“Be Opened,” given by Rev. Dr. Jay Marshall Groat, September 8, 2024, at Mount Vernon, Ohio, based on Mark 7:31-3

As I mentioned earlier, this story only appears in Mark. It’s not exactly a well-known, considered pivotal passage of scripture. Nevertheless, I really love it. I love this. I’ll read it one more time, not the whole thing. “They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech, and they begged him to lay his hand on him,” they, being the friends and supporters of the deaf man. His friends bring him to Jesus, and they beg Jesus to lay his hand on him. So, Jesus, who like me and anybody else who went to seminary and took pastoral care as a class, because of that takes him aside in private. This is a pastoral group. Takes him aside in private, away from the crowd, and I just love this part – he puts his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. This is just the two of them. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” and that is “be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

I absolutely love and am intrigued with that statement, “Be opened.” I can’t even say it without moving my hands and arms like this, being opened. Typically, when I prepare a sermon, I start looking at the scripture on Monday. I’m fairly regimented in the way I prepare a sermon. So, I’ve been thinking all week about how we go about living our lives like this, being opened. I have a monthly clergy group, a peer group, that I attend, it’s a very important part of my life. I’ve always enjoyed the concept and whole notion of body language, and one of our colleagues came into our last meeting. I’m going to exaggerate a little. She walked in basically like this (slouches). I thought, hmmm, what is that body language? And then she sat down in her seat and just slumped and crossed her legs and her arms. We have a wonderful relationship, all of us in the group, and it didn’t take me long to say, “Let’s talk about your body language.” She went on to say that life had been very, very difficult for her that week. How can we go about living like this – be opened?

One of my friends, my pastors, one of the wisest persons I’ve ever known, he regularly attends two recovery programs. He has his whole adult life. He was the person who I first heard say to me, he said, “Jay, learn how to lead with your vulnerability.” He was the first one I ever heard say that. Be opened. Lead with your vulnerability, he would say to me. And then he said, “You need to know when you should do that and when you shouldn’t.” There are some people and some groups where the worst thing you could do is lead with your vulnerability. How do we do that as Christians, how do we do that as a congregation? That’s a big question that we get to live with.

I’ve been thinking this week about listening. “Listen” and “silent” are made up of the same letters, you just rearrange them. Silent, listen – same letters. What are we hearing? What are we listening for? I shared it with you before, I’m going to share it very briefly with you again. My son Jackson is working 14, 15, 16 hours a day from his office with a staff in German Village, and driving all over the place in his car trying to get some Ohio U.S. senator re-elected. The political realities of the nation in general and the political realities of the state of Ohio are alive and vibrant and vivid, and a part of the Groat house every day. And the news that came out this week was not good. What am I hearing? What should I listen for?

I’m just going to race through this real quick. There are people who devote their whole lives to this. I’m just going to touch on it very quickly. What does it mean to be an active listener? Ready? There’re seven things. Of course there’re seven, right? There’re always seven. Seven active listening techniques. Number one, be fully present. Be there. I had a mentor very early in my ministry. I was in seminary at the time, and he said, “Listen, when you get your first congregation the number one thing to keep in mind” – and I thought, where’s he going with this? – “is to be there when the pain comes.” He didn’t say, “say the right things,” which is a nice thing. Be there. Be fully present. Number two, pay attention to non-verbal cues. Number three, keep good eye contact. Four, ask open-ended questions. Five, reflect on what you hear. Six, be patient. And seven, withhold judgment.

So, I’m going to finish with this. I’m thinking about listening, I’m thinking about the great mentors and friends and teachers that I’ve listened to over the years, and I’ve put down a few things that I’ve heard when I decided to be opened. The first was from my mom when I was in the third grade. This is one of the things that I heard in my life that made a big difference. I’ve listed these from the oldest to the most current. When I was in third grade the house that we lived in was the Manse, the Presbyterians called it the Manse. We moved out of the Manse and bought our own house the next year. But the Manse in Marysville, 206 North Maple Street, it had a long hallway on the first floor, and I was mad at my mom. I don’t remember why. I’m sure it was something incredibly important. But I was in third grade, I was mad at my mom, and I was about to do something that was not like me. She was way down at the other end of the hallway in the bathroom, where she couldn’t see me. And I was at the other end of the hall, and you know what I did? I stuck my tongue out at her. I used to tell this story every year at Mother’s Day. When my mother was alive, whatever church I was serving, I would always call her on my cell phone during the service and I’d have the whole congregation say Happy Mother’s Day. So, I stuck my tongue out at my mom, a third-grade boy. What I didn’t know was this – there was a full-length mirror on that side of the door, and it was open just enough that she saw me. She walked down the hall, I put two and two together, I realized what had happened. She looked really sad, and she said, “I guess that just shows me how much you love me.” And I spent the rest of my life trying to make it up to her. I think I did.

The next one happened when I was in high school. It was something my dad said. I’ve never been able to shake it and I never will. I don’t want to. Somehow it came up when he was talking about church and serving people and the ups and downs and the things people say, things people do. He said to me, “This is my rule of thumb, I always believe half of what I see” – there’s such wisdom in that – “and as for what I hear, if someone comes up to me and says something good about another person I believed it. And if somebody comes to me and says something bad about another person, I don’t believe it.” I learned that from my dad. I heard it with my ears. 

This one was about 35 years ago when I was an associate pastor. The late, great RogerKunkel was our senior pastor, and he used to say this, he said it a couple times a month in the service. He said, “Jesus didn’t come to make life easy; he came to make us equal to life.” I like that. So now fast-forward to when our son was in fifth grade, and he had an abusive teacher, not physically, but emotionally. If your desk was out of order, she’d shove all your stuff onto the floor, that sort of stuff. I was really struggling with it. Vicki was struggling with it. We ended up talking to the principal, which isn’t like us. I told Jackson, “I’m really struggling with this, I’m sorry you have to go through this.” You know what my fifth-grade son said to me? He said, “You know, Dad, Jesus didn’t come to make life easy, he came to make us equal to life.” Because I say it too.

Twenty-five years ago, I was a senior pastor, had a staff, for the first time, and I had on my staff one of my friends. He was a retired Presbyterian minister, but he was working for us half-time as our minister of pastoral care. He was a dear friend; he’s been dead a long time. I was there a couple years, and you never forget your first time. I got my first anonymous, critical note from somebody in the church. It’s happened not very many times, but it’s happened. It was just a mean-spirited, anonymous note. And I went to Joe, my mentor, my pastoral care staff member, and I showed it to him, and he started to laugh. Now he had been a pastor for decades, 35-plus years. He said, “Jay, sometimes the most valuable piece of office equipment you have is the trash can.”

And then I’ll finish with this. This one happened yesterday. Remember, I’ve been thinking a lot about listening, and I’ve shared with you some wisdom that I’ve heard, and I was open to it. And I heard one yesterday. My best lifelong friend, Dean, we met in third grade. He’s spent his whole adult life raising his children with his wife, Sarah,and being successful in business in California, the Bay Area. And on Monday his 88-year-old mother, who still lived in Worthington, died. She was a great, great woman, a great mother. And Dean and his three siblings are really grieving. I’m doing the funeral on Friday in Marysville. So, we gathered the family this week and we talked about the service, and Dean and his siblings and I walked down the street in Marysville to go have lunch. Dean shared with me how he’s been struggling with the death of his beloved mother. He said, “I’ve sobbed a couple of times. She was just so great.” He told me a story, and this is my last one, which I heard yesterday. When we were in ninth grade, I wasn’t involved with this, Dean got into some trouble – underage drinking, and the police got involved. No arrests or anything, but Dean and the guy he was drinking with, they got to go visit the police station with their parents. And Dean shared with me as we walked to lunch how brokenhearted he was and how ashamed he was that he did this. He said, “I wasn’t that worried about my dad, but I was ashamed and worried that I hurt my mother. I was afraid to talk to her and I even went to bed that night and couldn’t talk to her, I felt so ashamed.” And he said, “That’s when it happened. I was lying in bed and my mom came in the room. I didn’t know what she was going to say, I didn’t know what to say.” She sat down on the edge of his bed and stayed a few minutes. All she did was stroke his head. She didn’t say a word.

We’re talking about a man who’s deaf and mute. And this loving mother didn’t say a word. She stroked her beloved son’s head, and all was forgiven. Be opened. Amen?