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And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well.” You may be seated. In the name of Jesus, amen.
Dear Aidan and all the baptized, the Lord Jesus has opened your ears to hear his word. And the Lord Jesus has opened his ears to hear your prayers. I think these two things are what our pair of miracles want to teach us today. It’s quite marvelous to consider them together because they’re so different, actually, in totally different places and totally different circumstances.
The Lord Jesus first goes up to the region of Tyre and Sidon, which is on the Mediterranean north of Haifa, Mount Carmel, up in areas, very pagan area. He goes up there, and it seems like He’s trying to avoid people, but here this one woman, a Syrophoenician woman, stranger even to that area, comes chasing after Jesus because she needs help. Well, really, her daughter needs desperate help. Her daughter was demonized, troubled with a demon. And Matthew gives us a fuller account than Mark does, although Mark gives us some very interesting details that add to the story.
The first is that this woman is crying after Jesus, and he doesn’t say anything. So, she presses in on him further, saying, “Lord help me, help my daughter.” Even the disciples are getting annoyed, so that the disciples say to Jesus, “Couldn’t you help her?” And he turns and says to the disciples, “I came only for the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Then Jesus goes into a house to get away from her, that’s what Mark tells us. But she won’t be stopped. She goes into the house and falls at the feet of Jesus and says, “Rescue, please, my daughter.”
Jesus finally addresses her, but in some ways, in the worst possible way. He says, “It’s not right to take the food from the children and give it to the dogs.” It’s an amazing thing to say. I think that – I don’t know about you, but I think at some point in that series of events, I would say, “Okay, this obviously isn’t going to work out. This Jesus isn’t going to be for me.” But she doesn’t back down; she’s not offended. She presses in even more, and she takes ahold of the words that Jesus says, “Fine, if you’re going to call me a dog, it’s great. In fact, it’s all I’m looking for. Just give me one word, and I’m going to hold on to it.” She says to him, “Yes, Lord, true enough, but even the dogs eat the scraps that fall from the master’s table.” That’s all I’m asking.
And Jesus’ face, you can almost picture it, how it turns from the stern, no looking away to now looking at her and smiling. In Matthew, He says, “Woman, great is your faith.” Here in the text, it says, “because of the statement,” in fact, how Jesus says to her, “for this statement you may go your way.” Her faith, seen in this, is that she holds on to the words of Jesus. “If you’re going to call me a dog, I’ll take it. It’s fine. I’ll just ask for what the dog gets, the scraps that fall from the table.” How great is her faith, which is just what Jesus wants.
In fact, this whole thing is Jesus teaching His disciples, and you and I, how to pray, to persist in prayer, to hold on to the Lord’s Word in prayer, to know that the Lord wants to answer our prayers even if for a while it looks like He’s ignoring us or saying no, so that we would come to Him and know, and here’s the first miracle, that we would know that His holy ears are open to our prayers. The Lord, dear saints, hears you. He hears your prayers. He hears your groaning. He hears your cries for mercy and for help in all this desperate life. He knows what you need, and He’s ready to hear those prayers and to answer them because He loves you.
I don’t think it should be this way. I mean, I don’t… if you were just to think about it, if the Lord should pay any attention to us at all, the answer is, well, probably not. God, but He does. He knows even the numbers of the hairs on your head. He cares for you with such profound intensity. He knows your every need, and He hears your prayers. That’s the first miracle, is that God opens His ears to us.
And just as a reminder, because I often think that, at least for myself, my prayers falter because my parents taught me… well, tried to teach me manners when I was growing up. One of the things that I think happens in our prayers is that we don’t want to be rude to God. So here we have to remember that the Lord wants us to be persistent in prayer. Every time He tells parables about it, when He says, for example, ask and seek and knock, and the idea of the knocking is that we keep knocking.
My favorite parable that Jesus tells is of the unrighteous judge. Remember, there was a man who was a judge, and he was unrighteous, and he didn’t fear God, and he didn’t fear man. And here’s a widow who needs justice, and she comes to him, and he doesn’t give her justice. In fact, he doesn’t care about her at all, but she keeps coming to him and keeps demanding justice. The judge, even in the parable, Jesus has the judge say, “I don’t fear God, and I don’t fear man, but I’m tired of being annoyed by this widow, and so I’m going to grant her request.” This is Jesus teaching you and me how to pray, that we persist in prayer, that we hold on to the Word of God, and that we don’t let go, and we trust in this most profound gift, that his ears are open to our prayers.
And then we get to the second miracle. Jesus leaves the region of Tyre. He goes north of Sidon, He comes down to the Galilee, and He goes to the other side of Galilee. It’s on the east, southeast side of Galilee, in the area called the Decapolis, also a pagan region that’s settled by the Romans over there. You almost get the sense when you’re reading the text that Jesus is looking for this woman and now looking for this man.
He goes into the region, and they bring him a man who’s deaf and mute, and they beg Jesus to lay hands on him. So Jesus takes him aside, and He does this wild miracle. He takes his fingers, and he puts them into the man’s ears, and then he spits, maybe on his hand, and then he touches the man’s tongue, and then he speaks. Mark is the only one who gives us this miracle, and he gives us a little bit of the Aramaic. He says, in fact, he looks up to heaven, he sighs deeply, and he heals the man and opens his ears, loses his tongue. It’s a beautiful miracle.
Pastor LeBlanc was preaching about it a couple of weeks ago and pointed out how Jesus is using sign language beautifully, but also how Jesus understands the deaf so perfectly. One of the results of being deaf is that your peripheral vision is kind of enlivened much more than it is for the hearing people. And so when Jesus takes the man off by Himself, He’s letting the man focus right on Him, and then He’s performing this miracle in sign language with His fingers in His ears and spitting and touching His tongue and sighing in this way. So even before the man can hear, he can hear the work that Jesus is doing. It’s an amazing thing.
Then He says the word, “Ephedra, be open,” and the man’s ears are opened. It’s a marvel to think that the very first words, that the very first sound that this man hears is the beautiful words from the mouth of Jesus. And here we get to the second miracle. The first is that God’s ears are open to us, but here the second miracle is that our ears are open to God.
It’s an amazing thing to think that each one of us, that God has performed in us this miracle of opening our ears to hear His Word. Now that doesn’t mean just that we hear what the Word sounds like, but this means to open our hearts and to open our minds, not just to hear the sounds of the Word, but to in fact believe what God says. This is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit.
I think about this often because St. Paul begins each one of his letters with thanksgiving, and I think this is his first act of thanksgiving, is that when he’s writing these letters to all the churches, he knows that according to human wisdom, there should be no one there to get them, no one there to receive the letter. And if there was some pastor sitting there to receive the letter, there should be no one coming to church to listen to it. If you and I were left on our own, we would have no desire for the Word of God unless it was to simply mock it or to reject it. We would have no attention for the Word of God. We would have no heart to believe God’s Word. We would cast it off.
But the Holy Spirit has worked this miracle in you and in me that we can hear God’s Word and believe His promises, that we can know that we are sinners who are forgiven, that we are mortals who will live forever, that we are rebels who have been adopted as God’s children, that we who were far off have now been brought near by the suffering and death and blood and compassion of our Lord Jesus Christ, that He’s called us and gathered us and enlightened us with His gospel and given us His truth.
This is all by the Word and the Spirit who has done this miracle in you and given you ears to hear the words that God speaks, His words of compassion and love and comfort and peace. So we rejoice today in these two miracles: that God’s ears are opened to our prayers and that God has opened our ears to hear His Word. May God in this work and in this Word give us joy and peace. Amen.
And the peace of God which passes all understanding, guard your hearts and minds through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
