To watch the sermon click here.
Good morning. It’s so good to see you. It’s a wonderful day today. It is our fall picnic. And it is a day filled with power of the Holy Spirit; which makes the Gospel that we encounter appropriate for this moment, because buried within it is a singular, powerful word that reveals the power of the living God.
Every so often, we run across a word like this in the Bible. The term for this type of word is Hapax Legomena, which is a word used only one time in the Bible. Now, as you heard the Gospel read, I am sure it wasn’t immediately clear which word this was. Don’t worry, it’s my job to point this out.
The word is Ephphatha, which means be thou open. Jad, our Communications Director, told me that this ancient Aramaic word has a corollary in Arabic, which is the word “open” as in “open Sesame.” “Open Sesame” as in the phrase made popular by the 1944 film Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves.
We hear this word, Ephphatha, spoken from the mouth of Jesus today with a sigh, as if power is being drawn forth from him: as if the spirit of God, the Ruach, is working its way through the corridors of eternity and up the stairwells of his soul, OUT – to unbind the soul of another.Be thou open. Ephphatha. Open Sesame. And the man standing before Jesus is liberated.
Now here is the context. We find Jesus somewhere near the Decapolis. He is walking along. Seems people know he is in town. Seems people know he is a person of spiritual power.So, some guys bring their friend to Jesus to lay hands upon him, that’s all.
The story says he is deaf and mute. I doubt if this is an actual physiological state as to not be able to speak or hear to some is a blessing, if not a superpower; and certainly not something that must be fixed. This is more likely a case of the man being spiritually stuck.
As a sidenote, I just got back from a little time in Montana with my sister, my son, my brother-in-law, my brother and my parents. My dad now wears hearing aids, sometimes. And I asked why only sometimes, to which he responded: “Sometimes it is better to not hear.”
Anyway, the friends ask Jesus to lay his hands upon this man. But Jesus takes him aside, in private, away from the crowds, which is not what they ask him to do, but it’s what Jesus does, because sometimes we ask God for one thing, and God does something else. We never know what’s going to happen when we encounter the power of the living God.
Then Jesus does the unexpected…he puts his fingers in his ears, he spits, he touches his tongue. He looks up to heaven, signs, and says “Be thou open.” Open Sesame. Ephphatha. And he is opened. The Greek word for “open” here is dianogia as in to draw back a curtain, and find behind it a tunnel that connects with God.
Jesus pulled aside the curtain with a word, Be thou open. Ephphatha. Instantly the man was liberated, ears opened, tongue released, soul accessible as the mess of materialism that junked over the entrance to his soul, was cleared away. Now he could speak plainly.
This is a super gritty story. It’s earthy. This is road work on a hot August day. Heavy lifting. Jesus is doing something. He is putting his finger in this guy’s ears, spits, puts his fingers in this guy’s mouth, touches his tongue. It’s tactile. It’s material. It’s physical. It is God in the world. It is encountering the living God.
Jesus exhales. He sighs. With a word the Holy Spirit moves, boring through the rubble that lay over the entrance to this man’s soul, pulverizing the rocks that piled up due to spiritual inattention, liberating him and reconnecting him to the living God that had always been there. The curtain had been pulled back.
Now, what does this mean for us? How do we encounter the power of the living God without myofunctional therapy? Well, we find some good examples in the Bible: on the road to Emmaus; at the martyrdom of Stephen; and at the conversion of Lydia.
Let’s take a look. We begin on the road to Emmaus, where we find two people heartbroken that their leader, Jesus, was murdered on a cross. As they walk along, they meet a man who opens their souls to God by speaking plainly to them about Holy Scripture. He takes the Bible and uses it as a frontend loader to clear a path between their souls and God. The curtain is pulled back, and they encounter the living God.
Then there is Stephen, the first deacon in the church. He is confronted by leaders who want him to disavow the name of Jesus. He will not do it, and so they stone him. As he is suffering under a deluge of rocks, his eyes are opened, and he sees Jesus, plainly, standing next to God. Suffering acting as an excavator that clears a tunnel that connects our souls to God. The curtain pulled back in suffering, and the living God encountered.
Then there is Lydia. She is a merchant of purple dye and as such, a person of great wealth and standing. She’s down by the riverbanks near the city of Philippi in Macedonia. There she hears Paul preaching plainly, her heart is opened, and it becomes clear to her that, as the first European convert to Christianity, that it is her calling to fund Paul’s mission in Europe. Lydia’s generosity becomes the road-grader that smooths the highway between her soul and God. The curtain is pulled back, and she encounters the living God.
This is gritty stuff, this road work of connecting to God:the frontend loader of Scripture, the excavator of suffering, the road-grader of generosity.
I know what this road work is like. I’ve been there, and not just because I drove the I-90 back from Montana this summer. I know what it is like because I know what it is like to have my soul cut off by the rock piles of my life.
I’ve been in a place where I couldn’t speak plainly. I have been a complicator of things. That’s what we become when think we are the kings of our own kingdom. We twist and contort and shapeshift to create realities that are not really real, but only result in piling up rocks over the entrance to our souls.
When I went to college I left Christianity – because you can’t have two kings, and I was ready to be the king of my own kingdom. But God set in my midst friends who were Christians… even practicing ones which was unusual at an “elite” university, even 40 years ago.
We would talk for hours about God. I was the complicator in the conversation, and they spoke plainly. And while they didn’t lift me up and bring me to Jesus, they modeled what it’s like, to have ears that could hear God in the cavern of their souls, and tongues that spoke plainly of God.
And the patterns of their life resonated with me over time, crescendo-ing into transformation…when my life got too complicated, I remembered them, and I knew where to turn. I picked up the shovel and begin to clear the debris I had piled at the entrance to my soul. And I am still digging, but now there are some breezeways through which the Holy Spirit can move.
As we come to the end of this sermon, I must admit I don’t know what debris sits between your soul and God. I don’t know if you are the fellows walking on the road to Emmaus ready to have the curtain pulled back by Scripture. Or if in suffering you have seen Jesus. Maybe it is through your generosity and philanthropy that your life is being transformed, and the curtain pulled back. I don’t know.
But I do know that today you’ve been given a word, a word that you may be employed to help loosen a friend’s tongue or open their ears to the reality of their own soul. Or to clear the debris in your own life. It is a word we share and own; a unique word, a hapax legomena, spoken by Jesus once, to resonate through eternity for all time. Ephphatha. Open Sesame.
“Be thou opened” to the power of God in your lives; “be thou open” to the eternal depth of your soul; “be thou open” to the love that is streaming forth from God.