 |
| Come Heal my Tormented Daughter |
Who
is Jesus? chapter 22
Jesus explains
about tradition; Heals a young girl and opens deaf ears. Our message today is taken from Mark's
gospel chapter seven.
When
their boat had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret. And the
people immediately recognized Jesus and ran about the whole region and began to
bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, to the
villages, cities, or countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and begged
him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as
touched him were made well.
Now when the
Pharisees with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem
And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him,
“Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of our fathers, but
eat with defiled hands?” And Jesus said to them, “Well
did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, "This people
honor me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they
worship me, teaching as doctrine the man made commandments." You leave the
commandments of God in order to carry out your traditions.
And he called the
people to come close and said to them, “Listen, and
understand: There is nothing outside a person that by
going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are
what defile him.”
Now when he had
entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him to explain what
he had just told the people. And he
said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do
you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, since
it enters his stomach and is expelled and not his heart?” (Thus he
declared all foods to be clean.)
And he continued saying; “What
comes out of a persons mouth is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of a person, come evil thoughts, sexual
immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting,
wickedness, deceit, envy, slander, pride, and such foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they degrade a person.”
And after they
had a time of rest, Jesus arose and went away to the region of Tyre
and Sidon
Immediately a woman whose little daughter had an unclean
spirit heard of him and came and fell down at his feet. Now the woman was
a Gentile, a Syrophoenician by birth. And she begged him to cast the demon out
of her daughter. And he said to her, “Let the
children be fed first, for it is not right to take the children’s bread and
throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Yes, Lord; yet even
the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” And he said to
her, “For this statement you may go your way; the demon
has left your daughter.” And she went home and found her child
resting quietly and the demon was gone.
Then he returned
from the region of Tyre and going through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee, in the area of Decapolis .
And they brought to him a man who was deaf and had a problem with his speech,
and they begged Jesus to lay his hand on the man.
And taking him aside from the crowd
privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his
tongue. And looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that means, “Be
opened.” And his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he
spoke plainly.
And Jesus charged them to tell no
one. But the more he charged them, the more zealously they proclaimed it. And they were astonished beyond measure,
saying, “He has done all things well. He even makes the deaf hear and the mute
speak.”
My prayer today
for you is that your spiritual eyes and ears will be opened to Listen to Jesus
saying: Come onto me and I heal your
heart, your eyes and ears, and cause you to become a new person as you follow
me.
No comments:
Post a Comment