Be Opened!

St. Augustine of Canterbury Anglican Church

Bishop Peter F. Hansen

Sermon for the 12^th Sunday after Trinity, September 7, 2025

“And he took him aside from the multitude, and put his fingers into his ears, and he spit, and touched his tongue; and looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened. And straightway his ears were opened, and the string of his tongue was loosed, and he spake plain.”

JESUS AND HIS DISCIPLES had spent time in Gentile Phoenicia and now were in the Greek lands east of Galilee. People heard there was a healer there, and they weren’t too fussy what his religion might be. They pleaded with Jesus to heal their friend who was both deaf and dumb, perhaps owing to a trauma in his youth with deep psychological, and now physical impairment. He was totally closed off from his fellow man, unable to hear a word spoken or to ask the favor for himself. So, his friends prayed for him, asking Jesus for his healing. And Jesus did it. How? He touched the man’s ears, touched some of his saliva to the man’s tongue, and then called forth the change by crying out, “BE OPENED!” Ephphatha! Within a split second, hearing returned to the deaf man, and speech to the one who had been dumb.

Why should we pray?

If we don’t have a dire illness or a handicap, is it still worthwhile folding our hands and addressing the God of heaven? Does He have the time for you? Is your need actually big enough to ask a favor of the Lord? Can’t you figure it all out yourself and leave God alone for more important times and issues?

Among the Sunday collects, those universal prayers offered on Sundays, this one is among my top three:

• ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

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We speak to God here about His full readiness to hear us, and His passionate desire to give to us abundantly, that far outstrips our puny willingness to go to Him and ask at all. The question of resorting to prayer is never about how important you are or how desperate your needs might be. He’s fully ready to engage, even right now. Might we say, “For no reason at all?” No, there’s always a reason…

What is prayer for? We might oversimplify it and say it’s a request for God to intervene in our situation, give us a thing we’re unable to make happen ourselves. Heal an illness, get us a job, solve a marital problem, save our land from violence, give me more faith. But prayers are not slot machines and God is not a vending machine. Why pray?

If we have God in our minds safely enthroned lightyears away, and ourselves autonomous on the third planet, we might be de facto agnostics, functional atheists, who use a God-construct to decorate our lives, but not really affect our course of action or define who we are. But our personal story doesn’t confirm the wisdom of that. Every day we need the God from heaven to enter our atmosphere and enter our souls, make us disciples, cure our misdirected aims, and be the true God of you and me. We are human beings. We are body, soul and spirit. We eat food for our bodies, read and listen and seek peace for our souls. What are we doing for our spirits? The only answer is a relationship with the God who is pure Spirit.

If God is love, as St. John repeats, our praying connects us to the love He is and does. The Beatles were right. All you need is love.

Prayer is a two-way radio. We address questions to the source of all knowledge and wisdom, then release the button to wait for answers. You seldom get audible words, but communication is only 10% words.

Going it alone is like a boat at sea. No compass, no sextant? You’re lost and you have no way to judge which way is landfall. God is our guidance system, our spiritual GPS. Am I using too many metaphors?

Jesus asked His Apostles to pray that they resist temptation. Pitfalls in this life are everywhere. You have them in your cellphone, on the TV screen, walking around. God is a shield and antidote.

We are the creatures, He is God. Our need is to align our will with His. CS Lewis said that prayer doesn’t change God, it changes me.

Prayer combined with fasting, even a sacrificed lunch, can tap spiritual depths and strengthen us to intensify the relationship with Him and all of these features we’ve said thus far. Prayer and regular fasting can help you accept God’s will. There are many methods proven effective in having a true sense of God’s presence and Voice in you.

And although Lewis said we pray more to change ourselves, prayer often succeeds to change things in our lives that are wrong by God’s dominion and grace. Call it a miracle. The Bible is full of them.

The Holy Spirit is promised to us by Baptism, strengthened at Confirmation, and operative when we pray. Why would you deny the effectiveness of the most powerful force in existence who is already here?

Prayer initiates with the Father. He wills a communication with us, sends His Spirit to inspire our prayer, which we offer. Then the Redeemer of our lives delivers our petition to His Father, and the circuit is complete. We enter the life of the Trinity and become more like Jesus.

We need communication with God, a relationship more essential than human marriage, where talking to our spouse must be a daily occupation, or else. We pray to show our thankfulness, rejoicing always. Thanksgiving sets the order of existence with God above and us below. It’s odd how often we get that upside down. We confess our sins to God and ask forgiveness “for things whereof our conscience is afraid,” as the collect says. We seek wisdom applied to what we know but can’t work out with our own answers. We pray for the benefit of those we love, or even those we don’t know, and even for people we don’t like! Ever pray a loving prayer for someone you really hate? Why not? It might change them and then you’ve lost an enemy. They were closed, and we were closed. Pray says, Open up! Ephphatha! Be opened!

The Greek-speaking Gentiles east of Galilee had a friend who could only grunt and awkwardly perceive what their pantomimes meant when they were offering him a gift or asking him something. It was a hard relationship and frustrating for all. Then they heard Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish prophet and healer, had come among them. They had no answers to solve their deaf friend’s problem, so why not? In impossible situations we often say, “Well, the least thing we can do is pray.” 

That’s actually funny. Prayer is not a last resort, it ought to be the first arrow we draw from our quiver. And we don’t just shoot skyward hopefully, but aim our arrow with such a statement as this: God, you can do all things, and you live eternally and always shall be. We believe you are fervently ready to hear us, more than we are to speak, and wish better things for us than we desire, better than we deserve. Pour out your merciful favor, open us, forgive us and then give us even what we don’t deserve or dare ask, except through Your Son’s great merits, and His ever loving mediation. Thy will be done. Amen.

+PFH