A Sermon on Mark 7:31-37 for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity. Delivered by Pastor Caleb Strutz.

“At sea in a dense fog.” That’s how Helen Keller described her condition of being blind and deaf. At 19 months old, she suffered a severe illness which left her without sight or hearing. But when she was seven, her parents brought Anne Sullivan to be her teacher. She would spell out words into Helen’s palm in an attempt to communicate with her. Helen found this frustrating as she couldn’t understand that every object had a word identifying it. A month later, she had a breakthrough. Anne was running cold water over one hand and spelling w-a-t-e-r in the other. In that moment, Helen understood what she called “the mystery of language,” that those symbols in her hand meant the cool liquid flowing over her other hand. Although Helen could not see, hear, or, at that time, speak, Anne was able to meet her where she was at and found a way to communicate with her.

In our Gospel lesson, Jesus heals a man who is deaf and has a speech impediment—he can’t articulate language. There are plenty of miracle accounts in Scripture, but the focus of this text isn’t on the miracle as much, but more so on the special way that Jesus does it. When we take a closer look at all of the interesting, peculiar details, we will see that Jesus meets us where we’re at. Although our natural, fallen state is closed off and isolated from God, Christ comes to us and encounters us with his powerful Word.

I. Man’s Natural State

In Helen Keller’s time, there were special schools for the deaf and there had been for 200 years, but the situation in antiquity was quite different. Romans and Jews alike connected hearing, speech, and intelligence. The Romans believed that the deaf could not be educated and Roman law classified them as mentecatti furiosi, “raving maniacs.” Jewish law was a bit more compassionate, but even then, in most cases a deaf person could not make a vow and would be dealt with more leniently in legal proceedings because deafness, in their mind, was linked to moral or cognitive deficiency.

We don’t know whether this man was deaf from birth or not, but that he has difficulty speaking and cannot communicate indicates that he has been deaf for a long time. He probably developed some sort of rudimentary communication with his family, but he likely can’t express himself more fully and it’s doubtful that anyone would have taken the time to educate him.

This leaves this man in dire straits spiritually, too. Religion was primarily transmitted orally. Spiritual truths cannot be spoken to the deaf. This man is not only cut off from his fellow man, but in many ways, he’s cut off and separated from God.

Physical disabilities, while not sinful for the one inflicted, to be clear, are still very much the result of sin. Our fallen world is plagued with things we were never supposed to experience, it’s full of sickness and illness and tragedy. These are all consequences of living in a sinful world. We are afflicted and grieved by the effects of sin.

Sin corrupts us, not only physically, but spiritually. By nature we are deaf to God. We don’t want to listen to him but would rather fill our ears with gossip and lies. The sinful world around us worms its way inside of us as we are constantly bombarded with sinful thoughts and the doctrines of men, which reject God.

By nature we are mute to God. We are unable to cry out to him because we aren’t interested in him. We would rather do it ourselves instead of asking God for help, boast and brag about our accomplishments instead of praising and glorifying him.

By nature, we are hostile to God, opposed to him, intentionally closed off from him, willfully deaf and mute.

II. Encounter with Christ and His Word

The people saw the deaf, mute man and his sorry state and brought him to Jesus and asked him to lay his hands on him. But Jesus does something else. Jesus considers the peculiar spiritual position of this man and accommodates himself accordingly.

First, Jesus takes him aside, in private. The man has just been brought to a man he doesn’t know by a large crowd, he is probably confused and dazed, so Jesus takes him, leads him aside to a quiet place, and communicates with him.

Jesus does a lot of weird things here, but he is doing them to communicate to this man. He can’t hear and he can’t speak, but he can see and he can feel so Jesus speaks to him through those senses.

First, he puts his fingers in his ears, as if to say, “I know this is the problem.” He spits, which, culturally, was connected to healing, he says, “I’m going to do something about it.” He touches his tongue, as if to say, “I know this is where it hurts.”

He looks up to heaven, telling the man that his help and this healing is from God himself. Then he sighs. This could be an expression of sympathy or grief, but Jesus dealt with a lot of people who were worse off and didn’t sigh, so I think there’s something deeper here.

Matthew 8:17, quoting the book of Isaiah, says, “He Himself took our infirmities And bore our sicknesses.” Jesus sighs because the miracle is hard work. It’s exhausting, because he is taking it onto himself. Jesus bore the sickness which he healed. Each healing was a taste of his suffering.

Jesus not only treats the symptoms, he gets down to the cause. He carried our diseases because he carried our sin. Sin was the cause of this defect and Jesus dealt with that, too.

Jesus came to defeat the curse of sin. He came to restore this fallen world. Jesus conquered sin and its consequences on the cross. He carried our diseases and afflictions, our deafness and our muteness to the cross. There he washed them away with the only cure: his precious blood, shed for the forgiveness of all of your sins. Jesus has crushed your sin, he has triumphed over this world and its fallenness, he has provided the only cure for our sick souls.

Jesus took great pains to meet the man where he was at and to communicate in a way he could understand. But he did not heal him by touching his ears or his tongue. He healed him with his almighty word. “Ephphatha.” “Be opened.” Jesus speaks to the deaf man and by hearing Jesus’ word, his deafness was removed. A single word from the Son of God caused the cure.

Jesus meets us where we’re at. He assumed human flesh and blood, got down into the messiness of this world with us. So that he can come to us and speak his powerful word. Jesus’ word does what he wills. Jesus’ word is powerful and effective because he is all-powerful. Jesus speaks to us and opens our ears to God.

When he says to you, through his servant, “I forgive you all your sins,” your sins are forgiven. Jesus’ word does what it says. When I speak the absolution to you, I’m not the one speaking. Those aren’t my words. It is Christ speaking his words and by those words he is really, actually giving and imparting forgiveness.

In the Lord’s Supper, Jesus comes to you and meets you where you’re at. He takes humble bread and wine because he knows that we are physical creatures who need and crave physical touch. Jesus placed his fingers in the deaf man’s ears, but he does so much more for you. He places his body on your tongue and his blood in your mouth. It is his true body and his true blood because he says it is, because his words are spoken over the elements. It forgives your sins because he says it does, because his word is powerful and it does what he wills.

Jesus told the people not to tell anyone that he had done this great miracle. This, too, seems confusing, but earlier in the book of Mark, Jesus is unable to enter towns and has to stay outside in deserted places because he’s being mobbed by people who want him to do more miracles (1:45). We are not held by that same command. Rather, we are told, “Go and make disciples,” go and tell the nations the good news about Jesus (Mt. 28:19). He has set our tongues free so that we can praise him and tell others what he has done.

As we tell others about Jesus, I think that we can learn a lot from his approach in our text. He goes out of his way to treat this man as an individual, to communicate with him in a way that he can understand, to meet him where he’s at. We should do the same. We need to meet people where they’re at, no matter what they’re going through. We need to communicate in a way that will be understood. We need to create a context of genuine love and concern, a context of relationship and hospitality.

But we also need to keep in mind how Jesus affected the healing. He met the man where he was at so that he could speak his Word. We do not make disciples by our own efforts, but by Jesus’ powerful Word. All the work that we do to create a context and an environment for people is ultimately so that we can have them encounter Jesus and his Word. That’s what it’s all about. That’s where the cure for sin is found, that’s how healing takes place.

Even in antiquity, they understood that there was a connection between hearing and speaking. They didn’t quite understand how it worked, but today we know that people usually learn speak by reproducing the sounds that they’ve heard. There are exceptions to this, Helen Keller, for example, later learned how to speak, but generally that’s how language acquisition works. And that’s how it works spiritually, too. Jesus has opened our ears to God by his powerful word. He has also set free our tongues so that we can sing his praises and tell others about him. But the tongue learns what to say from what the ears hear. We need to be hearing the Word constantly so that we have the words to say. We receive the Sacrament so that we have the strength and the energy to proclaim those words. We have this good news about Jesus: that he comes to us as we are and meets us where we’re at to speak his powerful, comforting word of forgiveness. Amen.

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