Sermon for The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 2025

Jesus looked up to heaven, and sighed. It’s a rather remarkable, though subtle, piece of the Gospel the Evangelist gives us here: that, before healing this poor man with a physical touch in such a sensitive way, Jesus sighed. He was intimately involved in making what was wrong with this man right. That was all encompassed in His sigh. And so also is encompassed all of the wrong, all of the evil, all of the trouble, all of the sin, all of the death that has come upon this world since its beginning. You might say that every tear ever shed, every heartbreak ever experienced, every death ever suffered, was all encompassed in that sigh, with the intention of making it right. 

And then, He made it right. He says to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” He spoke to him, and He made it right. Here is the power of His almighty word: that same Word who spoke creation into existence. At the very beginning, when all that He had made was without form, and void, and all was darkness, He said, “Let there be light”; and there was light. He said, “Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters and let it divide the waters above from the waters beneath”; and it was so. He said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear”; and it was so. He said, “Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to divide the day from the night”; and it was so. He said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the expanse of the heavens”; and it was so. He said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so. He said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness”; and it was so. And He said, “Be opened”; and it was so. Immediately his ears were opened, and the impediment of his tongue was loosed, and he spoke plainly. Behold the magnificent, wondrous, immense, infinite power of His almighty word. 

Readings:

• Old Testament: Isaiah 29:17-24

• Epistle: Romans 10:9-17

• Holy Gospel: Mark 7:31-37

Sermon: