Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost at Epiphany on September 20, 2009

Mark 7:31 Then Jesus left the vicinity of Tyre and went through Sidon, down to the Sea of Galilee and into the region of the Decapolis. ³² There some people brought to him a man who was deaf and could hardly talk, and they begged him to place his hand on the man. ³³ After he took him aside, away from the crowd, Jesus put his fingers into the man's ears. Then he spit and touched the man's tongue. ³⁴ He looked up to heaven and with a deep sigh said to him, "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!"). ³⁵ At this, the man's ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly. ³⁶ Jesus commanded them not to tell anyone. But the more he did so, the more they kept talking about it. ³⁷ People were overwhelmed with amazement. "He has done everything well," they said. "He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak."

Universal Health Care

Health care is a big debate in our nation right now. Our nation and its leaders are almost evenly split whether or not health care is a right for all American citizens. I don’t plan on debating national politics from the pulpit. However, it is interesting that the people in Jesus’ day were also interested in a “universal health care.”

Jesus had been going on a bit of a tour along the coastal regions of Tyre and Sidon to the region of the ten no-name cities across from the Sea of Galilee – the Decapolis. He is in Gentile territory, yet these people have heard of Jesus. They have heard of this Jesus who healed all kinds of diseases. He gave the blind their sight and made the lame walk. He healed fevers and leprosy. He drove out demons and even raised the dead.

Some people brought to Jesus a friend who could neither hear nor talk. A deaf mute. This man has lived his entire life on the fringes of society. Unable to speak. Unable to hear. Imagine a world like his where you never heard the sound of laughter or music or your children’s voice. Imagine that you couldn’t speak clearly. Your thoughts are there, clear enough, you have feelings you want to express, ideas you want to exchange, but you can’t get the words out. They refuse to form on your tongue.

People who have had a stroke know what this is like, the futility and frustration of not being able to communicate. My grandmother suffered a stroke last year. Her mind and wit are there, but the words aren’t. She prefers to play rummy for hours, just so she doesn’t have to talk.

Like these friends of the deaf mute, we would like healing. As Christians, we regularly pray for God to heal people. There are bumper stickers that say, “Expect a miracle.” And certainly God can and does heal people today and is performing miracles – probably more frequently than we know or realize.

These friends from Decapolis wanted Jesus to provide universal health care for their deaf mute friend. They were healthy, why shouldn’t their friend have the right to be healthy, too? That’s the debate that rages in our nation right now. There are those who want the government to provide us with universal health care. Why shouldn’t we all have right to free health care and be healthy? And where the government fails, then God should pick up the slack and make us healthy. He should remove our tumors, mend our broken limbs, dull that arthritic pain, and restore our hearts, hips, lungs, knees, eyesight and hearing. Others are healthy. Why shouldn’t we be healthy, too?

But Jesus provides us with a better health care plan. Not Obama care. Not the Republican alternative. It is universal health care. Actually, it is eternal universal health care.

You see, there is a greater miracle that God desires for you (and for all!) than simply the restoration of health or strength or hearing or eyesight – and that is the miracle of forgiveness. The cleansing and healing and restoration of your soul. Perhaps we take it for granted because we can come sick with sin every Sunday to church and be healed with Christ’s words of forgiveness. Perhaps we are no longer amazed that we can kneel beside our bed at night, broken and bruised by the harsh words and hard feelings we’ve caused or felt earlier that day, and with a prayer of repentance from our lips and the breath of God in our ears, we are relieved and rejuvenated.

So when we read the miracles of Jesus in healing and restoring those with all kinds of sicknesses, disabilities and diseases, it should be with this in mind – that these miracles are not an end in themselves, but are serving a greater purpose. Jesus is working a greater miracle. Jesus did not come to be a “miracle-working-Santa Claus,” but used these miracles to point us to this greater miracle that He comes to accomplish and work in us. The miracle of His forgiveness.

I don’t know your thoughts on our nation’s health care debate. However, opponents of nationalized health care offer this criticism, “I don’t want some bureaucrat in Washington dictating my level of health care. That’s a decision that I should make with my doctor. Health care should not be done from far way. Health care should be up close and personal.

The critics of nationalized health care raise a good point. There are some things that you shouldn’t do from afar. There are some things that need to be done up close and personal.

Jesus got very up close and personal with this deaf mute. Jesus put His fingers into the man’s ears. Then He spit and touched the man’s tongue. He used spit! Comedian Paul Reiser wrote once about mother’s spit. “I saw a kid who had some dried-up food on his face. His mother took out a tissue, spit on the tissue and rubbed it into the kid’s face. This goes on, in communities around our country, on a daily basis. It is disgusting, but it sure does work, doesn’t it? There’s something in Mother Saliva that cleans like nobody’s business. All women, once they give birth, their enzymes change, and saliva becomes Ajax. It’ll clean anything: a baby’s face, a countertop, a Buick – you get enough mothers, you could do a whole car in 30, 40 minutes.”

Mother’s spit may be great for cleaning, but Jesus’ touch and spit for something even greater – for healing! What had been broken, Jesus mends with the Creator’s touch. The Great Physician at work. Notice the earthiness of it all. Fingers in ears. Tongue touched. God coming down to us, reaching down to where we are, opening ears, loosening tongues, and saving souls.

Notice how Jesus is “hands-on,” not distant and removed. Touch is vitally important to healing. We don’t do enough of it in our culture anymore. The stethoscope was the first piece of equipment that got between doctor and patient. Now the doctor could listen to your heart and your breathing without touching you. And we’ve become further and further removed from human touch. We get x-rayed and our bodily fluids get extracted and sent to labs and we get crammed into MRI tubes. But we are touched by few.

When Jesus touched someone, they were touched by the hands of God. God is a “hands-on” God, who stepped down from His glory into our human flesh, to dwell among us and touch us through His own humanity. Fingers in the ears, spittle from His mouth, grabbing tongues. He is the God who deals with us as the human creatures that we are. None of this out of body “spiritual” nonsense we hear about today. God deals with us in the grubby, ordinary, earthy, everyday way of our human existence. When Jesus stuck his fingers into that man’s ears, they were the fingers of God. When Jesus touched the man’s tongue, it was God touching his tongue.

Jesus looked upward to heaven. He was saying to the man, “Your help comes from God, and I have come to bring God to you.” Jesus is our go-between, the mediator between God and man. He prays for us. He intercedes for us. He touches us with God’s touch. Jesus sighs. He knows how deep the brokenness is, and what price He will have to pay to fix it. He knows the cost of this healing: a cross and His death.

Finally, Jesus speaks a word. A single Aramaic word “Ephphatha!” Be opened. Be released. Jesus wasn’t simply speaking to his ears; He was speaking to the whole man. “Be released from your bondage. Be free.” Jesus was releasing him from everything that held him bound and captive. “Be released.” Jesus came to proclaim release to the captives. To those who are bound in sin and death, He came to speak a liberating Word.

The Word of Jesus is living and active, Spirit and life. His words fall on deaf ears and cause them to hear. His words fall on mute tongues and cause them to speak. At the sound of Jesus’ word, “Ephphatha!” the man’s ears could hear and his tongue was freed and he spoke plainly and clearly. Mark doesn’t tell us what he said. But the attention is always on Jesus, not on the miracles or those who receive them. All we know is that he spoke plainly and coherently. His ears were opened. His tongue was loosened.

And then Jesus ordered everyone not to speak, which is a bit ironic, since He just loosened a man’s tongue. The man can now speak clearly, yet Jesus puts a gag order on him and the others. Jesus didn’t want to be known as a wonder worker. If all that people saw in Jesus was a cure for their temporal problems, an ear and tongue specialist, a health care provider, they missed the point. If all we see in Jesus is quick therapy, we have missed the point. The apostle Paul said that if our hope in Christ is only for this life, if all we look to Jesus for is a solution to our problems, then we are to be pitied more than all people.

There was more to Jesus than miracles. The miracles were signs that God had come to us to touch us. Isaiah had spoken of it centuries before. (Is 35:5-7) “Your God will come,” he prophesied. “He will come with vengeance, with divine retribution, He will come to save you.” The eyes of the blind will be opened. The ears of the deaf will be unstopped. The lame will leap like the agile deer. Mute tongues will shout for joy. Water will gush forth in the dry wilderness, streams of water in the desert. Burning sand will break out in bubbling springs.

God came in Jesus Christ. He came to save us by absorbing into Himself all the sin and evil and brokenness, all that had gone wrong with us, all that had come into the creation because of our Fall. He came to take up our sicknesses and diseases into His own body, to battle the demons that darken our lives, to take up the devastation the crushes us. He came to free us from everything that binds us, that imprisons us, that keeps us from being God’s free children. He came to unchain us from sin, death, and the devil. He came to bring in a new creation with His own dying and rising, a new creation in which blind eyes see, mute tongues speak, the lame leap, and water flows in the desert.

That’s why Jesus didn’t want anyone to say anything about what happened. It was too small, too soon. There was much more of Jesus to come. His death on the cross. His open, empty tomb. His ascension to glory. The outpouring of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Then His disciples would speak, openly and plainly.

Jesus wants to do for you what He did for that man in the Decapolis that day. He wants to stick His Word into your ears, to cut through your deafness, to open your ears, your minds, your hearts. He speaks His Ephphatha to you. “Be opened.” He wants to grab those tongues of yours, tongues that don’t naturally know how to pray, praise, or give thanks, and He wants to loosen them for His praise. He wants to turn our tongues into instruments of worship and witness, declaring the praises of Him who called you out of darkness into His light.

Now it’s O.K. to talk about it. No commands of silence now. The work is done. It is finished. The Aramaic Ephphatha was followed by the Greek word Tetelestai. Jesus has accomplished His mission. He has died and risen and reigns. Tell everyone. If He healed your deafness and cured your muteness, you’d be talking about it. You couldn’t stop yourself. Jesus has provided you with a greater miracle. He has healed your sin and death. He has given you eternal life. He has opened your ears with His forgiving words at your baptism. He has placed His Body and Blood on your tongues. There is much to hear, much to tell, much to praise, and much to sing.

You can debate the pros and cons of nationalized universal health care. Jesus has already settled the matter of universal, eternal health care. It is already yours. Amen.