The Hopeful Sigh of God
Your hurt changes to hope because Jesus sighs.
Have you ever played that joke where you get a few friends together on a busy sidewalk, and all of you look intently up into the sky. Others pass by and they look up into the sky also, to find what you’re looking at, and but you tell them you’re not looking at anything. You just wanted to see how many others you could get to look up in the sky. Gotcha!
The Bible says in Mark 7 that when healing one man, Jesus “looked up to heaven,” except Jesus had a real purpose for it. Jesus also looked up to heaven when performing other miracles. “Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves,” before he fed the 5,000 (Mark 6:41). When he raised Lazarus from the dead, Jesus “looked up and said, ‘Father, I thank you that you have heard me’” (John 11:41).
In the case of this deaf man, however, it doesn’t appear that Jesus is looking up to heaven for thanks, because when he looks up to heaven he does so “with a deep sigh.”
This deep sigh is not a quick huff, like expelling a bunch of air from the lungs. It is more like a groan. A deep, gut-wrenching groan like you’d hear from a football player writing on the field who just tore an ACL. A pain-filled groan.
Yes, Jesus is hurting.
Like the Bible says we hurt at when “we groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for … the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:23). Or, “We groan and are burdened … so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life” (2 Corinthians 5:4). There’s this pain we have. It doesn’t bleed, it doesn’t nauseate us, it doesn’t make our nerves scream, but it hurts.
It’s the pain of sin. The hurt of our mortality. The burden of knowing we allow ourselves to be less than God expects, and the consequences that come along with it – broken relationships, disease, guilt, stress, and death to name a few. Those hurt us, and right here they were hurting Jesus who approached this man to reverse sin’s dreadful consequences.
It’s a compassion that calls for sacrifice – bloody, painful, deadly sacrifice like the commitment of a nation that goes to war and sends its sons and daughters to die for freedom. The pain-filled groans of thousands of children who lost a mommy in the war or thousands of parents who lost a son in the war doesn’t compare to the painful compassion Jesus bears in this moment, and in every healing miracle he performed. “He drove out the spirits … and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases’” (Matthew 8:16,17).
The Jesus painfully sighing for this deaf man to hear is the Jesus painfully crying from the cross, “My God! My God!” He leaves nothing of sin alone. He bears it all – the mistakes, the bad decisions, the burdened consciences, as well as the sickness, the stress, the death, and the bitter loneliness and separation from God. At his own hurtful expense.
The Jesus speaking into the ears of a deaf man who will not be deaf anymore, “Ephphatha! (Be opened)” is the Jesus risen from the opened tomb for believers who will die but not remain dead, who will fall into sin again and again but rise up again, and again, and again.
With every healing, and with his very death and resurrection, Jesus reverses the effects of sin with his painful compassion. Jesus healed this man not as a wonder-worker but as the world’s Savior who takes issue with all of sin and its consequences, starting with defect and disease, ending with death, and including every hurt in between.
Your hurt changes to hope because Jesus sighs – and redeems you from sin’s effects forever.
PRAYER: O, Jesus, come and heal me too. Heals us. Heal humanity of our selfish tunnel vision, our greed for money and power, and our love of self. Heal me of watching it all happen and doing less than I should for the world, and for my deficiencies. Remember me, even as you had mercy on the deaf man and opened his ears. Open me to your promises. Open me to love others. Open me to your life-saving sigh. Amen.