Trinity XII Sermon 2025

                 ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than
we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve…
(Collect Trinity XII)
 
 
The Collect for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity expresses a truth that is habitually rehearsed but rarely remembered. The truth it reveals is that it is God’s nature to be more ready to hear than we to pray because our condition is more often than not otherwise occupied and, thus, slothful in relation to our spiritual well-being. God hears to give, and what He gives is, as the Collect continues, more than either we desire or deserve. (Idem) The failure of zeal, alacrity, and dispatch is on our side. In desiring Him more, we shall receive the abundance His mercy and the intensity of its power. Thereby, we continue last week’s theme of embracing God’s Grace in the Trinity season. 
The deaf and dumb man described in today's Gospel is an image of that spiritual condition that neither desires nor deserves what God longs to give. The man can neither hear nor speak.  But just prior to this morning’s Gospel, we meet a Syrophoenician woman who had no problem speaking up and begging Jesus to heal her daughter, who had an unclean spirit (St. Mark vii. 25). She may not have felt that she deserved anything, but that didn’t stop her from desiring fragments of Jesus’ healing power for the healing of her demonized child. She was not a Jewish petitioner but a Gentile seeker. Jesus provoked her when he reminded her that [God’s] children should first be filled; for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to dogs. (Ibid, 27) Jesus was intent on eliciting from her a spiritual gem.  She said, Yes, Lord: yet the dogs under the table eat of the children’s crumbs. (Ibid, 28) Clearly, the Syrophoenician woman thought herself wholly undeserving of God’s Grace. But her faith persisted in procuring God’s Grace from Jesus. Her desire revealed a deep sense of God’s presence in Jesus which His own fellow denied. 

This morning, we encounter a Jewish man who cannot so much as express his desire, let alone think about what he might or might not deserve. He is in the sad and sorry state of being deaf. No doubt he feels great pain at his inability to communicate with the world around him. But there were some kind men who noticed his handicap and would help him to find a remedy. We read: And they bring unto Jesus one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech; and they beseech him to put his hand upon him.(Ibid, 32) Jesus finds goodness in at least some of the Jews who would help their suffering compatriot. As yet, Christ cannot communicate with the deaf man. So Jesus offers a silent prayer to His Heavenly Father. Next we read that Jesus took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed….(Ibid, 33, 34)

Jesus took him aside from the multitude. Too much noisy and senseless talk from the multitude, who can talk but should be quiet, threatens the silence that Jesus needs to impart God’s Grace to us. So Jesus took him aside so that, in solitude and silence, the deaf man might be better able to receive the lasting impression of healing. Jesus does this with us also, taking us into a quiet place to treat our sicknesses and heal our souls. This man needed to encounter God, in Jesus Christ, for the very first time. Thus, in a very elementary way, He heals the man by making use of his operative senses to understand the blessing. The deaf man sees that Jesus put his fingers into his ears, as if to show him that He will open them to hearing. Jesus spits and touches his tongue to indicate that He intends to enable the man to speak. Jesus looks up to Heaven to show he man the source of his impending healing. Thus, the man knows what Jesus intends and accomplishes.

In this morning’s Epistle, St. Paul reminds us that we are not sufficient of ourselves
to think anything as of ourselves; [for] our sufficiency [comes] from God. (2 Cor. iii. 4) My Grace is sufficient for thee. (2 Cor. xii. 19) Christ comes to the deaf man and heals him only after awakening his soul to the source of the healing. Thus, this man realizes that God enables him to see and feel, with wonder and awe, as the approaching God in Jesus Christ opens his ears and unlooses his tongue. There is a double kind of miracle going on here. The man is healed physically but learns spiritually that his sufficiency, or ability to hear and speak, comes from God.
We read also that Christ sighs or groans before He brings about the healing. Christ loves us all truly and longs for nothing more than to heal us from the sad wreckage that sin has caused in the world.

No doubt, we must conclude that physical handicaps like blindness, deafness, and others come from a fallen world. The sadness and sorrow we feel as a fallen race are real and palpable. With St. Paul, we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body… [For] we hope for [what] we [do not yet]see…[and so] we with patience wait for it. (Romans viii. 23) And so, as the Venerable Bede teaches us, [Jesus] looks up to Heaven to teach us that is from there that the dumb must seek speech, the deaf hearing, and all who suffer healing. He [sighed or] groaned, not because he needed to seek with groaning anything from the Father…but that he might give us an example of groaning, when we must call upon the assistance of the heavenly mercy…. (Ibid, 2). Jesus sighs to show us that we must, with deepest inward sighing and groaning, supplicate Heaven for whatever healing we desire. Jesus sighs or groans because He loves us more than we love Him and longs to give to us more than we desire or deserve. (Collect) 

The words of other men have started today’s miracle on course to fruition. But to become conscious of the power of God’s Word, we must ask it for ourselves. Our Collect reveals the kind of miracle that we need. Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. (Collect) Beyond and more important than our earthly handicaps, our souls fear past sins and the wreckage that we have wrought by them; the remembrance of them is grievous unto us, and the burden of them is intolerable. (General Confession: HC Service, BCP 1928) When we are given spiritual ears with which to hear the truth about ourselves, we become conscious of the horror and shame of the past lives we have lived. Our consciences are afraid; they tremble before the presence of Almighty God. In the presence of God’s Word, Jesus Christ, we pray for those good things which we are not worthy to ask. (Collect) We do not deserve to hear, and yet God desires to open our ears. We are ashamed to speak, and yet His Word slowly but surely gives us those words that can establish friendship with Him.

Jesus says Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain. (St. Mark vii. 35) Jesus hears the Word of the Father and speaks His Word. The man now can both hear and speak. The deep impression of God’s heartfelt desire for his salvation now opens his heart to follow Jesus.  

And he charged them that they should tell no man….(Ibid, 36, 37) The new miracle will take time to perfect. Without any fanfare or boasting, we must patiently allow God’s Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, to give us the words with which to approach Him. Perhaps, we are deaf to God’s Word and cannot speak His truth. But Jesus knows all this and wants to help us to learn to speak with Him. Ephphatha, Be Opened, Jesus says. Jesus longs to open the ears of our souls so that we might begin to desire what we don’t deserve but what He insists that we should learn to have.

In the simplest of terms, we begin to hear Christ’s words, Come follow me. Christ calls us to follow Him quietly in the journey up to His Cross. There, we shall see and hear how He offers Himself completely to us. There we shall see and hear how quiet He becomes as the whole world turns on Him. Of course, He isn’t deaf to the accusations of sinful men. Rather, He knows that they are deaf to God’s Word and so cannot speak the truth. So, He is intent upon accomplishing His own work as God’s Word, made flesh, spoken and shared to be heard by those who, in faith, will hear and understand the meaning for salvation. Then, with redeemed words, because we have heard, we shall exclaim, He hath done all things well: he maketh both the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak. (Ibid, 37)
Amen.
©wjsmartin