"Be Opened" | The Rev. Heidi Thorsen | September 8, 2024

Sermon Preached: September 8, 2024 at Trinity on the Green

Year B, Proper 18 (Track 2): Isaiah 35:4-7a | Psalm 146 | James 2:1-10, [11-13], 14-17 | Mark 7:24-37

May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our hearts be pleasing to God. Amen.

“Looking up to heaven, [Jesus] sighed and said to [the man who could not speak], ‘Ephphatha,’ that is, ‘Be opened.’ And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

I was at the park last weekend, when I noticed two kids (a 4 and a 7 year old) playing familiar game: “What’s the password??” one of them shouted, leaning out from beneath a slide. The other kid shouted something back, and they started a loud conversation about what the password might be. There was shouting, there was laughing, there was even some growling - and then my two year old daughter walked up to see what the excitement was all about. At that point I think the older kids’ dad shouted something about being nice to the sweet little toddler girl. But my daughter made it very clear that she is 100% okay with games that involve a little running and a little shouting. In fact, I think she probably growled back at them. Fifteen minutes later they were running all around the playground together, chasing and laughing and occasionally shouting “what’s the password!” And that was the beginning of a beautiful playground friendship.

What is the password? As kids, we love to imagine secret passwords and hidden treasures. Just say, “open sesame,” and the cave opens before you, like in the old stories of the Arabian nights. There is a kind of playfulness and magic in the idea of a secret password.

In today’s Gospel we encounter a word that almost sounds like a secret password, at first. Ephphatha, Jesus says to the man who is deaf and mute, and suddenly his ears are opened and his mouth is able to speak. It’s as if Jesus has cracked the secret code for healing with a few strange gestures and this magical word. Of note, the Gospel of Mark is the only book in the Bible in which the word ephphatha appears. It’s an Aramaic word, the common language that Jesus spoke. While the Gospels are written in Greek, the language of the ruling power at the time, the writer of Mark was often particular about using the Aramaic language in recounting stories of Jesus’ ministry. Ephphatha means exactly what the Gospel says it means, “be opened.”

Reading this story alone, it might be easy to imagine that faith is a bit like magic. Just say the right words and - poof! - a man’s ears are opened, and his speech impediment is healed. But faith doesn’t work that way. Prayer doesn’t work that way. Our belief in Jesus does not immediately cure us from all the things that ail us. Belief in Jesus doesn’t make us rich, or successful, or unceasingly happy. Belief in Jesus does not shield us from pain. But I will tell you one thing that following Jesus will do, for you and for me. It will open us up. It will open our eyes to see others as God sees them. It will open our minds, to see the ways that we have put up false boundaries that distance us from people who are different. It will open our hearts, to love our neighbors as ourselves. Following Jesus Christ will not fix our lives in some magical way. But it will open us up. Open sesame. Ephphatha. Be opened.

Both of the healing stories in today’s Gospel Lesson are about being opened. 

In the first story, the story of how Jesus heals the daughter of a Syrophonecian woman, Jesus’ ministry is opened up to a broader community of people. As Christians we often take it for granted that Jesus’ ministry extended both to Jews and Gentiles - Gentile being the Biblical word for all non-Jewish people. And yet it is in stories like this that we see Jesus doing something remarkably different from other religious leaders of his time. Jesus is opening up the boundaries of who deserves a seat at the table. He is challenging his followers to think differently about the community - about the kingdom they are called to be part of. Jesus’ words to the woman may sound harsh at first glance: “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But the ongoing dialogue between Jesus and the Syrophonecian woman makes it clear that he regards her as a peer; as a woman whose words deserve to be heard by himself and by the disciples - who are no doubt eavesdropping in the near distance. This story is just one of many in the Gospels that show Jesus opening up what it means to be a part of this community of faith. Jesus eats bread with tax collectors and sinners, and describes the kingdom of heaven as a tree with all kinds of birds nesting in its branches. At each step of his ministry, Jesus cracks open our understanding of what community means until we realize that we are connected to something much, much bigger than ourselves.

The second story of healing in today’s Gospel is also a story of being opened up, but in a more literal way. A deaf man with a speech impediment is brought to Jesus and, miraculously, healed. It’s important to notice how that healing is described. The scripture says that the man’s ears were opened, and his tongue was released. These are words of liberation. They suggest that there wasn’t anything inherently wrong with the man before he met Jesus. There was, however, a greater freedom that the man had yet to experience. The experience of being opened in all of his senses.

That is what I wish for all of us, myself included, when we draw near to God. That we may be opened. Ephphatha. Be opened.

Be open to seeing yourself, not as you wish you could be, but simply as you are - with all of your gifts and challenges.

Be open to seeing this world, broken as it is. Be open to seeing and naming the realities of war, genocide, hunger, gun violence - so that we might do something about it.

Be open to seeing both sides of a conflict - not because we are weak or wavering, but because we affirm that each and every person contains in themselves a seed of God’s divine image.

Be open to change, because Jesus was always encouraging us to imagine a better world.

Be open to sharing yourself with others, because you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

Be opened.

Some of the earliest followers of Jesus described sin as a state of being curled up unto oneself. St. Augustine of Hippo, a 4th and 5th century theologian from Africa, was the first person to coin this term in Latin - incurvatus in se - meaning “turned inward on oneself.” If sin is a state of being curled up into one’s self, then salvation is its opposite, the state of being open. There are times in my life when I can feel myself curving inward– times when I feel lonely, or threatened, or unworthy. The Gospel of Jesus Christ reminds me to open up again - like a flower towards the sun, like a cat stretching in late summer, like a toddler running around a park with complete openness to every new friend she meets. Be opened. 

That is the Good News that Jesus proclaimed. 

That is the faith that we practice. 

That is my prayer for all of us today. 

Be opened. Be free to connect with your true self, with God, and with the world. Be opened. Amen.