The One Who Wounds, The One Who Heals
Mark 7:31-37
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Mark 7:37 And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.”
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… We have before us today in St. Mark’s Gospel the simple, friendly account of how Jesus healed a man who was deaf and mute. Let’s begin today by simply reviewing the story.
The good word about Jesus was spreading all over Israel: this man Jesus is a Teacher sent from God. He speaks with authority. He teaches with patience. He accuses all men of sin, but at the same time He offers the grace of God to all men – the forgiveness of sins as God’s free gift through faith in Him. This Jesus has divine power over the creation – over sickness, over demons, over nature itself. This Jesus takes from no one, but gives freely to all who come to Him for help. This Jesus is merciful, kind and good. And, He just might be the Christ.
Some of those who heard the good word believed the good word. But some of those who heard and believed had a friend who couldn’t hear anything, because he was deaf. So they brought to Jesus one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him. And Jesus did exactly that, and He did it without requiring anything at all of the deaf man. Jesus simply stopped what He was doing and took the man aside, one-on-one. And then, in His typical not-afraid-to-get-too-close-to-you manner, Jesus put His fingers in his ears, and He spat and touched his tongue. Then, looking up to heaven, He sighed, and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” And the man’s ears were opened and his tongue was loosed. And the crowd was amazed and said, He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.
I wonder how the world would react if Jesus performed this miracle today. I think the world would react this way: “It’s about time you healed him, Jesus! It’s Your fault that this poor man was deaf and mute in the first place! You should heal everyone who is suffering. You never should have made them suffer in the first place.”
Blaming God for human suffering is a very common reaction. Many people would say that it is God’s fault that the man in the Gospel was deaf and mute in the first place; and in a sense, they’re not entirely wrong. There is this from the book of Exodus, when God first called Moses to deliver the Israelites from slavery in Egypt, and Moses at first made the excuse that he couldn’t speak well enough. So Yahweh said to him, “Who has made man’s mouth? Or who makes the mute, the deaf, the seeing, or the blind? Have not I, Yahweh?” (Ex 4:11)
So, yes; in a way God is responsible for these physical maladies that people suffer. There’s no getting around it or denying it. But God is responsible for these things like, for example, the principal of a school is responsible for a disruptive student getting suspended, or like a judge is responsible for a criminal going to jail. Yes, the teacher suspended the student. Yes, the judge put the criminal in jail. But to be sure, those guilty parties earned those consequences for themselves.
Still, we should not imagine that the deaf man committed some specific sin which caused his deafness. It all goes back, once again, to the terrible sickness that infects all people from birth: it goes back to Original Sin, the corruption that we inherit from our parents, and they from theirs. It goes back to our natural lostness, our deadness, the slavery to sin in which we’re born. It is a condition that is absolutely lethal for everyone, and yet it is a condition that no one fully grasps on his own. Before God, no one is innocent. No one is righteous. No one is heaven-bound by nature. Instead, all are hell-bound from conception.
So why does God cause some to be deaf or mute, or blind or handicapped in some other way? Well it is not because He is cruel. In fact, God commanded the Israelites not to be cruel to those who suffer in these ways, saying in Leviticus 19:14: You shall not curse the deaf, nor put a stumbling block before the blind, but shall fear your God: I am Yahweh. Why, then? Is it only to punish? Is it only to give us what we deserve?
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So, what does God do with us? He afflicts us in ways that we can see, that we can perceive. He afflicts us with maladies: some with one, some with another, some with physical afflictions, others with mental or emotional afflictions, and sometimes with financial challenges or hardships. And all of it is designed to get us to go running to the doctor, to the Great Physician, so that we can hear His diagnosis and receive His medicine.
As Yahweh says through the prophet, Now see that I, even I, am He, And there is no God besides Me; I kill and I make alive; I wound and I heal; Nor is there any who can deliver from My hand. (Deut 32:39)
But when God afflicts, when He wounds, He wounds like a doctor who prescribes a harsh and aggressive treatment, or like a surgeon who has to poke and prod and take his knife to cut open a patient’s body, maybe even having to amputate some part. And He does so not to make us sick, for we are already dying! He does so not to cause harm, but to get in to where the tumor is growing, so that he can remove the tumor that is killing his patient, so that He can treat the sickness at its very source. Of course, the surgery may be painful, and the recovery may be painful, too; perhaps even life-long. But the wounding that a doctor does is for the sake of saving a life, not harming it. He wounds in order to heal. He kills in order to make alive.
So it is with our good and gracious God. All the earthly wounds and troubles that mankind suffers are used by God to drive us to His Word for answers, for the diagnosis, and also for the cure. And, of course, the cure is the forgiveness of sins, earned for us by Christ through His death on the cross; adoption, sonship, the promise of present help and future glory.
What did God promise in the Old Testament? In that day the deaf shall hear the words of the book, and the eyes of the blind shall see out of obscurity and out of darkness. (Is 29:18) That prophecy was a prophecy about Christ. It was a prophecy of spiritual healing – the healing of spiritual deafness and muteness and blindness. In other words, those who stubbornly refuse to listen to the Gospel will be brought to listen to it. Those who stubbornly refuse to confess that God is good will be brought to confess Him as the One who gave His Son into death in order to save us poor sinners. Those who stubbornly refuse to see the path of life, which is faith in Christ, will be made to see it and to walk in it.
But again, those spiritual healings can’t be seen. So, Jesus performed miracles that could be seen: healing deaf ears and loosing tongues that could not speak. And He did it to show His kindness – God’s kindness toward those who deserve His wrath. He did it to show that all who come to Jesus for help receive the help they need. When Jesus walked the earth visibly, that help was also visible. And now that He reigns invisibly from God’s right hand, His help is often invisible too, but it is just as real. He makes it not seen, but heard – heard through the proclamation of the Gospel, heard through the delivery of Holy Absolution, heard through words connected with water and with bread and wine. Forgiveness, strength and hope.
And those things are also the very medicine we need to be and remain spiritually healthy. God gives us His very self in Word and Sacrament in order to be the constant antidote to our sin and disobedience, and to strengthen and heal us until He brings us to our eternal home.
He lavishes his forgiveness on us so that we can be certain that the wounds we Christians suffer now are not punishments from an angry God, but tools of the Great Physician to keep you close to your divine Doctor, to teach you to persevere and to trust in Him who was wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniquities. He gives us His strength to bear up under all afflictions. And He gives us hope – hope that there will be an end to the sufferings, either in this life or in the life to come, when Christ returns.
So, dear fellow redeemed, the One who wounds is also the One who heals. And when He comes again, it will not just be to heal our wounds, but to make us entirely new. He will change us into flawless creatures, with neither physical nor spiritual deformities.
That is the sure hope that is ours, through faith in Christ Jesus.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
