As I prepare my message for Sunday, Sept. 6, 2015, on Mark 7:31-37, I was thinking about why Jesus wanted to do the mir
acle of giving hearing to the deaf man a secret. Jesus had done other previous miracles in view of an audience but not this time. He takes the deaf man aside and does some strange things to him–poking his fingers in his ears and putting spit on the man's tongue. To many people, this would be repulsive. However, I believe Jesus was trying to communicate what He was about to do to the man. In an ancient form of sign language, Jesus was probably showing him that He was about to unplug his ears and free his tongue to talk! And the means by which this would happen would be through the personal touch of Jesus. After all, Jesus only had to touch people and they would be healed. Since this man couldn't hear, Jesus communicated that He would heal his ears and tongue!
Isn't it amazing how Jesus still personally touches our lives? In baptism, Jesus washes our sins away and in a sense, proclaims to our heart, "Be Opened!" By pouring His love into us, we are truly opened to love others with the love of God! I love that Jesus still speaks to the brokeness in our lives as well in Holy Communion. Jesus intimately feeds our souls and proclaims to people whose lives get clogged with sin, "Be Opened!" Just like going to the doctor to get ears cleaned out or even more severely, when one has to get an angioplasty to get arteries cleaned out, so too Jesus is our Great Physician ready to clean and clear out sin in our lives!
