In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit

Jesus has just traveled from the region of Tyre and Sidon, a place where He cast out a demon that held a young girl in its grip. Now, our Lord is by the Sea of Galilee, and again He comes face to face with a person in the bondage of Satan. The people bring to Jesus a man whose ears are imprisoned with deafness and whose tongue is bound by an impediment of speech. For when a person cannot hear, neither can he speak clearly or rightly. Such is the goal of the devil: to disrupt and tear down the lives and the capacities of those created in the image of God, to cause people trouble in both soul and body. He does this in an attempt to turn our hearts away from the Lord.

It is not incorrect to see the working of the devil in one's physical troubles. For was it not through Satan's temptations that sin entered the world, bringing with it sickness and pain and death itself? Indeed, that is why St. Paul refers to his "thorn in the flesh," his bodily ailment, as "a messenger of Satan to buffet me." Likewise, the Old Testament reading connects deafness and blindness and poverty to the work of "the terrible one" and "the scornful one," namely, the devil.

Nevertheless, the Lord uses even Satan's destructive schemes to accomplish His own righteous purposes. The Apostle Paul spoke of how although God wouldn't take away his physical troubles, He taught Paul through those troubles to trust entirely in His grace and His power in Christ. In this way the devil's onslaughts are turned upside down so that they cause us to cling more tightly to the Lord's promised salvation. You've probably experienced this in your own life. Isn't it true that you often turn to God most eagerly and pray to Him most passionately in difficult times-like when you're facing financial difficulties, or right before a surgery, or in the midst of illness or ongoing bodily pain? Thus even through those bad things the devil, the destroyer, is turned against himself. For though we may be weak of ourselves, yet we are made to be strong in the Lord. For our trust is then directed ever more fervently to God's strength and mercy. When Satan buffets us, the Holy Spirit draws us to pray in faith the words of the Psalm, "Make haste, O God, to deliver me! Make haste to help me, O Lord!"

However, we cannot pray in this way unless the Lord first opens our ears and unlooses our tongue. For like the man in the Gospel we are by nature deaf and mute towards God. Being bound by Satan even from birth, our ears are closed off and calloused towards God. We don't naturally grasp His words or perceive what He says. We don't "speak His language." The impediment in our hearing also causes an impediment in our talking, our praying. It's sort of like listening to music on headphones with the volume up. If someone tries to talk to you, the noise keeps you from hearing them. And if you try to speak back to them, your speech is liable to be slurred and funny sounding because you can't really hear yourself. That's also how it is in our relationship with God. The noise of the world and of our own fallen nature keeps us from hearing Him speak, from listening to and grasping His words. And our speech back to Him, if there is any, is slurred and garbled and turned inward by sin. Indeed, in a very real way, we are just like the deaf-mute in today's Gospel.
The people bring this man to Jesus and beg Him to put His hand on him. Immediately, Jesus takes the man aside, away from the crowds. He doesn't want to make a show. This isn't for the TV and the tabloids. What Jesus does is so different from the so-called celebrity "faith healers" of our day. Jesus never sought celebrity. And he doesn't use the misfortune of others to draw attention to Himself. He is completely there for this man. He has Jesus' undivided attention.

Jesus uses a bit of sign language. He reaches out to him in a way that acknowledges him personally. Jesus reaches out to the man where he is and deals with him in his language. Jesus takes his fingers and sticks them in the man's ears. Then he spits on his fingers and the touches the man's tongue. He touches what is broken with the Creator's touch. The Great Physician is at work. He is "hands on," not distant and removed.

When Jesus touched someone, they were touched by the hands of God. God is a hands-on God, who stepped down from His glory in heaven, to step into our human flesh, to dwell among us and touch us through His own true humanity-fingers in the ears, spitting and grabbing tongues. He is the God who deals with us as the human creatures that we are. None of this out of body "spiritual" nonsense we hear about today. God deals with us in the grubby, ordinary, earthy, everyday way of our human existence. When Jesus stuck his fingers into that man's ears, they were the fingers of God. When Jesus touched the man's tongue, it was God touching his tongue.

Even now our Lord comes into contact with us not only according to His divine nature but also according to His bodily human nature. He touches us tangibly in the sacraments. We meet Him face to face in the Supper of His body and blood. He takes us aside and lays His hands on us in baptism and in private absolution and speaks to us His words of forgiveness and release. Indeed, our Lord still attends to His people personally, hands on.

But why does Jesus do it in this specific way, fingers in the ears and spit on the tongue? Well firstly, in the Scriptures, the "finger of God" is another term for the Holy Spirit. So when Jesus puts His fingers into the man's ears, that shows us that it is only by the working of the Spirit of Christ that our ears are opened rightly to hear God's Word. It is only by the Holy Spirit's power that we are made able and willing to listen to and understand and believe His saving Gospel. I Corinthians 2 says, "The natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them." "[But] we have received . . . the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God." Jesus opens our ears by His Spirit, the finger of God, that we may hear and comprehend and hold to His words of life. It's just like after Jesus' resurrection when He appeared to His disciples. Luke 24 says, "And He opened their understanding, [opened is the same word that Jesus spoke to the deaf-mute] that they might comprehend the Scriptures."

Secondly, when Jesus spits and touches the man's tongue, that is clearly a picture for us of Holy Baptism, in which our Lord touches us with water and unlooses our tongue rightly to sing of His glory. The Psalmist says, "O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise." In Baptism, the Lord puts His name on us, that we may call upon His name in prayer. And the Lord places into our mouths His own words, His very saliva, so to speak, that our once muted tongues may sound forth with the words of the faith-the confessing of the creed, the singing of the church's hymns, the proclaiming of His marvelous deeds and His life-giving teaching. It is written, "(The Lord) has put a new song in my mouth, a hymn of praise to our God." By first opening our ears to hear His Word rightly, the Lord also opens our mouth to sing and confess the faith rightly. First the ears, then the mouth. The speaking flows from the hearing. Christ puts His words into our ears, and they flow off of our tongue back to Him in prayer and praise.

Jesus looks up to heaven. He sighs and says to the deaf mute, "Ephphatha," which means "Be opened." Immediately his ears are opened and the impediment of his tongue is loosed, and he speaks plainly. Notice that when Jesus says, "Be opened," He speaks not just to the man's ears and mouth but to his whole person. For the words, "Be opened" can also be understood in the original language as meaning, "Be released!" Jesus is here releasing this man from his bondage to Satan. He is setting him free from that hellish prison. Jesus' miracle is more than just evidence of his power over bodily ailments; it is evidence of His triumph over the devil. Jesus' words shatter the chains by which the evil one holds his victim bound.

Our Lord's words also shatter the chains which bind and enslave you. He says to you, too, "Ephphatha! Be released!" And by water and the Spirit you are set free from the powers of darkness. "Depart, O unclean spirit, and make room for the Holy Spirit." So it is that at the font the Lord liberates you from the control of the oppressor-and that is a miracle no less marvelous than the one here by the Sea of Galilee. Christ releases and frees you from Satan's grip and brings you into the loving and uplifting hands of God, as the Psalm says, "The Lord gives freedom to the prisoners."

That freedom, however, does not come without a price. For as Jesus is about to speak, He sighs, He groans. Our Lord groans because He takes on Himself all the things that cause us to groan-the pain, the loneliness, the troubles-whatever binds and imprisons us. You see, in order to release us from the captivity of Satan, the Lord put Himself under that captivity. He let Himself be placed into the hands of the powers of darkness, who finally killed Him. There on the cross He made direct contact with our sin-like the fingers in the ears-and He groaned and breathed His last in our place. However, through that death He was not defeated but victorious. For in so doing Christ took away the sin that gives Satan his power. He overcame all that makes us sigh and groan in this fallen world and put it to death. And by rising bodily from the grave, He restored the bodies of all the faithful to life that is whole and immortal and imperishable-no more deafness and blindness and disease and death. That resurrection life will be revealed to us and to the whole creation when Christ returns on the Last Day. Isaiah prophesied of this when he said, "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. The humble also shall increase their joy in the Lord, and the poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel. For the terrible one is brought to nothing, the scornful one is consumed."

It is because Satan is indeed consumed and brought to nothing that this man's tongue is released to speak plainly and truthfully about the immeasurable goodness of Christ the Savior. In fact it's not just the deaf mute who now speaks but also all those with him. Although Jesus commands them not to tell anyone, they can't hold it in; they are driven to speak. The more Jesus commands them, the more widely they proclaim what He has done. Is that not how it is with the Gospel? The freeing Gospel of Christ cannot be restrained or bound but proceeds ever onward in the ears and on the lips of His church, of you His people.

God grant, then, that you who have had your ears opened and your tongues loosed by Christ may confess before the world with these people in the Gospel, "He has done all things well. He makes both the deaf to hear and the mute to speak."

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit