In the historic Holy Gospel for this past Sunday, the Twelfth Sunday after Holy Trinity, the Lord Jesus heals a deaf man with the touch of His fingers, some spit (however strange that may seem), and the speaking of His Word, “Ephphatha!” (St. Mark 7:31-37). By these ways and means, He opens the man’s ears to hear, and He releases the man’s tongue to speak rightly.
This profound Holy Gospel demonstrates, so beautifully and concretely, the importance of our Lord’s Word and the preaching of it, such as St. Paul describes in the alternate Epistle included in the LSB one-year lectionary for this past Sunday (Romans 10:9-16). The Apostle first lays out a series of rhetorical questions, highlighting the necessity of the preaching office: “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in Him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching? And how are they to preach unless they are sent?” And in response he concludes, “Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ.” So, not only is faith a work of God and His free gift, but even the hearing by which such faith is given to us and worked in us is by the Word of Christ.
It is the same for all of us as it was for the deaf man in the Holy Gospel: The Word of Christ must first of all open our ears before we can hear and receive what He speaks and gives to us by His grace. That is the significance of the Collect in the Divine Service, one of the earliest parts of the Liturgy as we have received it from our fathers in Christ, going back to the start: The Church does not even presume to hear the Holy Scriptures without first of all calling on the Name of the Lord to open our ears, our minds, and our hearts to believe and understand what He there speaks to us, and then also to confess the faith and bear the fruits of faith in our words and actions.
Until the Lord Jesus opens our ears by and with His Word, we can neither hear nor believe what He says; nor can we speak rightly or confess the faith, except by the hearing of His Word. That is inherent in the very concept of confession (homologeō), which is to say the same thing. In order to confess rightly, we must first of all hear what the Lord says to us, that we might say the same thing back to Him and to one another in His Name.
The words of St. Peter in the three-year series Holy Gospel this past Sunday really echo the same point nicely: “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the Words of eternal Life” (St. John 6:68). It is a simple and straightforward fact that we have nowhere else to go for faith and life than to the Word and preaching of Christ Jesus, our Savior. To avail ourselves of His Word, and to give careful attention to His Word, is fundamental to discipleship, to being a student of the one Lord Jesus Christ. Hence, the necessity of ongoing catechesis at every age and stage of life: not only in preparation for Holy Baptism or the Rite of Confirmation, but from the cradle to the grave, irrespective of anyone’s education, occupation, or station.
It is all the more important for those who are called, ordained, and sent to preach and teach the Word of Christ, that they be regularly hearing and receiving His Word – for their own faith and life in Christ Jesus, and so also to speak rightly to those entrusted to their pastoral care. As the Prophet Isaiah writes in anticipation of the Lord Jesus Himself: “The Lord God has given Me the tongue of those who are taught, that I may know how to sustain with a Word him who is weary. Morning by morning He awakens; He awakens my ear to hear as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened My ear, and I was not rebellious” (Isaiah 50:4-5).