September 10, 2000

This story today is filled with admonitions and it's a great story because Jesus continues to do such ordinary things with such extraordinary results. In today's story, we have this man who is deaf, first of all, and because he can't hear the sound of his own voice, he has that impediment of speech that is so common among people with a hearing deficit. It's difficult to make sounds when you don't know what they sound like. And so, he had this condition which is not uncommon in our own time either. But Jesus does not call on the physicians (they have already run out of ideas). He doesn't do anything particularly strange or remarkable. He calls the man aside and says, "Let's go over here alone," and then he touches him. Jesus wasn't a scientist in our description of that word, because he doesn't see cause and effect. When people asked him who sinned to cause this terrible thing to happen, he says that it wasn't because anybody sinned, but for you to be able to see the power of God.

The cause and effect is not his way. Instead, he sees the need and brings his grace to bear upon the need. He never blames anyone for running short of food, for being ill or possessed, or for being just an outright sinner. He looks at the person and says, "You need to be healed, so be healed and go and sin no more," — just ordinary words with extraordinary results.

This man was taken aside so others couldn't hear or see, and they wouldn't be the center of attention. Jesus does two simple things: he touches his ears and he touches his tongue — the man's ears are opened to hear clearly, and his tongue is loosened to speak clearly. That healing touch of Christ, the sign of God's eternal purpose, is brought to bear in a similar way, but pointing to a much larger purpose — that we would all have our ears truly opened to hear God's love being spoken to us, and that we would all have our tongues loosened so that we could truly take the love of God that we know in our own person and express it and share it with those who have that nagging God-shaped hole in their hearts and are trying to fill it with all the wrong things. Those are the bigger issues for us and this simple little story points us in that direction.

Also notice, that Jesus does not take over here until the doctors have given up hope, God continues to use our doctors in the healing arts as long as our knowledge continues. When our knowledge ends, he takes over. And so, here we are, a little thing that points us to a much larger thing. While I have witnessed and I have heard more of healing that occurs without explanation (the miraculous healing), I have seen other harm done by people who claim doctors should be ignored and we should only go on faith, ignoring the fact that God works in our physicians.

When I was a young seminarian doing my summer internship at the state hospital in San Antonio (a place filled with people who had little hope for healing), one of my classmates, another chaplain in training from another denomination, believed absolutely in faith healing. The congregation was made up of people whose mental capacities had been damaged and reduced in some way or another. There were two ladies in there who had struggled because one was confined to a wheelchair and, the other, her best friend, would wheel her around everywhere. In a sermon to that gathering one day, this young and somewhat naive seminarian said that if you have enough faith you can stand and walk. Later in the day, the lady who did the walking and the pushing tried to get her friend out of the wheelchair; she fell and broke her hip. It took the rest of the summer to try to help those two ladies overcome that experience.

Some of us forget there is a greater healing — the greater healing of our hearts and our souls. We forget about Helen Keller who was healed, but she remained deaf and unable to speak clearly. She, too, could only make sounds, but made a major contribution to the world in her ministry. We forget that President Franklin Roosevelt was never healed in the strength of his legs after polio, but that did not stop him from leading this country through two of its greatest crises — recovery from the great depression, and World War II. We forget about Julius Caesar (if we ever knew anything at all about him that is) and that he was an epileptic who was never cured of his epilepsy, but still led the Roman Empire to the height of its glory.

We, too, need to remember that there are much greater healings than simple physical healing (although that is greatly to be desired in and of itself). But, being denied that, we have to ask ourselves, "What is it that God wants to heal?" St. Paul was never healed of whatever the thorn of his flesh was, but I suspect it was bad eyesight. After he was blinded on the road to Damascus, he prayed that God would remove that impediment from him. But, God kept saying, "My grace is sufficient for you Paul. When you could see with 20/20 vision, you thought you knew exactly what I wanted. Now you have impaired vision to remind you that you couldn't see clearly with 20/20 vision, but you can see clearly now because you have spiritual vision." When he took pen in hand and wrote out his letters, he always said, "See what large letters I write." He wrote large so that he could see what he was writing. It seems convincing that sight was Paul's impediment. It was never healed because Paul would have fallen back into his old arrogance.

To be healed from lack of hearing is what we need as Christians today. So many of us walk around in our lives, never being able to hear that Jesus loves us, that God has redeemed us once and for all, and that we are his children and he will never turn away from us. No matter what we call ourselves on the outside, we were created by God, redeemed by God, and are sustained by God. But how many of us don't yet hear that? How many of our friends, our circle of associates in our homes and in our neighborhoods, or even in our families, have never been able to hear that word spoken to them?

We, too, need to be healed in our hearing as Christians. Sometimes we don't hear the word of God spoken by our closest friends, just like Jesus couldn't tell the people in Nazareth anything because they said, "We knew you when you were a little boy, so what do you have to say to us today?" They made an assumption that this person could not speak to them because they already knew him in his youth. We do the same thing to our own spouses, our children and our parents. We doubt people who have wisdom because we know them too well. We stop listening for the word of God coming to us from those who know us the best. Yet, they do speak, and if we can listen, and if we can hear, then they speak to us.

We also need to be healed of our impairment of speech. We know what it is for God to be in our lives, for Christ to hold us in his arms. The question is, do we speak that love of Christ to those around us? We know that Jesus healed by touching, but we've been told in the last decade not to touch anybody because it is improper. I think Jesus would have been in deep trouble with the bishop every time he healed someone in the first century. We know what it is to cuddle a child in our arms when they are upset. We know what a joy it is to our children as we embrace them when they have had a success. Do we do that for each other?

There are plenty of words that are spoken by professed Christians. The question is how many of those are God's words and do we seek to speak the word of Christ to people who need to hear them? There are plenty of words spoken by each of us, but how do we speak in the name of Christ? There are many ways to come into physical contact with others. Sometimes, that contact injures, but sometimes, when we are careful and we do it deliberately in the name of Christ, we can bring a healing touch — knowing that the touch is not ours, but Christ's.

James' admonition this morning is good, "Be quick to listen, be slow to speak, particularly, be slow to anger." But, he doesn't say, "Don't speak." Be slow. Think about the words before you put them out in voice or paper. The things that appear in print, so often are slanderous, harmful things. Whether it is a letter we have written or an article in the newspaper, we must think: "Will this do good, or will this do harm?"

Jesus did ordinary things; he spoke; he touched; he had extraordinary results. He sends us to go and do likewise — to speak ordinary words to ordinary people, expecting extraordinary results. Like it or not, the Lord's lips and the Lord's arms today belong to you. It's a great responsibility and a great joy to know that Christ dwells within you. The word that you have to speak to someone else can be his words. Christ's healing touch and loving embrace are contained within your arms, and that healing touch and that warm embrace can be his through your ministration.

I believe that this church is far above other parishes around the country. Let us always strive to be attuned to the word of God, to be attuned to the needs of the people around us, so that we, too, can be his evangelists, his healers, his people who take the love of God into the world. AMEN

The Rev. Dr. Robert Certain
rgcertain@stmargarets.org
10 September 2000