TO BE OPENED: A SERMON FOR THE 12TH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY

A Beautiful Medieval Western Icon of Christ Healing the Ears and Mouth of the Deaf and Dumb

By Bp. Joseph (Ancient Church of the West) 

INTRODUCTION

Brethren beloved, we are now deep in the green fields of Trinitytide, when the Church bids us tarry with the mystery of growth. Easter has given us life, Pentecost has filled us with fire, and now in these long weeks after Trinity, the Church teaches us what it means to live by the Spirit day by day, “from glory to glory,” as the Apostle saith. It is the season of sanctification, of the steady ripening of the soul toward harvest.

This week our calendar shone with great luminaries: St. Gregory the Great, pastor of pastors and missionary to our British forebears; St. Moses the Lawgiver, who beheld God’s glory in the mount; St. Zechariah the Prophet, who foresaw the coming King “lowly and riding upon an ass”; St. Sharbel the Bishop and Martyr of Persia, who gave his life in blood as a witness; and the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin, tomorrow, dawn of salvation, the morning star before the Sun of Righteousness. These feasts remind us that the Church’s life is not bounded by our age or nation but stretches from Sinai to Persia, from Rome to Bethlehem, and now even to our own gathering for a synod in Southeast Asia this next week. Next week we shall convene our synod there, to deliberate under the Spirit, as did the Apostles and Fathers before us, to guard the faith and to extend the mission.

SCRIPTURE AND PATRISTIC COMMENTARY

The law today gave us the great shadow of Leviticus: the Day of Atonement. Once a year, the high priest, clothed in linen, entered the Holy of Holies, to sprinkle blood before the mercy seat for the cleansing of the people. St. Cyril of Alexandria declares: “The high priest’s entrance foreshadowed Christ, the true High Priest, who not with the blood of goats, but with His own blood entered once for all into the heavenly sanctuary.” Here, already in Moses, we see Christ hidden.

Paul then speaks to us of the two ministries: that of the letter and that of the Spirit. The letter engraved on stone could dazzle the eyes but not change the heart; its glory was fleeting. But the Spirit engraves the law upon fleshly tablets of the heart, as Ezekiel promised: “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you” (Ezek. 36:26). Chrysostom thunders that the Law could condemn but could not justify, but “the ministry of the Spirit doth not only deliver from death but bringeth righteousness abundant, shining with immortal glory.” The Law revealed the wound, but the Spirit imparts the medicine.

And in the Gospel, Christ takes aside a deaf man with a bound tongue, sighs heavenward, and says, “Ephphatha, be opened.” Here is a new creation. St. Ephrem the Syrian remarks: “He who formed the ear in the beginning, now recreates it; He who fashioned the tongue, now looses it for praise.” And St. Bede adds: “The sigh of Christ shows His compassion, for He bore our infirmities not coldly, but with love that groaned for us.” The people rightly cry, “He hath done all things well.” For in Genesis God saw all that He had made, and it was good; now in Galilee God remakes man, and it is better still.

THE SERMON

I will say these things to you now, in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit! 

Beloved, the Spirit is teaching us today that the true work of God is not only to dazzle but to transform. Moses’ face shone with glory, yet the people’s hearts remained stubborn. The Law’s light shone upon them, but the Spirit’s fire must burn within them. It is as Isaiah cried: “Hear, ye deaf; and look, ye blind, that ye may see” (Isa. 42:18). Christ came precisely to make that prophecy real: to open what was shut, to unbind what was chained.

Consider the deaf man in Decapolis. He stands for Israel and for us all. Israel heard the thunder of Sinai yet remained deaf to the still small voice of God. We, too, hear the words of the Gospel with our outward ears, but how often are our inner ears stopped, our tongues slow to confess? How often do we find ourselves as those of whom the Psalmist spake: “They have ears, but they hear not; mouths have they, but speak not” (Ps. 115:5-6). Yet Christ does not abandon us. He takes us aside (note the profound tenderness) and touches us in the very place of our infirmity. He sighs, and His sigh becomes our healing breath.

Here we see the connection with the Day of Atonement. The High Priest entered with fear and trembling once a year. Christ enters daily, hourly, into our deafness, into our dumbness, into our closed hearts, not with the blood of another but with His own. Every sigh of Christ is the Spirit’s groaning within us (Rom. 8:26), carrying our infirmities before the Father. And every opening of ears, every loosening of tongues, is Pentecost renewed.

And what of Sts. Gregory, Moses, Zechariah, Sharbel, and Mary? They are living icons of this very Gospel. Moses saw the glory but longed for the substance. Zechariah promised the King who would come meekly to save. Gregory opened the ears of the English to the Gospel. Sharbel sealed his confession with blood, his tongue loosed forever in heaven. Mary, born in Bethlehem, was herself “Ephphatha”! She was opened unto grace, made the living temple where the Word took flesh.

And we, brethren, are summoned to walk with them. Next week, as our Synod gathers in Southeast Asia, may we not only deliberate with human wisdom but be opened by Christ’s word, loosed by His Spirit, guided by the sigh of His love. The Church’s councils are nothing if not places where deaf ears are opened and mute tongues proclaim, “It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us.”

POETIC REFLECTION

For our meditation, let us turn to Fr. John Donne, priest and poet, who in his Holy Sonnets cries out with the very urgency of “Ephphatha”:

Batter my heart, three-person’d God; for you

As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;

That I may rise, and stand, o’erthrow me, and bend

Your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.

Here is the cry of the deaf man, here is the sigh of Christ, here is the glory of the Spirit: the breaking and remaking of the heart, until it is open and loosed for God alone.

COLLECT

O LORD Jesu Christ, who by thy mercy didst stoop to open the ears of the deaf and to loose the tongue of the dumb: open our ears to hear the voice of thy Spirit, and cleanse our lips to show forth thy praise; that, being transformed from glory to glory, we may with Moses, Zechariah, Gregory, Sharbel, and Mary rejoice in the eternal light of thy kingdom; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost, one God, world without end. Amen.