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You can talk long distance to your beloved on a telephone. You can correspond via magnetic tape (cassette, VHS). You can see the person on your "picture-phone" or computer screen. But it isn't the same as "real." Talking to someone who isn't actually there with you, is, talking to someone who isn't there.. .WITH YOU. With technology being the applied discoveries and inventions of Man, one is left with the failures and limitations of man. Sinful creatures can at best only construct sinful communication networks. They're elaborate but they're not infallible (we won't even go into the "Postal Service"). Communications break down from seen and unseen reasons. When that happens, you can't hear, all you get is silence. Tapes can "jam" or break (or warp if left in the sun). Sunspots can wreak havoc with radio communication and downed power lines silence telephones. Computers "crash" and ISP's refuse to be "connected to." Man's own sinful incompetence plays itself out everyday in his creations. A popular television commercial has the cell-phone quality-control guy wandering all over the country (the world) asking his friend, his friend's ear, mind, and soul: "can you hear me now?" Can you hear me now?

Yes, some people talk to themselves, but the real joy of human communion (communication) is to talk to someone else, someone that you care about, knowing that they hear you, that they understand and know you. There is a bond of thought, intellect and will...then you are not alone anymore. There is connection and bonding. The two become one. Man was made to be in fellowship with nature, with animals, with his "helpmate" and most of all with his Maker. Sin broke, and breaks, the conversation. The static of trespassing means God can't hear. The unbelief and rebellion of "cut cable lines" means there's nobody on the other end of the pagans' words. You were all pagans at birth.

Aside from the delusional megalomaniac, nobody wants to do all the talking; conversation is two-sided, give and take. You love to hear from your beloved probably even more than you like to talk. And if your beloved is the maker of your body, your soul and your life; if your greatest friend is the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, you have no greater joy than to sit at His feet and listen to Him talk to you. Think of all the scenes contained in the Gospels of people gathered to hear the Lord speak. But to hear the Christ of God, that is to hear Him speak, one needed ears, one needed the physical sense of hearing. Some were deaf. Deafaess is the result of living in a sin-filled and broken world. We're all broken in many and varied ways. Some of us are born deaf. The double earthly curse of having one's sense of hearing marred is that it almost always effectually takes away the sense of speech as well. Deaf people usually don't talk. It was called being a mute in Jesus' day, a "deaf-mute." And, to hear the Christ of God, that is to believe in the content of Jesus' words, the truth of His vocables, to have the faith to really "hear" Him, one needed ears which only the Holy Ghost could provide, one needed the spiritual sense of hearing. All are born deaf in this regard; deaf, dumb, blind enemies of God. Deaf people don't give themselves the gift of auditory release and the joys of hearing. Unbelievers don't chose for themselves the free gift of faith either. God acts. He acts directly and indirectly through His faithful children who share His love and Word with others: "Then they brought to Him one who was deaf and had an impediment in his speech, and they begged Him to put His hand on him." As horrible as it would be today, to be deaf; the sense of isolation, the frustration of being "cut off" can you imagine what it would have been like to have been a deaf mute in 1st century Galilee; talk about being an "outsider," an untouchable piece of refuse. And then on top of all that to have the "religious experts" of the day blame you, yourself, for being deaf [he is such a horrible sinner, his sin is being punished by God] virtually guaranteed you a life of sitting in the street in rags begging for your daily food. But there, in Galilee, was God's Word working through the saints, acting upon those who had heard Messiah and His good news of release, healing, and restoration. Oh to have friends and family like these: "then they brought to Him one who was deaf." But that's you too! You had friends and family like these unnamed benefactors. You also were carried to the font when you were deaf, dumb and dead. Your parents, your God-parents, your parish also begged Jesus to put His hand upon you. He + did.

Yes, what the Nazarene did that fateful day 2000 years ago for the deaf-mute still reverberates today every time a babe is washed into the Kingdom, every time you are absolved of your sin, every time you drink and eat the body and blood of God. But lest we short-change this real, tangible and earthy miracle of Christ with but a "spiritualizing" metaphor, we need to remember the sanctification of flesh. That pathetic creature, your brother from two millennia ago, was given back his hearing; was given back the clarity of his speech. He was restored in his flesh by the God/Man standing there in front of him in the Flesh. That God would become incarnate of the Virgin Mary and made Man, still causes us to kneel in awe and grateful homage. That the Lord rose from the dead on the third day in the Flesh, serves as an everlasting reminder of what will happen to your corpse at the final trump. Every time in the Gospels that Jesus healed a physical infirmity He demonstrated that He was God of God, and He signaled to all "ears which could hear" what will be the end result of your own dying and decaying flesh: "I believe in the resurrection of the body."

The same "Ephatha" which opened the deaf man's ears opened your hearts and souls to the Holy Ghost on the day you were "Christened" in the Savior's Blood...your Baptisms; is the same Word of God which will open your sepulchers at the end. He has opened your ears. You hear and believe. "Oh Lord, Open Thou my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Thy praise."