Loose Our Tongues to Tell Your Kindness

Did you notice the link between the Old Testament and the Gospel lesson today? We have prophecy and fulfillment going on here. Isaiah proclaims that when God comes to settle the score and save His people, blind people will have their sight restored; the ears of the deaf will be unstopped; the lame man will leap like the deer and the tongue of the mute sing for joy. Some six hundred years after Isaiah’s poetic proclamation, Mark reports in his gospel that a man who was deaf and who had a speech impediment was taken aside by Jesus and healed, in the words of the text, “his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.” God was doing what he said he would do, in Jesus, His Son. God had come to save. God had come with vengeance and with recompense. In other words, it’s payback time. Satan’s defeat is imminent. And God is already beginning to put his broken creation back together again, one person at a time, like the deaf man in the gospel of Mark.
When God comes around and acts in people’s lives, look at the response: “then the tongue of the mute sing for joy.” When God’s gifts hit home, there is a response of joy—an impulse to express our thanks to God, and, in the words of our liturgy, to “tell everyone what he has done.” The crowds who knew the deaf man in Mark’s gospel could not help themselves. The more Jesus charged them to keep this miracle on the down low, the more zealously they proclaimed it. Jesus had generated major buzz in the region of Decapolis. 1900 years before Arabella Katherine Hankey wrote her famous hymn, the people of that region were “Loving To Tell The Story,” saying “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute speak.” That’s just what happens when Jesus touches a human life. Or is it?
Is it true that people who have received the blessings of Jesus can’t stop talking about Him? Or have we learned to live in a different way? Are you quick to share with others the things that Jesus has done for you, or are you more likely to keep such things to yourself, obeying our culture’s dictates to keep “religion and politics” out of polite conversation? Now it is true that when we share our faith, we want to be tactful, winsome, and as gracious as possible. But it is also true that there have been times that the Lord put the ball on the tee for me; all I had to do was swing, and I didn’t. I didn’t speak even a simple word about what the Lord is up to, and I am haunted by that failure. Some of you may be able to relate with my predicament and the guilt that goes along with this type of inaction.
Our self-defensive nature shoots back: “But I don’t have some big conversion testimony to tell. I was never miraculously healed of a disease. I was never amazingly spared some accident. What do I have to share with people?”
Well, first of all, are you sure you’re not forgetting anything? Certain that the Lord did not come through for you in a major way at some point in your life? And, follow me on this, how exactly do you know that God never saved you from a disaster if it didn’t happen? More importantly though, can any Christian really say that God hasn’t done anything “dramatic” in his or her life? What about Jesus leaving the security of heaven, being born of a woman in an animal shelter, having to be hidden from paranoid rulers who wanted him dead? What about his baptism in the Jordan River, with the voice of the Father booming out and the Holy Spirit visibly appearing? What about his fulfillment of prophecy after prophecy, such as the one here in Isaiah 35? What about his clashes with the religious establishment? What about his unjust trial, the cruel beatings, the scathing words, the catastrophic effect of the Roman whip, the agony of his hours before the cross? What about his death on that Good Friday? What about coming back to life after three days in the grave? What about the fact that it was all for you? All so that your sins could be erased and forgotten? All so that you could live knowing that God has made peace with you? All so that you can die in confident expectation of heavenly joy and a future resurrection of the body? What about those things? What about your baptism, by which a life-giving connection was forged between you and Jesus? What about the Lord’s Supper, where Jesus serves you his own body and blood for the assurance that your sins are completely forgiven? You may or may not have a riveting “personal testimony,” but one thing is sure: you have this—Jesus lived, died, rose, and still rules so that your ears could be opened to hear his Word of truth; your eyes could be opened to see things His way; and your mouth could be opened to declare His praises. Since He has done all this for us, let’s be open about our faith and open to share His story—which is of course, our story now too.