And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak (St. Mark 7:37).
Of what are you most afraid? What possibility or person or thing fills you with bone-chilling dread—with that paralyzing fear that causes you to sweat even though you’re not moving? I have always feared heights, but I’m sure everyone here has a terror that we struggle to tame. When I was 19 years old, and a bright-eyed seaman in the Navy, I tried to explain this fear to my first chief petty officer who had minutes earlier ordered me to climb the tall mast of an Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate whilst we were tossing about on the open seas. Needless to say, he vigorously expressed his lack of concern over my fear and suggested it was in my best interest to get up that mast as fast as I was humanly able. Convinced by his profanity laced reasoning, I climbed up the mast. It would be very easy for me to find a banal and comforting lesson from this story. Something about how great I am because I overcame my fear, and that you can be great too if you just overcome your fears. I can’t tell you how many modern sermons I have heard which basically repeat this message; you probably have heard it too. It is here that a sermon, meant to be a convicting proclamation of the work of God which reminds us that we are all part of an eternal drama that is infinitely bigger than the problems and concerns that plague our minds and sap our spirits, it is here that a sermon can quickly become the lexical equivalent of a Tony Robbins’ coal walk. The good news is that I am not here to motivate you because motivation, particularly in the shallow way that word is too often used, is merely manipulation through which the speaker cleverly takes advantage of your guilt or shame or fear and causes you to do something he wants you to do: buy my book, be a better you, be more like me. One can almost hear them whispering, “loser,” through their perfect smiles.
The great danger here is that we can convince ourselves that all we need to do is try a little harder, and we can be like these “perfect people,” these modern white-washed tombs, but as we struggle and strive to be like some fictional character on a stage or screen, we completely miss the glory and power and majesty of the perfect Savior of the World. We misdiagnose our disease, for our problem is not about sanding down the edges of a pretty good human being; it’s not about finding the right alchemy for balancing work and family, and it’s not about hypnotizing ourselves into believing we can “have it all.” The human capacity for self-delusion is only perhaps matched by our capacity for self-destruction, and we need radical help. Please do not look to me or any other preacher for motivational magic spells. Sure, I climbed that mast, but I hated every minute of it. I still fear heights, just in that instance, I feared the threats of my chief more. That lingering fear is a sign of a greater need than just being more awesome or integrating some vague spiritual superstition into my hectic life. My fear is a sign that my deficiencies must be healed by one truly greater than myself, not someone pretending to be greater than I or someone I have convinced myself is greater than I, but the real and living God who heals with the power of creation and recreation, birth and rebirth, life and resurrection.
Today’s gospel reading from St. Mark’s account puts us in the middle of three important exhibitions of Jesus’ divine power. These miracles show that the king of creation has entered the world in the perfect humanity and divinity of the God/man Christ. With every healing and exorcism and feeding, Jesus graciously permits those around him a foretaste of the new, redeemed world He will bring into reality. A striking feature of these particular occurrences is their location; Christ is purposefully traveling in Gentile lands. That may, at first glance, not seem to be very important or controversial, but we must remember that Jesus is constantly confounding the messianic expectations of everyone around Him. The Jewish hope for restoration of the Davidic dynasty had nothing to do with the new king going around and cavorting with the enemy, and the Gentiles were the enemy. The Jews had been conquered over and over and over again by the brutal and vicious armies of the Gentiles. The last Davidic king had been captured by Gentiles and blinded as his sons were murdered in front of him to ensure that this horror would be the last thing he ever saw. Even as Jesus is traveling through Gentile lands, the armies of Rome occupy Jerusalem and rule it with an iron fist. Very reasonably, the 1st century Jew saw himself in a historic struggle against the heathens who murdered and raped and stole the promised land from him. Quite obviously, Jesus is engaged in a different conflict.
St. Mark writes, “And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him” (St. Mark 7:32). Jesus’ has come to save the world. As St. Paul tells us:
For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, ‘The righteous shall live by faith’ (Romans 1:16).
The righteousness of God is revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and that is first made known to the Jewish people who will then take that good news to the Gentiles; however, there are some important aberrations in the life and ministry of Christ that help point toward the future full inclusion of the Gentiles in the covenant. Why does Jesus act here in the land of the Gentiles? As in other passages, Jesus is moved by the love of the deaf man’s friends. The text says that they “begged” Jesus to help, and it is this selfless, sacrificial love that convinces Jesus to intervene. Sacrificial love for another is the Christian definition of true love. Jesus hears the voice of His people on their lips. Further, Christ’s entire incarnational rescue mission is an act of humble, self-sacrificing love. As St. Paul tells the Philippian church:
Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:4-11).
From humility comes glory: the glory that Jesus Christ exuded when He rose from the grave, the glory we will show forth when we follow Him in our own resurrection, and the glory shown in the healing of this poor deaf man: a foretaste of a future world without disability or pain. The love of this man’s friends, revealed in their courage and humility, leads to his healing and a showcasing of God’s merciful power.
St. Mark continues:
And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly (St. Mark 7:33-35).
What part of this healing was accomplished by the deaf man? Is there any aspect of this miracle that we could attribute to his innate goodness or his acceptable tribe or his ideological leanings? No such evidence is provided, for it is Jesus who is doing battle with the forces of evil that have struck this man deaf. Some would say that they don’t believe in miracles because they don’t believe God would ever intervene in the natural world, but Christ shows that there is nothing natural about physical disabilities. There is nothing natural about being deaf or being blind; there is nothing natural about autism or Trisomy 13; there is nothing natural about cancer or diabetes. Christ has come to abolish these unnatural afflictions that beset a good creation. He is the great physician who will cure all of our deformities: including the decay and death that attacks us all. Amazingly, we find that it isn’t the disabled who are somehow specially afflicted by the world or somehow targeted by an angry god, but in fact, there is no such thing as “normal” in a fallen world: we are all under the judgment of disease and death that can only be cured by making peace with God; it can only be cured by ending the mad rebellion of humanity. Sin and disease are intimately related. It is for this reason that our Lord says in chapter 2,
Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Rise, take up your bed and walk’? But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins’—he said to the paralytic— ‘I say to you, rise, pick up your bed, and go home.” And he rose and immediately picked up his bed and went out before them all, so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, ‘We never saw anything like this!’ (St. Mark 2:9-12)
Without the forgiveness of sins, only possible through the sacrifice made on our behalf by Jesus Christ, we are doomed, but we can take great comfort from the God who looks at this deaf man, an enemy two times over (both as a Gentile and as a sinner), and has compassion on him, sighs, and says, “Be opened.” Not to impress a crowd or to increase his popularity or to receive a financial contribution, no, only to help His poor creature—maimed by sin and evil. That should fill us with great comfort, for we worship a God who has pity on us even in our lowest point, and we can be sure that he will heal us from even the greatest affliction, namely, death.
Let us remember that God is the one who heals and that our most grievous injuries are no match for His loving compassion. The Christian prays for the healing of his physical pains, but he should most fervently pray for holiness, for the purging of evil from his heart, so that he can live as one whose eyes and ears have truly been opened. It is then that the fear in our lives can be banished forever as we finally see and hear and believe the good news. We can be like this deaf man who lived in silence and fear until one day his ears were opened, and he could hear his powerful savior’s voice. Let us pray for that kind of healing whenever we bow our heads; let us pray for that kind of healing today.