We live in a world full of noise. The construction noise from the renovation work across the street fills the area outside the church during the day, and the sound of students talking loudly as they go to and from parties and bars fill the same area during the night. We can carry music and videos wherever we go, and listen with earphones or speakers wherever we are.
With all of the noise around us, we find ways to close our ears to those around us. Headphones and ear buds can be noise-canceling or at least noise reducing, keeping the outside noise out so you only hear what you want to hear. Ear plugs are cheap and readily available whenever you will be around something that makes a lot of noise, be it a lawnmower, a concert, or just a neighbor’s party. We also learn to close our ears to false promises. Even though we’re bombarded by political ads, we just ignore the noise; ignoring the promises by both parties that will never be fulfilled.
We don’t just close our ears to distracting noises, though. We close them to noises we need to hear. Students with headphones will walk into each other or out into the street without being able to hear surrounding noise that could warn them of dangers. Children just turn their music up to avoid listening to their parents, and spouses turn up the TV to avoid talking to one another. We close our ears to avoid dealing with many things.
Although some of you have hearing aids, most of us don’t have our ears as closed as the deaf mute man in today’s Gospel lesson. If you can’t hear me, you can either turn up your hearing aid or get the assisted listening device from the back. If you don’t want to hear me, you may have turned down your hearing aids to get a nap in during the sermon. But we live in a world where it’s easier for someone who has lost the ability to hear to get along. Signs, closed captioning on TV, American Sign Language, video blogs and other advances allow those who are hearing impaired or deaf to function in society better than they could even a few years ago.
The man Jesus heals had none of that, though. He had no way of communicating with those around him. He had no way to hear what others said to him, and no way to speak to them. In a society where literacy was rare, he couldn’t even communicate with texts. He was closed off, and needed help from the outside to be opened.
The others around Jesus were deaf, too. Their ears were closed to God speaking to them. Their ears were closed to what Jesus was really doing. James and John heard all of the teaching of Jesus on humility, yet still asked about which one of them would have a greater position in heaven. Peter heard Jesus’ promise when he walked out on the water, yet still doubted. All the disciples heard Jesus preach about how he had to die and rise again, but they were still caught by surprise when Good Friday and Easter came. It took Jesus appearing to them after Easter to open their minds. They heard and understood, and then went out to tell. But not until they understood. Not until they were opened to the possibility that God was doing a new thing in Jesus.
But that is why Jesus was sent into the world. Jesus was sent into the world to open up all of us who are closed off from God and each other because of sin. Jesus was sent to go behind the closed stone of the tomb to open the way to heaven for all who believe in Him. Jesus was sent to forgive us for all our sins, all the times that we close our ears and refuse to listen to God or each other.
Our music groups began rehearsals this past week, and they need to have opened ears. The choir members need to listen to each other in their section in order to sing together, to match pitch and rhythm, and to be able to enunciate clearly and at the same time. (You all should be doing that as you sing hymns, too!) If you can’t hear, it’s hard to sing.
Once our ears are opened, and the word of God dwells within us, our mouths and our hearts are also opened. As we hear in the Psalms (and some of you may remember from doing a Matins service), “O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth will declare your praise.” Once the word of God is within us, once we have heard the good news, we want others to hear it, too. Unlike the people who saw Jesus miracle, though, we know the whole story. We know who Jesus is. But like them, we can’t keep the good news to ourselves. We are sent out to proclaim that word to a world that would cover its ears with its hands to ignore the word. And so we don’t just use words, just as Jesus didn’t just use words. Jesus used touch to heal and communicate to the deaf man. The word gets proclaimed in many and various ways; in actions throughout the church, the community, and the world.
Kenda Dean, a professor at Princeton Theological Seminary, wrote a book called Almost Christian: What the Faith of Our Teenagers is Telling the American Church.In it, she writes about how teenagers don’t use the language of faith because they haven’t heard it. “‘The language, and therefore experience, of Trinity, holiness, sin, grace, justification, sanctification, church, Eucharist, heaven and hell appear, among most Christian teenagers in the United States at the very least, to be supplanted by the language of happiness, niceness, and an earned heavenly reward.’ If teenagers are barometers of a larger theological shift taking place in American culture, we can be sure that adolescents are not alone in their religious inarticulacy. … What we can say with some certainty is that American young people have enormous trouble putting faith into words.” Like the deaf and mute man, we can’t speak what we haven’t heard.
Like the deaf man who had trouble speaking, we can have trouble speaking about God when we don’t listen to God, when we can’t hear God clearly, when we let other noises get in our ears. It can be hard to hear God speak above the din of distractions, the various voices clamoring for our attention, the fierce winds of false teachings, and the desperation of our own anxious thoughts. It is especially difficult to hear the Lord if we do not spend time reading our Bibles and talking about our faith with those around us daily. It is nearly impossible to hear God’s voice if we do not gather for worship with other believers. And if we do not believe in Jesus Christ as our Savior, the spiritual silence will be deafening—and deadening. It may well be that our ears are stuffed and our mouths are stopped. We don’t hear what God is saying, so neither do we know what to say in reply.
“Be opened!” Jesus commands! And by the power of his Word, our ears are opened and our tongues are loosed. By the power of his word, our hard hearts are softened. By the power of his Word, the Holy Spirit creates faith in our hearts to believe in Jesus and receive his message. Jesus’ Word heals us and makes us whole. “Be opened!” he says, and that very Word opens our ears and hearts to receive and believe his Word. No less amazing than the healing of the deaf man is the healing of the sinners heart by the forgiveness Christ won for us on the cross.
Sin closes us off from God and each other, and stuffs our ears so that we cannot hear how much God loves us. Jesus continues to come to open the ears of the deaf and the mouths of the mute so that we may say, hear, and even sing God’s praises. We are sent out to speak words of love, to speak comfort, to proclaim good news. Open your ears and listen. Open your mouths and speak.
Pastor David Beagley
Memorial Lutheran Church and Student Center
Ames, Iowa
September 6, 2015