Sermon for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity
“Ephphatha”… “Be opened”
Hearing and seeing are the biblical senses of the understanding. It might seem, at first, that they are simply about what is received, that they are, as it were, merely passive senses, the senses of reception. Something seen is received by the eye; something heard is received by the ear. But there is an activity as well, the activity of seeing and the activity of hearing.
What is seen and heard is there for the understanding. There is something communicated, the meaning of which we enter into through the activity of understanding. For it is not just the words which are heard or the vision which is seen that is received. What the words signify, what the vision reveals, is given to be understood.
Our understanding is our wrestling with the significance of things. It is a profoundly spiritual activity. It speaks to who we are in the sight of God – those to whom God reveals himself and into whose presence he would have us come. Hearing and seeing as the senses of understanding mean that there is an acting upon what is received. There is a similar double-sidedness to our “being opened.”
In the Gospel for today, “they bring unto [Jesus] one that was deaf, and had an impediment in his speech”. They beseech the healing touch of Jesus upon someone who is deaf and, if not altogether dumb, at least impeded in his speech to the point that others must speak for him. In response to their request, Jesus puts his fingers into his ears, spits upon the ground, and touches his tongue – all outward, tangible and physical acts – but, as well, and just as remarkably, Jesus’ “look[s] up to heaven”, “he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, be opened”. There is, in short, a healing: “and straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”
As with all the healing miracles of the gospels, they signify the restoration of our humanity. What is wanted by God is not the deformity of our being but the perfection of our humanity. What is wanted is our being made totally and completely adequate to the truth of God; in short, our being opened to God signals our willingness to will what God wills for us.
