The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity 14
August, Anno Domini 2016
St. Mark 7:31-37
Pr. Kurt Ulmer
In the Name of the Father, and of the +Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Sometimes the simplest and clearest truths are the ones that we struggle against the hardest. Selfishness brings loneliness. Children need mommies AND daddies. Pornography hurts people. In the Gospel appointed for today, Jesus demonstrates a very important reality that we have to always be mindful of – faith, speaking rightly, comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of Christ. The man’s speech was impeded because he couldn’t hear what rightly ordered speech sounds like. He was forced to try to figure it out on his own which left him making sounds no one could understand. If we are to speak rightly, we must first listen. That should seem pretty self-evident. After all, don’t children have to first hear the words of grown ups before they are able to start speaking them on their own? Don’t they have to be taught how to put the letters and words and sentences together? It’s funny listening to children as they are trying figure out language. They put words together that are completely unrelated. And usually there isn’t any real consequence other than a frustrated toddler who can’t express himself in such a way that people can understand his deep philosophical thoughts on how tractors work.
It’s really no different for us as children of our heavenly Father. We aren’t born knowing the language of heaven. The truth doesn’t come naturally to us. We have to learn it. Someone must teach it to us. This is what preaching and teaching is all about – teaching the language and grammar of the true Christian faith so that we may rightly confess who God is, who we are, and what God has done for us in Christ. Parents and heads of the house, this is your single greatest responsibility for those under your charge – teaching them to speak rightly according to the Word of God. And this speaking has life and death consequences – eternal life and death. God wants us to rightly confess our sin so that we may rightly believe and
confess our salvation. That is why God speaks. He speaks so that we may hear and by hearing be saved. Apart from God speaking so that we can hear we would be lost eternally.
But the things of God are foolishness to the natural man because it is the Spirit who discerns them, the Spirit given by water and and by Word. Ears stopped up by sin and greed produce only tongues that speak falsehood, that cannot speak rightly, orthodoxly as the Greek puts it, about God. Indeed, such tongues only curse God and speak falsely of Him, give Him false names, attribute to Him false works, and give His glory to others. Our ears must be first opened by the Word of Jesus so that we may hear His voice and His voice alone as truth. Then, and only then, having our ears opened by the command of Christ “Ephphathah!”, receiving the Holy Spirit in the waters of Holy Baptism, we may finally hear the voice of the Good Shepherd and speak rightly of Him.
Consider how we find it not only ridiculous but also arrogant and foolish when children claim to be the sole possessors of all wisdom, when they are too busy running their mouths about everything they think they know to listen to the truth. And what frustrates us even more as parents and other authorities is when we do speak we, who have lived life and learned more, are dismissed as fools. It’s completely backwards. And that is the world we live in. A world where those who should be listening are speaking foolishness and those who should be speaking wisdom are listening to and applauding the foolishness as wisdom.
We are born knowing the language of selfishness and desire. We are born wanting to talk about “me” and what I want. We are born knowing Satan’s language filled with words of pride and arrogance, gloating, and self-preservation. Our ears are filled with the perverted and deceiving words of our demonic father and the foolish wisdom of his world. That isn’t the language of God. That is the language of death and pain and misery. And that is the language that our sinful flesh finds comfortable and natural and satisfying. And when that is what we are listening to, when that is what we fill our ears with then our speech will be impeded and we will be filled with
false beliefs and false speaking. We will be filled with either despair because we know of nothing that will save us or arrogance because we don’t believe we need saving. Like petulant children we so often presume as though God needs to hear us speak, as though we are master’s of the Word which needs to submit itself to our reason and judgment. We often refuse to listen because we imagine that we no longer need to hear it. Repent.
God must speak if we are to be saved and that is exactly what He does. He provided the preaching of the prophets and the apostles. He caused that preaching to be written down for us in Holy Scripture. He continues to provide for the preaching and teaching of His Word – so that we might hear Him and by hearing believe and by believing confess in our hearts and with our lips that the God of heaven and earth who has made us and against whom we have grievously sinned, has sent His beloved and only-begotten Son, the Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to proclaim to us the love and mercy of God and set us free from eternal judgment.
God’s speaking, not ours, not our declarations of love for God or our decisions, is the whole beginning and content of our faith. God reveals to us who He is and all that He has done and we say “Amen”. Our whole life as Christians is a continuous cycle of hearing God speak and then speaking back to Him what He said, thereby glorifying His Name and proclaiming Him to be true. That is beauty of the Church’s liturgy – it is almost entirely God’s own Word, verbatim, on the mouths of God’s people. The fountain and source of Christian prayer is what God has said and promised. Pray the Psalter. It is filled with the promises and works of God as the basis for all hope and joy even in the midst of darkness and suffering. It gives you words to speak when you have none and puts words on your tongue you would never dare speak or believe except God spoke them first. Truth does not come from within us because it can’t. No amount of human wisdom will ever attain to heavenly wisdom. It is clouded and perverted by sin. On our own we are completely devoid of the truth
that saves. We need to hear the Word of God continually so that we may be led in the way of truth.
Saving truth must be and has been proclaimed to you. You must receive it from outside of yourself and submit yourself to it rather than it to you. When the waters of Holy Baptism cascade over the head of the sinner, God speaks, absolving and adopting. That same speaking continues to echo forth as the called servants of Christ speak the absolving Word of Jesus’ death and resurrection. And at the command of Christ, by the power of His creative Word, He joins Himself to the bread and wine of Holy Communion. With joy do we hear the voice of Christ giving us His very Body and Blood. On the strength of His promises do we confidently believe and confess that in the Sacrament of the Altar we receive forgiveness, life, and salvation.
Ephphathah! May God continually grant to you His Word so that your ears may hear, your hearts believe, and your tongue confess His saving Name.
In the Name of +Jesus. Amen.