Sermon for the 12th Sunday after Trinity, 2021

Homily for Trinity 12

Fr. Tony H. Melton

August 22, 2021

 CHILDREN’S HOMILY

Raise your hand if you like to play with Play-dough. Isn’t it so fun? I like to play with Play-dough, too. When I was your age, I used to make people with Play-dough. Have you ever done that? You have to roll up the legs and arms, and make a ball for the head. Once you have the torso, limbs, and head, you poke holes for the eyes, nose, and ears. Right?

One of my friends and mentors is Fr. Thom Smith. Fr. Thom is an artist, and one of the things he loves to do is make clay figurines. He makes these really silly faces. I once got to see him make one. He made the cheeks and the shape of the head with his thumbs. He used his pinky to make the eye sockets. He used his fingernail to make the lines for the face and lips and eyebrows. Finally, he used a toothpick for the nose, eyes, mouth, and ears. It was almost like a person was coming to live out of the clay.

I’m biased, but I think Fr. Thom is the 2nd greatest figurine maker in the whole world. Do you know who is the 1st greatest? God. When did God make figurines out of clay? [Genesis] That’s right! God make Adam out of the clay, and after making holes for his nostrils, mouth, and ears, He breathed into Adam and made the clay figurine alive!

This is an important idea to have in mind this morning when we hear the Gospel lesson. Jesus is traveling with His disciples near a town and the people in the town brought him a man who could not hear and could not speak. His ears and his tongue didn’t work properly. Jesus took him aside from the crowd of people and stood in front of the man and He took his fingers and pressed them into the man’s ears. Then he spit on his finger and pressed it into the man’s mouth and tongue. And then he breathed out. He looked up to heaven and said, “Ephatha” which means, “Be opened.” And the man could hear and speak!

What was Jesus doing? It was like in the Garden when God made Adam out of clay. Jesus was making this man new, and He was starting with the man’s ears and mouth.

This is a picture of the Gospel. God is remaking us. He is making us new. When we are born, we are like Adam and we are like the man who couldn’t hear or speak. Because there is sin in our hearts, our bodies don’t always work right, and even more often our souls don’t work right. Have you ever been really sick? Have you ever been really selfish? Or said things when your are angry that you don’t mean? When God made Adam out of clay and breathed into his nostrils, He didn’t intend for Adam to get sick, or selfish, or wrathful. But, sin brought death and sin. God needs to remake us, starting in our hearts but in the end he will give us new bodies, too. God has done this with you and He continues to do it even when you can’t see it.

When we are born, our hearts cannot hear God’s voice, our tongues cannot sing God’s praise, our eyes cannot see God’s glory. Every one of us was like the man in the story. We had no hope until Jesus came and opened our eyes, and opened our ears, and loosed our tongues. When you are baptized, God’s Spirit begins to remake us. So, God has opened your eyes, ears, and mouth.

Even though you can’t see it, God lives in you and He is remaking your heart and soul even right now. What God is doing in your heart, even right now, is more glorious even than when Moses met with God in the tent and came out with his face shining bright. That is happening in your heart and in your mind. Even if you can’t see it, and even if you can’t feel it. And when sin creeps into your heart, like a dragon in a cave, and your ears don’t hear God’s voice, and your eyes don’t see God’s gift, and our mouth doesn’t sing God’s praise, Jesus comes again and reopens them and breaths new life into you and makes you whole again.

Isn’t that great news? God is doing a work in you. This should fill you with what Paul calls “trust”. He says in the first words of the Epistle this morning, “Such trust have we through Christ to God.” Such trust. Do you trust that will make you holy? Do you trust that God will make you kind? Do you trust that God forgives you for what you’ve done? What about when we don’t act right? What about when we keep doing the same thing over and over? You can still trust God. He isn’t just making us behave better, He is making our hearts new. “Fr. Tony, what if I don’t feel like praying, or singing, or being kind, or being holy?” You can still trust God. Our prayer for the week says that God is always more ready to hear than we are to pray, and gives more than we desire or deserve. You can trust God that He is working in you, remaking you, so that when He is done with you, you will see God in everything. You will hear His voice. You will speak His Truth and His Gospel boldly. Trust God, children, for He is remaking you, even now, into mighty men and women for His kingdom. Amen.

 ADULT HOMILY

Adults, we’ll continue briefly on this topic. Another way to say this is that the Gospel is not primarily behavioral. The Gospel is primarily ontological. Ontos is the Greek word for being. The Gospel remakes our very being. God truly is refashioning a new humanity, sacramentally united with His Son, filled with the Holy Spirit, the breath of God. We are the people whom God has breathed upon and said, “Ephatha.”

This is the contrast that St. Paul is making in the Epistle. Who can deny that the Old Covenant was glorious. They couldn’t even look at Moses’ face! Yet, the Old Covenant stopped at the behavioral. It wasn’t ontological. It didn’t remake the soul as a new creation in Christ. This is why Paul calls it the ministry of condemnation. So if that covenant was glorious, how much more that New Covenant that actually fixes our problem!?

Where do we go with such amazing news? Again, we respond with Faith. This is harder than you might expect. This ministration of glory that is in us, do you sense that in your day to day life? Mothers, when you think about the shining of Moses’ face, do you always feel that your experience of the Gospel is more glorious? Those of you who are aging, do you always feel that your body has been made whole ontologically? We must pray for Faith. Jesus in this story wanted to hide what would later be made manifest, but He also made manifest what would be made hidden for a long time after. He was making clear that He does posses the power to heal us entirely, though we cannot see it very often. For the vast majority of Christians, Jesus does not actually spit and touch their tongue, but He does inspire our voices to sing today. He didn’t often stick His fingers in people’s ears, but He does cause us to hear His Word and understand it. He only washed a few disciple’s feet, but He works in you when you get your spouse a glass of water, or encourage a fellow parishioner, or volunteer at the parish. There is a glory that is planted within us, that is germinated by tears of contrition and the light of the Word. Who knows what it will be when are resurrected? Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. Our first response to the Good News is Faith.

And the second is to Trust. We must Trust that God is in control. He must take the people of Galilee at their word: “He hath done all thing well.” When we Trust God that He will do what He says He will, that is almost indistinguishable from Faith. But there is another aspect of Trust that we can find in the Epistle today.

In 2nd Corinthians, Paul is having to defend his ministry. There are impressive preachers talking trash about Paul. They say he is weak in speech, harsh in writing, etc. Paul in this epistle is making the point that Christians are free from the need to compare themselves with each other. We can accept the unimpressiveness of ourselves and of others because we know that behind the veil of our fallen humanity, hidden from the world, is a blazing fire of the living God coursing through our veins, pulsing in our minds, refashioning us mightily yet imperceptibly, gloriously yet hidden. To foist ourselves around or to wallow in self-critique is to ignore the reality that actually binds us together. Our communion with God is based on His action toward us. Our communion with each other is based on His action toward us. Our identity is not in where we are in our journey, but in where God is taking us. Our sufficiency is not in what we do, but in how God is making us.

Our sufficiency is of God. These five words are worthy of our contemplation. If this truth were to sink itself so deeply into our souls, what would it purge us of? I bet it would surprise us. Would it change the way we talked with people? Would we be as quick to silliness and coarse joking? Our affirmation is of God. Would it change the way we related to others? You can see in the Epistle that the reason Paul is not threatened by these “super apostles” is because he does not compare himself with others because his sufficiency is in God. It would change the way we wash the dishes! Because any action done or word spoken which does not have its energy and its sufficiency from God is an action done apart from God, which corrupts the soul and makes it pitiful. Living in that sufficiency makes us trusting, humble, peaceful, meek, happy, others-focused, servant-hearted, hopeful, secure.

Paul knew this well. So did the man whose ears were open and tongue loosed. Beloved, let us be a people who hold fast to the hope that God is working in us. And let us be a people who trust in that work for our sufficiency.