Tag: Mark7

Lord unstop our ears to hear Your Word

Posted on by nfuller

“To you, O LORD, I call; my rock, be not deaf to me, lest if you be silent to me, I become like those who go down to the pit.”  Psalm 28:1  Have you ever felt that God is deaf to you? That even if you pray, the Lord does not seem to listen? 

Has it ever felt that God is so silent that you could just die? When we face illness we feel how frail and weak we are and we desire for the Lord to hear us, so we pray be not deaf to me. When disappointments in life pile up and we feel overwhelmed by the challenges before us, we see so clearly that without the Lord’s help we will quickly fail. O Lord hear the voice of my pleas for mercy.

And not only do we fear that Jesus is not listening to us, but we also struggle to ourselves hear God’s Word.  Why else would Isaiah chapter 35 provide a message to those who have an anxious heart, that they should Be Strong and Fear not? An anxious heart hears and sees only what an go wrong and what is dangerous and unsafe. With an anxious heart we may not hear God’s Word, on account of our sin our ears may be deaf to hear the Word.

The message for us in God’s Word today is that especially when we are weak and helpless and when we cry to the Lord for mercy- especially then is the Lord near us. Psalm 146:8 “The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.” 

In our gospel lesson we have before us a vivid picture of the care Jesus has for those who are deaf.   Put yourself there in the gospel narrative. Imagine what the world looked like and felt like for the deaf man in the region of the Decapolis near the sea of Galilee, nearly 2000 years ago who Jesus healed.

The villagers brought the deaf man to Jesus. The man saw the people begging before Jesus on his behalf, asking for Jesus to lay hands on him. The man did not communicate anything himself and before he knew it Jesus took him to a private place away from the crowds.  If you are without hearing it is unsettling to be in a large crowd where without your hearing you rely on your sight for social cues as to what is going on, and you cannot see everyone all at once.

Jesus took him aside from the overstimulation of the crowd and laid his touch on him in the quiet solitude. Jesus placed his fingers in his ears and touched his tongue as well, the very locations where the man’s body was not functioning. As the deaf man saw Jesus right in front of him working on his ears and loosening his tongue he could see and feel Jesus sigh and look up to heaven.

“Ephthatha” The power of God’s Word had immediate result, he could now hear Jesus’ message to him, ears no longer shall you be closed, be open.

There is something extraordinary about hearing restored to the deaf. Where once there was only silence, now a chorus of noise. We attempt to experience the slightest reward of hearing things for the first time in a while. During Lent we stop singing Alleluias. After 6 weeks , when we sing This is the Feast, when the organ sings that familiar melody, we are reminded of the chorus of heaven, the Revelation Song in which the hymn is based.  Imagine the joy of hearing this song for the first time that you have heard anything at all!

After the man received his hearing and had the gift of speech he heard the Son of God tell him to keep this healing miracle a secret. This act of mercy Jesus performed was a sign that the Messiah is here: We heard from Isaiah chapter 35 Then shall the eyes of the blind shall be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped, then shall the lame man leap like a dear, and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. 

The man appeared to have sung for joy after Jesus healed him as we hear in the final verse of our gospel lesson: “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

Jesus says to us in His Word, “Never shall I leave you, never shall I forsake you.”  And yet too often we carry on as if we are all alone in the world, as if Jesus does not hear our pleas for mercy.  We feel as though the burdens we carry belong to ourselves alone. It is like we are wearing headphones and someone in the room says something and you don’t realize someone is talking until they enter your field of vision and wave their arms. We are listening to something else so often and our ears are closed to God’s Word.

In the hardness of our hearts we often do not hear God’s Word, just as Jesus taught about the purpose of parables

12 so that “‘they may indeed see but not perceive,  and may indeed hear but not understand,
lest they should turn and be forgiven.’”

Have you ever noticed when your ears are stopped up? Have you ever noticed the hardness of your heart?  Maybe there is anger you are holding inside you toward someone and you don’t have a lot of space in the moment to hear God’s Word.  Or maybe there is pride, where you are so busy telling yourself why you are right, that there is not much room for you to hear the correction of God’s Word.

And just as important our ears can be stopped from hearing the good news of the gospel.  When you only hear in your mind how much you have failed everyone, when you see yourself as a disappointment, when you feel you have let God down in so many ways, you may struggle to hear and believe that you are perfectly loved by God.

You see, just as Jesus sighed and looked up into heaven before he opened the ears of the deaf man, Jesus sighed in love for you.  He sighed and groaned in agony and looked up to heaven and said it is finished, as he paid the price of our sins on the cross.

Although our sinful nature seeks to reject God, His love is unrelenting. The Father raised Jesus from the grave, so that our rejection of Jesus would not be the final word.  Jesus poured out the Holy Spirit on the disciples so that their forsaking him would not be the final word. And our Triune God claimed you as His own in the waters of Holy Baptism, so that your sin would not be the final word.

Just as the curtain of the temple was torn at the crucifixion, the barrier that stops us from hearing God has also been destroyed. Jesus has taken the ultimate wrecking ball to the walls we put up.  The hardness of our hearts is broken down layer by layer as we come before Jesus in Word and Sacrament, as we take in His Body and Blood and truly hear in faith that this is his body broken for us, this is his blood shed for us for the forgiveness of our sins.

It has been hard going through the transition from one music director to substitute organists and waiting on who may fill the position, whether someone we have met or someone new that the Lord brings to us. It was also an unexpected road bump to receive information in recent months about the repair of our steeple.  The barriers of keeping our congregation as healthy and vibrant seem overwhelming day in and day out. But we must remember God’s Word is open to us. There is absolutely no barrier that keeps us from hearing his Word. If you do best reading on your own time make sure to clean out what stands in your way.

To prosper as a church must be centered on hearing his Word, because we cannot control how many people attend on a Sunday or how well balanced our budget is. If its just about keeping the church afloat, if that is our only focus we are missing what God has to say to us in our lives here and now. By the Holy Spirit’s power, we can hear God’s Word as if we are hearing it for the first time, with the same joy of the man who heard for the first time. 

So as we come to Jesus this day, We pray, “Lord let your merciful ears be open to the prayers of your humble servants. Lord be our strength, Lord be our Rock when we call to you.”   Amen.          

Love God’s Word more than any human creations.

Posted on by nfuller

Brothers and sister in Christ, we know that it is a gift of the Holy Spirit when we are able to sit here in church and focus and listen well as God’s Word is spoken to us. And sometimes our lives can be such where focus is very difficult.

In our gospel reading there are specific details about how pharisees and scribes feel about ceremonial washings and how Jesus’ disciples appeared  to them to eat with defiled hands- that is hands that were not ceremonially cleansed, or vessels like copper pots that were not ceremonially cleansed.  Without a doubt this is not one of the most exciting or captivating gospel readings. No miracle, no apparent connection to Jesus’ amazing love for us on the cross.  

Yes, there are implication for our Christian life and worship as Jesus talks about the danger of outward acts of piety without love for God in our hearts.  However, it is not the most important gospel lesson we have had this summer.  How relevant can a disagreement about the needs and motivations for ceremonial washing be for us when we have gone through a week as a nation with bitter sorrow, knowing that countless American citizens are essentially hostages under a ruthless and dangerous regime?

Perhaps it is a little difficult to be all that concerned about a disagreement about cleansing with water, when we have every reason to believe that thousands of Afghan citizens who helped the U.S. Army in the last 20 years have a bounty on their head and records from the government in the hand of those who consider it a duty to Allah to exact vengeance on such people. How do we focus on God’s Word when the world we live in is so chaotic- where everyone seems to do what they see right in their own eyes without any fear of God?

Yet the Holy Spirit is present with us as we gather for worship. We have been brought here to die to our old self and any expectations of how secular government should be for us, so that we can be born anew in God’s kingdom-  a kingdom which is not of this world.

Yes it may be hard to focus at times, yet God’s Word is always relevant for us.  Because we always have a choice whether we are to put our hope in the promises of God or in the traditions of man.

In our Introit there is a statement of faith that is as relevant as ever to our lives- regardless of what government should collapse next. “Lord I love the habitation of your house and the place where your glory dwells.” 

There are a lot of things that Americans say that they love.”  Chocolate, the blooming onion ring appetizer you can get at some restaurants, going down a water slide at a water park. But usually when we say that we love things we mean we enjoy them.

I enjoy Taco Bell. It probably would be incorrect grammar to say I love Taco Bell.  Or maybe its not grammar that’s not quite right about these things we say, maybe it is our theology. How does what we say compare to what God’s Word says?

The Psalm verse does not say, Lord I enjoy the habitation of your house, Lord I generally prefer the habitation of your house as long as there are not too many things going on in my life.  It says ‘Lord I love.’ 

It is not the building we love. It’s the promise that the Lord comes to us in this building in worship, that His glory dwells with us, we love that He is there for us no matter what when we approach Him in repentance and faith. That is what we love.

We love because He first loved us. By our human nature we are enemies of God.  Yet by faith we can come into the Lord’s presence not begrudgingly, but with love and commitment and passion, because we have been given new life in Christ, because the part of us that fights against being in the Lord’s house has been drowned in Holy Baptism.

Even as we live in our Baptismal New life in Christ, we still face choices about if we are to love the traditions of man, or if we are going to love God’s Word. In our gospel reading we hear how the traditions of man became just as or more important to the pharisees than God’s Word. They challenged Jesus: “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”

 As a way of promoting their self righteousness, the people took up traditions such as hand washing and other cleansing of common everyday materials, as if there actions of making things clean could make them all around better people and more holy. And they used their tradition of upholding these practices as grounds to shame and taunt Jesus and his disciples for not practicing them.

Isaiah chapter 29 describes this outward show of allegiance to God while the heart is elsewhere “Because this people draw near with their mouth and honor me with their lips, while their hearts are far from me, and their fear of me is a commandment taught by men.”

Jesus quotes this passage and correctly applies the meaning of drawing near with mouths and lips as a type of false worship: “This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.”

Jesus then says:  “You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”  The traditions of men were more dear to their hearts. Instead of saying Lord I love the habitation of your house, they were saying, Lord I love what we have done with this house and how we do things better than other believers. When they made it about themselves they left the commandments of God.  Instead of loving God’s Commandments and loving where God’s glory dwells they loved how good they were at their own traditions.

We have some good traditions of how we do worship. The traditions are good. But if we only see the traditions and miss the glory of God present with us, we are missing the point.  It is God’s Word that we need to treasure. And may Lord have mercy on us that our traditions communicate God’s Word more than our pride in ourselves. As Dr. Fickenscher of Concordia theological Seminary has observed in our worship theme readings this morning: “There is plenty to love and rejoice over God’s Word, without teaching as doctrine the words of man.”

There is indeed so much joy in God’s Word, that we do not need to ever put our chief focus on how well we practice traditions of piety. The appointed verse for this Sunday comes from Jeremiah chapter 15: “Your words were found, and I ate them, and your words became to me a joy and the delight of my heart, for I am called by your name, O LORD, God of hosts.”

We can be thankful that in our congregation and in our denomination we do not tell people they need to work harder to be saved, or that people need to have the right emotion and feeling within to be saved. Because we understand the clarity of scripture, and the sufficiency of scripture to save us- we do not feel a need to adopt traditions where we are seeking an emotional experience or another word from God by trying to find evidence or seek signs in the world around us that how we are acting as a church is Godly.  

We believe in the power of God’s Word as an instrument of the Holy Spirit to forgive our sins and save us.  Other church bodies may see the Bible as full of important information that we are given so that we can live our lives according to God’s Will. But they do not see the Bible as what has the power to save us.

In this time in our nation when people focus so much on what our feelings tell us, it appears everyone seeks to do what is right in their own eyes. in this time when so few are listening to God’s Word, the traditions of man are more popular than ever.

May we so love your Word that they are for us our joy and delight. May we see that  we are here in worship not to follow the dictates of our hearts, but to follow God’s heart because we have been called by name. As we sung in our hymn of the day, may we treasure the catechism as Luther taught, not to get lost in traditions, but to follow an order of Christian life that always treasures and gladly receives the gift of Jesus to us.