have to give up. The message
cannot be gotten across. Again, the mute person is left alone, shut in on
themselves.
Surely the word that Jesus chose to speak to this deaf and
essentially mute man was no accident. “Ephphatha” means “be opened.” And
that is exactly what the gift of hearing and speech was able to do for this
man. He was no longer forced to be only in his own world. He could speak his
mind and make it known. He could hear others and respond.
The way Jesus speaks is even part of how we speak about
communication. If we “open up” to someone it means that we feel comfortable
enough to let them in on what we keep hidden from those we do not trust. The
closeness of a relationship is often determined by the openness that exists
between them. Hopefully God has blessed you with relationships like this where
you can be open and honest, free and easy. Having relationships like this is
one of the finest pleasures that God gives.
But it is not just with our fellow human beings that we are
able to have such a relationship. When Jesus healed this man’s deafness and
speech impediment, it wasn’t just so that he could pass his time with this
friends and family in a more agreeable way. Jesus’s words of “be opened up,”
also applied to this man’s relationship with God and Jesus his Savior.
Hearing and speaking are important with God too. In days of
old God spoke to his people through his prophets. Now in these last days he
speaks to us through his Son. In our epistle reading Paul speaks about how we
are called and brought to faith by hearing: “Faith comes from hearing the
message, and the message comes through the word of Christ.” “How
beautiful are the feet of those who bring the good news of peace, who preach
the Gospel of good things.” It is vitally important that you hear God speak
to you through his Scriptures, through preaching that is based on those
Scriptures, through his Sacraments.
What happens to relationships where there isn’t constant
communication? The closeness goes away. The openness towards one another gets
less. So it happens also to those who do not hear God’s speaking to them. It is
my hope that you think of God’s Word more often than one day a week. One day a
week isn’t often enough. But what about those, then, who let weeks and months
go by? Their heart grows cold. They are busy with other things, shut up by
themselves in their own lives, their own thoughts, their own plans, hopes, and
ambitions.
When God speaks to us, it is to let us in on who he is, what
he has done, what he is doing, and what he is going to do in the future and at
the end of the world. You cannot know who God is, namely, that he is the
Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever, without God
telling you in his Word. You cannot know what God has done for you, redeeming
you in the cross of Christ, sanctifying you by his Holy Spirit, without hearing
God tell you. You cannot know what is good and bad, honorable and dishonorable,
pleasing to God and displeasing to God, without hearing God tell you what the
good life is. You cannot know what will happen when you die, or when Christ
comes back in glory, without hearing it from him.
And when God speaks to us he is very friendly. He says, “Ephphatha,”
“be opened.” Be opened to our Father who art in heaven. Do not be left off by
yourself, beating your chest, not daring to lift your eyes into heaven, shut up
in your own guilt and fear. The nature of our God is such that he became man in
the womb of the Virgin Mary for no other purpose than for saving us, so that we
may regard his Father as our dear Father and regard ourselves as his dear
children. The closeness and openness between God and you is something that God
wants you to believe in. He tells you of it being for you in his Word.
There is also a healing of the tongue, spiritually, that is
ours in Jesus Christ. We are to use God’s name for help in every trouble and to
pray, praise, and give thanks. The highest ambition that a person can possibly
have is to pray, praise, and give thanks. If only we could do this properly, we
would be the way that God had originally made us to be before sin wrecked us.
This is also what is destined for those who go to heaven. What God’s Word says
to us about the life of the world to come is that God’s saints are busy
praising him. Their eyes have been opened to the goodness of God that we have
such a hard time seeing in this world with the cataracts of our sin-filled
eyes.
With both our hearing and our speaking you can see how we
are “opened up” towards God. This is a highly important matter, closely related
to our faith. I think you probably know by experience how easy it is for this
openness toward God to be damaged and lost. When we have a bad conscience it is
very difficult to hear God speaking to us. We are afraid to hear him speak. It
is also nearly impossible to pray in an honest way.
It is important, therefore, that we fight against all the
lies with the truth of God’s salvation. Jesus’s blood cleanses us from all sin.
The only reason why we should be afraid to hear God speak or that we should
speak to him in response is that we’ve been taken in by lies. The truth is that
Jesus has come to open us up, and he does all things well. He makes the deaf
hear and the mute speak.
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