The One Who Opens
Rev. Richard A. Bolland

Mark 7:31-37
(Sept. 28, 2003 Sermon Transcript)

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        Perhaps many of you men have noticed, like I have, that all the vaunted talk about equal rights comes to a screeching halt at the discovery of a jar that won’t open. That suddenly, in that moment, there is the sudden realization that most men are considered by both men and women are considered to be superior to women in terms of being able to open stuck jar lids. And so, in the frenzy of making a meal, it becomes clear that it is more important to have the jar lid open so that the tomato sauce can get out for the spaghetti than it is to prove that women are equal to men.

        And so, there you have it. Equal rights in a nutshell. I’ll be skewered later, I know!

        And now, keep in mind that what is true for jars of tomato sauce is also true for ears and eyes. A jar is no good unless you are able to open it. And with respect to ears and eyes, ears are made for hearing, and eyes are made for seeing, and mouths are made for speaking. And unless they are opened, none of that can happen.

        And in today’s gospel lesson we read a few moments ago, and of which I gave you the epitome of the verses out of it, you come to understand very quickly, that in fact, the one who is opening this man’s mouth and his ears is the one who has come, not only to open mouths and ears, but also human hearts. To call people to the gospel. To show that He is the one long promised, who will be our savior from sin and will open not merely our mouths and our eyes and our ears, but He will open our very hearts to Him.

        And indeed, they needed opening. And indeed, they were shut. For indeed were we absolutely closed off from God from the curse of sin. Our lives were shut away from God because of sin. Who can begin to estimate the incalculable damage that the fall into sin of our first parents, Adam and Eve, in the Garden of Eden experience, and how that would come echoing across the millennium to our very own lives this very day.

        It is indeed beyond our thinking, and beyond our measure. Even if we describe it as some kind of nuclear spiritual devastation, we don’t even begin to come close to what happened in the Garden. All the perfection of creation was ruined, every bit of it. Man’s relationship to his creator was broken, completely and permanently, were it not for the intervention of God through Christ.

        Man’s relationship to his fellow man has been at odds and at enmity with one another from beginning to end, ever since the fall. And now, that relationship too is shattered by sin. There is absolutely no disaster movie that could ever be made which could begin to capture the height and the depth and the breadth of the spiritual devastation as the shadow of sin has closed over our planet, and ruined everything.

       In a very special sense, the world became closed off to God. Even that which was His ultimate creation, one might add, especially that which was His ultimate creation, the world which was created in all of its perfection, the dominion of that world was given to that ultimate creation, to mankind, to live and rule over it. Not to abuse it, but to use it wisely and well. And that ultimate creation was now, in the Father’s eyes, as good as dead, as were all of Adam and Eve’s children who came after them.

        Dear friends, He had made us perfect. And our first parents, instead, chose corruption. He made  us to live with Him forever, and we were simply more interested in a piece of fruit. He had made us to interact with our fellow human beings in a perfect way, and now we kill, we steal, and we defame and we hate. How devastating the shadow of sin.

        God had made us perfectly, and we threw it away.

        If you go to the city of San Antonio, Texas, and you go there to a small, old cemetery called the Oak Hill Cemetery, there are memorials to the futility of humanity. For many are the gravestones which mark that place, but one in particular is striking. It is that of a woman named Grace Lewellyn Smith. If you go to that place, you will read this epitaph, for there is nothing else on the stone, not a birth date, not a death date, just the name of her two husbands and these words.

        Sleeps well but rests not. Loved, but was loved not. Tried to please, but pleased not. Died as she lived, alone.

        It seems that Grace Smith had a good deal of closings in here life. Of course, we can’t tell what happened, but perhaps there were parents that closed her away from their love. Perhaps there were teachers who found little promise in her, and moved on to more promising students. Perhaps there were husbands who never figured out how to give love, but only take it. We don’t know. But you can just hear the futility in the epitaph.

        It seems to me, that, as terribly sad as that story must have been, that it does not even begin to compare with the much greater separation and closing away from God that sin has wrought in our own lives.

        We were people who were made, of all things in the image of God Himself, only to have it mortally wounded. We were people designed for spiritual perfection, only to know sin, and finally death. We were crafted by the divine one to live forever in the splendor of His presence, only unless God intervenes we end up decaying in a grave and consigned to hell.

        If you think that Grace Lewellyn Smith’s epitaph is sad, it doesn’t begin to touch that one. But in response to our closed attitude toward God, to our closed actions directed to God, and really to direct at ourselves and our own self-interests, God, instead of reacting with anger and condemnation, responds with compassion and love. He sends His only begotten son, who is man and who is fully God, both. Dwelling in human flesh the divine one walks the face of this earth and encounters a deaf mute. Now consider this man for a moment, if you would. Surely, having been born into this condition, as much as we know, his parents must have taken him to whatever medical help was available in those days. But to no avail. Certainly it must be said, that this probably was a man who ended up begging on the streets, making a living, meager though it was, off the cast-offs of others.

        And then we find that somebody cared about him. Somebody must have cared about him enough to take him to this Jew in a Gentile land, in the land of Tyre and Sidon. And they brought him to Him, and they entreated our Lord to lay His hands on him. We don’t know their motivation. Hopefully they were just concerned about this man. Perhaps there was something more sinister. Perhaps they just wanted to test Jesus, to see if He could do what other people said He had done. WE don’t know. But regardless of that, Jesus takes hold of this man, takes him away from the immediate press of the crowds to get him by himself. Jesus was never a show-off when He did His miracles. And He conveys to this man what He is going to do in a kind and gracious way. A deaf-mute man can only see. And so he saw Jesus reach His fingers out to place them in his ear. He saw Him spit (don’t ask me what that’s all about, I don’t know), and then touch his tongue.

        But the man knew, as I explained to the children, that He was going to do something about the hearing. He was going to do something about the speech. And He looked to heaven and sighed. You can see someone sigh. And said one single word. Ephphatha!  It’s interesting to me that Mark chose to leave the word in its original language which Jesus spoke. A word in Aramaic that means not merely "Be opened", but "Be completely opened". And he could hear. And he could speak. And he knew why it happened.

        This man, in his frustratingly closed off state, closed off by the silence of his words and the silence of his hearing. Closed off from all of his family, friends, and society, could not under any circumstances do anything himself to make his condition better. If he could have, he would have done it long ago, before this story was written. He was completely dependent on something outside himself coming in to release his tongue and to open his ears.

        That is precisely, dear friends, our spiritual condition following the fall. The is nothing we could do, nothing we could say, nothing we could think about, that would possibly have removed the curse of sin, and death, and the grave from us.

        And just as it was with this deaf mute, Christ came to us with the power of His word and through the sacrament of Holy Baptism, and who will come to us again through the Sacrament of the Lord’s Table. And when He did, He might as well have used the same word. Ephphatha!  Be completely opened! For that is indeed what happened to us. From being closed off to God, from being consigned to death and the grave, let it be known that Jesus opens the gates of heaven for us. He opens the gate of life for us, in this time and in this place, so that we may hear Him continue to speak to us through His means of grace, through word and sacrament. And that we may grow in the faith that He established.

        Man does nothing. God does everything. When it comes to salvation, when it comes to that spiritual opening, everything that needs to be done is done by God. If it were not so, it could not be called grace.

        God has spoken to you. And the first word you ever heard was the first word this man ever heard. "Be opened!" Completely opened to the love, and the mercy, and the power of God. To know, beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is God who has made us His own now and forever. He came to us when our eyes were shut tight. Our spiritual ears were as deaf as could be, and He opened them, so our hearts too would be opened, and that we would know that our only hope in heaven and earth is our Lord Jesus Christ. His suffering, His death, His resurrection. Here is grace.

        It need not now be said that our epitaph read like this. "Slept but found no rest. Tried, but not hard enough. Lived but died in the closed away from God." Because were it not for God’s action, that’s what it would be. And you might as well carve it into your tombstone.

        But instead, now on your tombstone, feel free to have your friends inscribe, "By God’s grace, called to be Christ’s servant, now and forever."

        Thank God the Father came to us as He did to this deaf mute. God, He has spoken His word of grace and life, and called us His own, and opened our hearts to Him. Thank God that this is the one who has done all things well. In Jesus’ name, Amen.