Bible Text: Mark 7:31-37 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus | Series: Trinity 12 | Usually when Jesus performs a miracle he does it by speaking. He just says it and it happens. This is what happened right before our Gospel lesson, with the Syro-phoenician woman. Jesus just says, the demon has left your daughter, and that’s what happens. And this fits perfectly with Jesus’ character. God created heaven and earth by speaking, so it’s only appropriate that God in the flesh should heal his creation with words. In fact, God still does this. He speaks, I forgive you all your sins, and it is so, he speaks, I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, he speaks, This is my body, this is my blood, and the devil is conquered, creation is restored, enemies of God become His dear children, as we just witnessed this morning with Everleigh. But our Gospel for this morning has Jesus do far more than speak. This is the most sensual of Jesus’ miracles – and I mean that not in any negative way, but that it employs all the senses – not just hearing but taste and smell and touch and sight. Jesus uses the stuff of this earth and the stuff of his own body – his spit – to give hearing to this man’s ears and speech to his mouth. Now the question arises, “Why?” Why not just speak? Why this spit and this sticking fingers into ears and on the tongue? And Jesus answers this question. He answers it with a little detail in our Gospel that we should never overlook, because it offers us comfort beyond expression. Jesus groans. He looks up to heaven and he groans.
This means God didn’t simply take on humanity in the abstract or as something connected to him but not actually part of him. No, he lived humanity. He still does. When we confess every Sunday, “And became man,” we aren’t repeating some technical point of Christian theology, we’re saying our God, the eternal Son of the Father, lived and lives as one of us, he knows what it means to have this flesh and blood, he knows the delights of this body, and he knows the horrible pains, he knows the temptation to sin and lust, he knows the fear of death and hell, he knows the weeping over sickness and pain and death, he knows what it feels like to be slandered and betrayed by friends. And when he sees the pain and corruption, he does what all creation does, he groans.
St. Paul devotes an entire beautiful chapter of Romans to the groaning of God’s creation. That’s your homework, to read Romans 8 tonight before you go to bed. He explicitly says all creation groans as it waits for the redemption of the children of God. Think of that, all creation knows something’s wrong. The cow, the tree, in their cow and tree ways, the rocks and mountains and rivers, all the earth waits and groans until God fixes it all, gets rid of sin and pain and death forever. They groan with us, they agree with the sons of God, the Bible says, when we see death and pain and cancer and corrupt government and deafness and unbelief and groan over it all. And the absolute beauty of it is that Jesus groans with us. God joins creation’s cause in our flesh and blood and groans our groan. So it’s no surprise that the Spirit he sends into our hearts also groans, with groanings unutterable. Think on this. You have nature itself, all of God’s creation, joining together with God Himself to await from His hand the deliverance He has promised. And here we have Jesus. The God who takes on himself His creation, and He groans with us and for us.
And his is no futile, helpless groan. He groans and acts simultaneously. It’s like this groaning, because it’s Jesus’ groaning, has to accomplish something. And it’s not simply that he has mercy on this man and answers the prayers of his friends. It’s not just that he heals him. It’s how he does it that instructs us and comforts us. He uses his fingers, the fingers of God, and yet very human fingers, and he spits and puts it on the man’s tongue. That’s God’s spittle. And only then does our Lord speak, Ephphatha, Be opened. He connects his words to Himself, to his body, to his spit, and this is to completely identify Himself with our human nature, which now belongs to Him and with which He saves us from all evil and buries our sin and crushes the devil by his groaning on the cross for us.
And so it should be no surprise to us who know our Lord Jesus, that He would connect His word to water in Baptism and so make us to see Him as He really is and to hear His Word with joy. Is the God who used his own spit and fingers to give hearing to the deaf and voice to the mute, do you think he’s above saving you through water, giving you spiritual hearing and sight through water? Do you think the God from whose side poured out water and blood after suffering in his body to take away all your sin, do you think He could then despise water and blood? No, God refuses to despise his creation. It’s not just that He created creation. It’s that He’s joined it. God is man, man to deliver. We can call water and bread and wine humble elements all we want, but God has made them and He calls them good. And the Son has water and blood and protein as part of him forever. He’s a man. He’s taken our stuff into Himself. So don’t marvel that Jesus chose Baptism, that He chose to wash us with water and His Word, that He chose to feed us His body and His blood through bread and wine, because He knows us body and soul. He’s come in our flesh and blood to save our flesh and blood.
When St. Paul talks about creation groaning and us groaning and the Spirit groaning and Jesus interceding for us, he specifically says that we all groan for the redemption of the body. Of course we groan for the redemption of our souls too, for the time when we will never even think of sinning again, when we will never cry or shudder over a guilty conscience, when we will never hurt those we love with our words, when we will never doubt God again or be discontent with the life He’s given, when we will love purely as we are loved, but we are also bodily creatures and our God, who took on our body, promises us the redemption of this body. So when you and those you love suffer pain, bodily pain, chronic pain that you’ve prayed God would just take away, when the pain of your body causes your soul to cry, How long, O Lord, know that all creation groans with you, know that God’s Spirit groans within you, know that Jesus intercedes for you precisely because He has suffered pain of body and soul for you. You have a God who sympathizes with you and will answer your faithful groans with redemption. Christ has died for you, He is risen, He intercedes for you at the right hand of the Father, and this means that no charge can be laid against you, no sin rubbed in your face, and no pain able to rip you from your Lord and steal your hope away, not tribulation, or sword, or famine, or disease, not death itself.
And this is because to be Christ’s is to hear His Word and to speak it. That’s what this deaf and mute man did. He had no use of his ears or his tongue before. Now that he has use of them, he uses them for what they were created to do. He hears Jesus and speaks about Him. It would be better not to have a tongue than to use it to hurt our neighbor in anger and spite. God didn’t create it for that. It would be better not to have ears than to use them to listen to gossip and lies about God and filthy language about filthy things. It would be better not to have arms than to use them to strike the innocent, and not to have mouths than to use them to get wasted with wine. All these things lead us away from Christ and destroy our faith and our confidence, because Jesus comes to us and saves us through these senses, through our bodies, through our ears and our mouths that hear and receive his word. So when we use our bodies rightly, when we use our ears to listen to Jesus’ word, when we use our tongue to pray to Him and confess Him and to speak in Christian love and concern for one another, when we use our arms to embrace our spouses and our children and loved ones and to bring our little ones to the waters of Baptism, when we use our mouths to eat Jesus’ body and drink his blood in faith, then we can take anything this world throws at us, body or soul. Then we conquer with Christ. We can’t lose. Jesus has opened our ears and loosed our tongue, and we sing with the hymnist, “Jesus, thy Spirit and thy word, thy body and thy blood afford, my heart its dearest treasure.” Then the words of our Old Testament apply to us, “Jacob shall no more be ashamed, no more shall his face grow pale. For the ruthless shall come to nothing and the scoffer cease.” And with St. Paul in our epistle we will have a confidence and a sufficiency that comes not from ourselves but from our Lord Jesus Christ, who makes us confident, makes us sufficient to suffer with him on this earth, as he once again comes to us in his very body and his very blood and reminds us of His groaning for us and the joy that awaits us. Amen.