Isaiah 29:17-24/Romans 10:9-16/St Mark 7:31-37
Holy Baptism: Tarijae Elaine and Chyianne Ren’ee McDonald
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
When our Lord takes aside the man who had a speech impediment, He takes aside all humanity. Which means, when He controls the man who is deaf and mute, He confronts us. For you and I have several problems: like the man in today’s Gospel, our bodies don’t work right - not the way they were created to work. Medicine helps - but it only puts off the inevitable. We are all terminally ill. We are born that way.
But the physical problems are symptoms of the deeper problem. It is written, The wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23). Our dying, broken bodies are symptoms of our broken souls and wounded consciences. The baptismal address, which replaces the confession of sins on days when there is a baptism, puts it starkly: “The Word of God teaches that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the power of the devil until Christ claims us as His own. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation” (LSB, 268).
Some of us have problems hearing and need a hearing aid. But all of us, by nature, have ears that would otherwise be closed to the Gospel, that is, unless Christ opens them. As Isaiah said in our first reading, In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book. Not merely that the deaf shall hear, which is a miraculous restoration of creation; but they shall hear the words of a book, meaning, we shall hear the Gospel, the promise of the free forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus.
And so it is that while in the region of the Decapolis, they brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. And Jesus took him aside, privately, opening his ears and loosing his tongue. So He has done this day for Tarijae and Chyianne. They are brought to Jesus. And we implore Him to lay His hand on them and bless them. He takes them aside, privately, in the waters of Holy Baptism in which He opens their ears to hear His Word and loosens their tongues to confess His saving Name.
For the finger of God is stuck into this deaf man’s ears that He may hear. So too, using my hand, Jesus Himself baptizes Tarijae and Chyianne so that they may live. In the ancient baptismal formulas of the Early Church, salt would be used to anoint the ears and lips of those being baptized. It was a confession of what is occurring in this text from St Mark. It is a confession of what St Paul teaches: faith cometh by hearing and hearing of the Word of Christ. But how shall they hear unless Jesus first opens our ears?
For our ears shun and ignore the Word, but perk up at the spreading of gossip and slander. They shut out the Law which rightly condemns us and itch to listen to self-help gospels and prosperity preaching. Jesus must open our ears to hear His Word taught rightly and purely.
And joy of joys - He does this through the self-same preaching of the Word. For His Spirit, who opens your ears and creates saving faith, comes in and with His Word. This is why St Paul is so concerned with the necessity of a preacher - one who is sent by Christ to speak in His stead and by His command to forgive sins through the preaching of His Word.
Then after He opens your ears to hear the preaching of His Word. He looses your tongue to speak rightly. As our natural ears,s are not inclined to listen to His Word so our natural tongues are not prone to right speech. Consider the wickedness which we commit with our tongues. Gossip and slander, lies and deceit. Words of anger and hatred. St James writes: the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (Ja 3:8). And Jesus says whatever comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart (Mt 15:18).
Which is why His Word that strikes our ears to create faith, must travel inward before it is confessed with the mouth. It must penetrate the heart. The collect for the preaching of the Word from the front of your hymnal prays in this way, “Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life, that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it.” St Paul speaks similarly, With the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
After He opens your ears the preaching of His Word. After He creates in you a clean heart and renews a right spirit within you by that same preached Word. His Word passes from the ears to the heart, and from the heart to the lips in confession. This is what Jesus did for the man in the Gospel who had a speech impediment. After spitting He 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 writes, he spoke orthos. That is, he spoke rightly. Of course after possibly a lifetime of garbled speech and mumbling, it is a great relief and pure joy to speak properly. But St Mark is teaching us something more. He spoke orthos, that is, he spoke orthodoxly. For the ears that are unstopped to Jesus’ Word and the heart that is changed by His Word give voice to lips that confess His Word rightly, in an orthodox manner, that is, with right praise and thanksgiving.
So it is for you who hear His Word preached in its truth and purity, and you believe rightly, you confess the orthodox, Christian faith, even as Tarijae and Chyianne did in the Apostle’s Creed, and as they will learn to do in time, by God’s grace, through catechesis. It is the same for you. You learned to speak as a child by listening and taking to heart. So you learn to confess as a child of your heavenly Father by listening with the ears of faith, pondering His Word in your heart, and speaking back to Him what He has said to you.
And the Word that does all this is the Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, who walked in the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. His are the beautiful feet walked this dusty earth, that confronts humanity in our fallen, sinful state. His are the feet that brought the Good News.
Those beautiful feet were nailed to the Cross, along with His hands, and they bled forth the precious blood of the Son of God. There He dealt not merely with the symptoms of our sin and death, but the very core of our problem. As it is written, For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).
That day Jesus was taken aside from the crowd and lifted up on the Cross. That day the Father was silent to the sighs of the Word made flesh. But in that sigh of It is finished, heaven itself was opened to you. As orthodox Christians sing in right confession, “When You took upon Yourself to deliver man, You humbled yourself to be born of a Virgin. When You had overcome the sharpness of death, You opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers” (Te Deum).
And by His death and resurrection, Christ had brought life and immorality to light. More, the Father’s heart is opened to you in prayer and praise and thanksgiving. Here the Father’s heart is opened to you in Baptism and preaching and the Supper. For by these Christ’s victory over death and the grave is delivered to you. Here is the medicine of immortality - the very Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
And finally, He who opens your ears to His Word, and who causes His Word to pass from your ears to your hearts in faith and from your heart to your lips in confession, then also causes His Word to pass from your lips to your life, that you may, with those in the Gospel, zealously proclaim what Christ, the Son of God, has done; who with the Father and + the Holy Spirit, be glory, both now and forever. Amen.
Holy Baptism: Tarijae Elaine and Chyianne Ren’ee McDonald
In the Name + of JESUS. Amen.
When our Lord takes aside the man who had a speech impediment, He takes aside all humanity. Which means, when He controls the man who is deaf and mute, He confronts us. For you and I have several problems: like the man in today’s Gospel, our bodies don’t work right - not the way they were created to work. Medicine helps - but it only puts off the inevitable. We are all terminally ill. We are born that way.
But the physical problems are symptoms of the deeper problem. It is written, The wages of sin is death (Rm 6:23). Our dying, broken bodies are symptoms of our broken souls and wounded consciences. The baptismal address, which replaces the confession of sins on days when there is a baptism, puts it starkly: “The Word of God teaches that we are all conceived and born sinful and are under the power of the devil until Christ claims us as His own. We would be lost forever unless delivered from sin, death, and everlasting condemnation” (LSB, 268).
Some of us have problems hearing and need a hearing aid. But all of us, by nature, have ears that would otherwise be closed to the Gospel, that is, unless Christ opens them. As Isaiah said in our first reading, In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book. Not merely that the deaf shall hear, which is a miraculous restoration of creation; but they shall hear the words of a book, meaning, we shall hear the Gospel, the promise of the free forgiveness of sins in Christ Jesus.
And so it is that while in the region of the Decapolis, they brought to Jesus a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment. And Jesus took him aside, privately, opening his ears and loosing his tongue. So He has done this day for Tarijae and Chyianne. They are brought to Jesus. And we implore Him to lay His hand on them and bless them. He takes them aside, privately, in the waters of Holy Baptism in which He opens their ears to hear His Word and loosens their tongues to confess His saving Name.
For the finger of God is stuck into this deaf man’s ears that He may hear. So too, using my hand, Jesus Himself baptizes Tarijae and Chyianne so that they may live. In the ancient baptismal formulas of the Early Church, salt would be used to anoint the ears and lips of those being baptized. It was a confession of what is occurring in this text from St Mark. It is a confession of what St Paul teaches: faith cometh by hearing and hearing of the Word of Christ. But how shall they hear unless Jesus first opens our ears?
For our ears shun and ignore the Word, but perk up at the spreading of gossip and slander. They shut out the Law which rightly condemns us and itch to listen to self-help gospels and prosperity preaching. Jesus must open our ears to hear His Word taught rightly and purely.
And joy of joys - He does this through the self-same preaching of the Word. For His Spirit, who opens your ears and creates saving faith, comes in and with His Word. This is why St Paul is so concerned with the necessity of a preacher - one who is sent by Christ to speak in His stead and by His command to forgive sins through the preaching of His Word.
Then after He opens your ears to hear the preaching of His Word. He looses your tongue to speak rightly. As our natural ears,s are not inclined to listen to His Word so our natural tongues are not prone to right speech. Consider the wickedness which we commit with our tongues. Gossip and slander, lies and deceit. Words of anger and hatred. St James writes: the tongue is a restless evil, full of deadly poison (Ja 3:8). And Jesus says whatever comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart (Mt 15:18).
Which is why His Word that strikes our ears to create faith, must travel inward before it is confessed with the mouth. It must penetrate the heart. The collect for the preaching of the Word from the front of your hymnal prays in this way, “Lord God, bless Your Word wherever it is proclaimed May Your Word pass from the ear to the heart, from the heart to the lip, and from the lip to the life, that, as You have promised, Your Word may achieve the purpose for which You send it.” St Paul speaks similarly, With the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved.
After He opens your ears the preaching of His Word. After He creates in you a clean heart and renews a right spirit within you by that same preached Word. His Word passes from the ears to the heart, and from the heart to the lips in confession. This is what Jesus did for the man in the Gospel who had a speech impediment. After spitting He 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 writes, he spoke orthos. That is, he spoke rightly. Of course after possibly a lifetime of garbled speech and mumbling, it is a great relief and pure joy to speak properly. But St Mark is teaching us something more. He spoke orthos, that is, he spoke orthodoxly. For the ears that are unstopped to Jesus’ Word and the heart that is changed by His Word give voice to lips that confess His Word rightly, in an orthodox manner, that is, with right praise and thanksgiving.
So it is for you who hear His Word preached in its truth and purity, and you believe rightly, you confess the orthodox, Christian faith, even as Tarijae and Chyianne did in the Apostle’s Creed, and as they will learn to do in time, by God’s grace, through catechesis. It is the same for you. You learned to speak as a child by listening and taking to heart. So you learn to confess as a child of your heavenly Father by listening with the ears of faith, pondering His Word in your heart, and speaking back to Him what He has said to you.
And the Word that does all this is the Christ Jesus, the Word made flesh, who walked in the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. His are the beautiful feet walked this dusty earth, that confronts humanity in our fallen, sinful state. His are the feet that brought the Good News.
Those beautiful feet were nailed to the Cross, along with His hands, and they bled forth the precious blood of the Son of God. There He dealt not merely with the symptoms of our sin and death, but the very core of our problem. As it is written, For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5:21).
That day Jesus was taken aside from the crowd and lifted up on the Cross. That day the Father was silent to the sighs of the Word made flesh. But in that sigh of It is finished, heaven itself was opened to you. As orthodox Christians sing in right confession, “When You took upon Yourself to deliver man, You humbled yourself to be born of a Virgin. When You had overcome the sharpness of death, You opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers” (Te Deum).
And by His death and resurrection, Christ had brought life and immorality to light. More, the Father’s heart is opened to you in prayer and praise and thanksgiving. Here the Father’s heart is opened to you in Baptism and preaching and the Supper. For by these Christ’s victory over death and the grave is delivered to you. Here is the medicine of immortality - the very Body and Blood of Christ Jesus, given and shed for the forgiveness of your sins.
And finally, He who opens your ears to His Word, and who causes His Word to pass from your ears to your hearts in faith and from your heart to your lips in confession, then also causes His Word to pass from your lips to your life, that you may, with those in the Gospel, zealously proclaim what Christ, the Son of God, has done; who with the Father and + the Holy Spirit, be glory, both now and forever. Amen.
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