Sun Kwak, “Breathing in Our Sighs”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9Y4YCuxhKg

TEXT: Mark 7:31-37

[31] Then he returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. [32] And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, and they begged him to lay his hand on him. [33] And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue. [34] And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is, “Be opened.” [35] And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly. [36] And Jesus charged them to tell no one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. [37] And they were astonished beyond measure, saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.”

SERMON: “Breathing in Our Sighs”

What’s wrong? Judy will often ask me. And it’s usually after I let out one of these deep sighs. And sometimes, I avoid the question — and tell her that it’s nothing. But other times, I tell her what’s behind the sigh — that something’s weighing heavy on my heart, and I just don’t know what to do, so I sigh. And I don’t know about you, but a sigh has with it both a reflective aspect and a preparatory aspect. It’s sandwiched in between thought and action. And perhaps, that’s why it could be mistaken as inaction. And in this moment, when you don’t know what to do, when the moment is too much, you sigh — because that’s all you can do at the moment. Scot McKnight came out with a book a couple years ago titled Sighing on Sundays. And it’s a book about church abuse and spiritual abuse. It’s for those who have on one hand the experience of Scripture — that the life-giving Word of God has spoken to them. And what the Word has informed them of is that the church is God’s vessel and means toward him. It’s ultimately for their good and a place of grace and love. And yet, they have on the other hand the lived out experience — of leaders who have acted out of step with the gospel, those who have abused their authority. And so, these victims have become the recipients of emotional, mental, and spiritual abuse. And so, they come to church on Sundays not sure of what to expect — wondering what to believe and skeptical of what’s presented to them. In reflection of their past, and yet, in preparation of worship and promise and hope, they sigh on Sundays. And you see, Jesus sighs in our passage this morning. And it relates to something reflective, something contemplative. And it relates to something preparatory, about something he’s about to do. And here, he takes a deep breath, because he sees what’s happened and what he needs to step into. And as he’s signing, he’s looking back at what has made his people let out these protracted and often hopeless sighs. And at the very same time, he’s sighing as he looks forward in preparation to the moment when his own lungs would collapse on him, where his shoulder would become so sunken in on the cross that he would need to use his nail-pierced hands and feet to lift himself up to gasp for air. And so, in reflection and in preparation, he takes a deep breath, and he lets out a sigh.

And if you’re here this morning where you’re letting out sighs — in this weird in between place, where you see your problems and a future, with no real means to a solution. Where you’re feeling something coming, and you’re having to take a deep breath because you know it’s going to knock the wind out of you. If that’s you this morning, whether it has to do with a bad week or bad month or bad year of work, of relationships, of parenting. Maybe you’re looking back and wondering — How do I unwind myself from this mess? Or, if it’s a certain choice you’ve made, that’s had ripple effects. And it’s causing strain in your relationships. And you’re anticipating, but you’re in this weird place of not knowing what to do in the moment of tension. Or, if you’ve been battling a sin that keeps visiting — whether it’s something related to self-remorse or means to distract yourself or the need to self-medicate or self-gratify. And you’ve fought this sin of yours, and each time, you’ve been beat up and left for dead. Or, if you’ve been involved with deep church hurt or even spiritual abuse and trauma. If you’ve come this morning having to take a deep breath, having let out sighs of defeat and confusion, the invitation from our passage is to take our sighs off of our present moment of helplessness. Not because they’re not heavy nor insignificant. But because he who is our cross bearer is also our sigh bearer. Where he not only sighs in reflection of our sin-stained doom, but where he sighs in place of the doom and wrath deserving for us. And so, we place our sighs on Jesus, who himself sighed also because of what was before his eyes — our hurts, our wounds, our sins, our helpless sighing.

And I hope that through our study of Mark’s Gospel, you’ve come to develop the practice and the reflexes to see yourself not as Jesus in these stories but those that Jesus comes to encounter — whether they’re helplessly wounded outcasts or self-righteous criminals. Because we look at the man brought to Jesus today, and we ask — Who is this deaf and mute man? And most of us might not have a hearing or speech impediment, which may lead you to think that this has nothing to do with you. But here’s the thing. Here’s a man who’s been sighing, much like you in your own unique reasons for sighing. And for this deaf and mute man, his sighing had gotten so deep and so heavy that his friends had to take him, kind of like the paralytic with his friends from chapter 2, to go see Jesus. And maybe you’re here this morning because of loving friends who brought you to church. Or, maybe you’re here this morning, because your parents brought you to church growing up. But most, if not all of us, have often dragged our feet to the sanctuary. And maybe dragged here, by one way or another. But we come here to see Jesus together and alongside one another, through all of our sighing, our hurts, our helplessness, to the one who sighed for us and with us, to the point of his lungs collapsing on the cross when we read that he breathed his last. Trusting his Father to the very last when saying — In to your hands I commit my spirit. CTo fill our hearts with air, to breathe into us life. Not just to sigh but to truly exhale, as the breath of God’s Word and his promises fill our hearts and our souls with lasting spiritual oxygen.

The context here is that Jesus is in the Decapolis, which is another Gentile place and in the Greek means ten cities. And as we’d noted last week, this is a new tide, a turning of a new chapter in the larger Story of God. And here, there are growing evidences that Jesus is special, that he’s the one, and that this is the pivotal moment in redemptive history. He’s here healing the sick, restoring sight, with all of these miracles. And he’s reversing the irreversible, which includes not just suspending the laws of nature but bringing the ostracized and outcasted into the center in this new way of life in his kingdom. And so, here’s this deaf man in our story, who might be all of the above and some more. He’s deaf but also unable to speak. And so, he’s also poor and illiterate. And he has had to make a practice of depending on others for his survival and well-being. Here was a man who was socially downtrodden, and he had no legs to lift himself up from where he was. And yet, it’s to this man who’s not only socially downtrodden but also from a Gentile region. Here’s Jesus, who’s been ministering to Jews for the most part, who goes out of his way to reach over to minister to this man who was otherwise out of reach and hopeless, who’d been sighing day after day wondering if there was any hope on the other side.

And something we noted last week was that these unexpected encounters direct us to the changing tides, the coming of a new era in the grander Story of God. And while it’s surprising and unexpected, it’s not random. It’s something that’s been planned and something that’s been foreseen and written by the promises. And something we note at the end of our passage, when Jesus heals this deaf and mute man in our story. The reaction from those who observed this incident — He does all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak. For you look at the very beginning of the Bible. What is the repeated exclamation and exhale that we find at the end of each day of creation? Not a sigh, but the exhale — It was good. That he’d done all things well. And this is what Mark is cuing us into. Here is Jesus, who’s come to a broken world with sinful inhabitants and decaying effects. And he’s here to bring reversal. Because to touch this man with his saliva is like if someone got cured of a cold by another who coughed on him or her. It’s neither hygienic nor scientifically proper. But it signals us to a great reversal, to the coming of a new age, where the clean will overpower the dirty and the innocent will overpower the guilty.

And this word that Jesus uses in his Aramaic expression — ephphatha. You see, Mark could have translated this into something Greek, but he doesn’t. Because some things are best left in their own native language. There’s a word in Korean that I would never translate — because there isn’t an English word that would serve as a proper substitute. And it’s the word jung, which also happens to be Cohen’s Korean name. And there’s really no English correlative. The closest thing might be like when you tell someone — You’ve got heart. But even then, it’s not the same thing, because it also relates to how you feel relationally to the other person. And it’s a word that holds so much meaning for Koreans, because it’s a word that also carries over from our parents’ experiences as those living in the hardships as a once third world country. And so, in preserving this native language, what Jesus seems to be doing is bringing a bit of home into this foreign setting. Because he’s not just in Gentile quarters, but his whole ministry has been away from home, so to speak. And here, I think Jesus gives us a sneak peek of home — for him and for us. That here, Jesus may have been saying this saying — ephphatha — not only to open the ears of the man but also to open the heavens. And it’s this sneak peek into the new heavens and new earth that we see with him reaching the unreached and reversing what’s irreversible.

Because that word for speech impediment that we find in verse 32 is the same word for mute that’s translated for us when looking at Isaiah 35 from the LXX, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. And in the whole of Scripture, it’s the only other place where this Greek word is used, which makes it a deliberate connection. And when you look over in Isaiah 35, what the prophet Isaiah is doing is speaking in the midst of tension. Much like our sighs, he’s reflecting on the past and contemplating what’s future. And he’s bracing his people to look forward while in the midst of this coming season of sighing, where a broken people would be devastated circumstantially and temporarily. But not without hope and promise of that sneak peek at home, the new creation of God’s coming kingdom. For it’s there in Isaiah 35 that the prophet refers to blossoming in the wilderness, which is completely illogical. But to have something blossom in the wilderness is to say that one day, the place where blossoming is to occur will no longer be a wilderness as it once was but a place of prospering and nurture. No longer this dried and desert wasteland. And that’s good news for us who find ourselves in the wilderness. Because it’s not that God will take away the wilderness. Or move us away from the wilderness. But he comes into it. So that when we’re there, we can know that he’s there by our side. Because Jesus himself had committed to be among his people in the wilderness to take the parched land and fill it with water, his living water, that he might be parched in our place on the cross for our sins and for all of our sighs that have left our throats dry while gasping for air. This is life in the place of death, watering in the place of wasting, about the great reversal, where the new creation promises we have because of one who stepped into our curses, our shame, and our condemnation.

Because Jesus would ultimately trade places with this man here in our passage. For once again, Jesus doesn’t just heal here. But he draws near, and he likewise sighs. This is a deep sigh, that once again, brings us to that place in Isaiah 35. Because there, we have clear words pronounced for redemption and ransom that describe our relationship to God and to him entering into our sighing. It’s not something that will happen just at the snap of a finger. But it will cost him in order to restore what’s broken and rent. In Isaiah 35, the reflection is that of exile but the preparation is that of homecoming. And the prophet Isaiah is inviting his people into this vision, to expect and to prepare their hearts to see clearly and dream big. Because things will never be the same when the king arrives and brings his upside down kingdom. For to bring these people back, there would need to involve a heavy cost. And it’s a purchase, where we as hostages would be held against our will. And there is a purchase price to this liberation, that we might be set free and liberated from our sin and death. And it’s only when the God of this universe, the Son who became flesh, the king who came to serve his servants. It’s when Jesus would emerge into this dying and decaying creation to bring about a new creation through his entrance into the marketplace of sin and death. And here he is, sighing at the cost — for the wages of sin is death. And not a physical death but an emotional, relational, physical, and spiritual death.

For what do we read in Isaiah 35:8? It’s a word we saw in the beginning of the Gospel of Mark. And it’s the word highway. It’s a word that Isaiah 40 would use to describe the entrance of the king. And what’s radical here is that the king would come — but not as other kings would. He would not come to conquer and to subjugate but rather to liberateand to set free. And he would do so by identifying with and among the hurts of his wounded and imprisoned people. And what kind of story is this? Where a king comes to pay the price of those who have offended him and betrayed him? Where this king comes to win back his slaves by not just redeeming us of our rebellion but by wearing our rebellion and our acts of treason in public shame?

For here, when Jesus heals this deaf and mute man, he lets out a sigh, because he knows the ultimate cost. He knows that there will come a time, when he would be made mute, where heaven would cease to hear his tongue, his speech, where the Father would not hear him when in the Garden of Gethsemane mere moments from anticipating the reality of the cost. And he would submit himself — Father, not as I will but as you will. And there, he would experience ultimate wounding and ostracizing, where would be unable to be heard. But on the cross, he would experience the other half of this man’s cursedness. For there, he would be unable to hear. Those words that he longed to hear and needed repeated to him — You are my beloved Son, with whom I am well-pleased. And instead, he became sin, and his Father couldn’t see him at that moment, as anything other than that.

And for centuries and for generations, the cry on the cross — It is finished, paid in full. This cry has opened the ears of those who were held captive to our sins. And may it be that this is something that is loudly proclaimed to our hearing today, as those who live in a world filled with sighs and disappointments. And here’s the thing. When this man in our story is healed, the first voice he hears is Jesus’ voice — like a newborn baby who first hears the voice of her mother. But the passage also tells us that his tongue is loosened, and he’s lead to speak. Because it’s what he hears that leads him to what he speaks. And that word for loose is a special word in the Greek. It’s the word that seminarians use to learn our conjugations. But it’s a word that has with it supreme authority. It has to do with release something that was once held captive, like setting one free. Like what Jesus would promise to do in the new creation. Like what the prophet Isaiah pointed God’s people forward to. And while it’s something that’s future, it’s also something that impact us today. For what we’re told in Matthew 16:18 is that when the apostle Peter proclaims the gospel, he and those who likewise proclaim the gospel, are given the power, the authority to loose, to set free hearts that are held captive. And it has that kind of authority each time we encounter it. It applies to the one who’s never heard the gospel, who’s been wondering — What kind of story is this? What kind of kingdom is this? And it also applies to us who have heard the gospel, who know the gospel.

Whether you’re sighing because of circumstances, because of sinful entrapments and patterns, because of a seemingly hopeless scenario. We are loosed, released from our enslavement to that which renders us helpless at times. Though we may come sighing on Sundays, my hope is that we might leave praising on Sundays. Because what’s constrained in our hearts has been loosed, set free by the power of the gospel. So church, we come here week by week to see Jesustogether and alongside one another, through all of our sighing, our hurts, our helplessness, to the one who sighed for us and with us, to the point of his lungs collapsing on the cross. To fill our hearts with air, to breathe into us life. Not just to sigh but to truly exhale, as the breath of God’s Word and his promises fill our hearts and our souls with lasting spiritual oxygen. And may that cause our lungs to fill our lips with praise in anticipation, in preparation that the best is yet to come. A little like what Joel the Unicorn says at the end of The Chronicles of Narnia — that when things are right, this is home, that this is where we belong, that this is what we were created for. We get a little foretaste of that every time we get together and listen with opened ears to the story of the gospel.