Shame and spitting [Trinity 12]

LISTEN TO THE AUDIO HERE.

READINGS FROM HOLY SCRIPTURE:

• Isaiah 29:17-24

• 2 Corinthians 3:4-11

• St. Mark 7:31-37

 

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. (Rom 1)

 

Who speaks you this morning saying,

“And taking him aside from the crowd privately, he put his fingers into his ears, and after spitting touched his tongue.”

 

I apologize to those of sensitive constitutions, for today we are going to talk about spitting, because Jesus is spitting today. And up until this point in history, spitting has always been considered negatively. Its always been an insult to spit at someone. 

 

Indeed, the Old Testament thinks so as well. In Numbers 12, Miriam and Aaron are insulting Moses saying that anyone can be a pastor. God gives leprosy to Miriam in response, but Moses prays for her healing. God says “no”. She must be exiled for 7 days in her uncleanness. The Lord says in v.14, “If her father had but spit in her face, would she not be shamed seven days? Let her be shut out of the camp seven days, and afterward she may be received again.”

 

Miriam had not only spat in Moses’ face, but in God’s face. For, to the people, Moses stood in the stead and by the command of God, as God (Ex 4:16). To insult Moses was to insult God. Miriam should have had enough respect for her heavenly Father, through Moses, to feel shame for her actions, but she didn’t.

 

In Deuteronomy 25, the man who will not take his brother’s widow as his wife and give her children in his dead brother’s stead is a man who spits in the face of his brother. The Lord says, “But if he stands firm and says, ‘I do not want to take her,’ ⁹ then his brother’s wife shall come to him in the presence of the elders, remove his sandal from his foot, spit in his face, and answer and say, ‘So shall it be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house.’ ¹⁰ And his name shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him who had his sandal removed’” (v.8-10).

 

This same idea has bled into our own culture. Spitting has famously and constantly been a horrible thing. In fact, the U.S. 9th Circuit court of Appeals wrote in 2004 that, “Intentionally spitting on another person is an offensive touching that rises to the level of simple assault.” The key word there is “rises”, as in comes close but not quite. Even Maryland law allegedly says that spitting may satisfy the elements of a crime, but probably not. So, maybe spitting isn’t so bad?

 

Even in our modern hysteria, the question is: is spitting biological warfare? You know, cuz plandemic and stuff. Turns out, you can’t get sick by someone spitting on you, your mouth is pretty clean on its own, after all. As usual, the science is not absolutely conclusive, but there is support for the proposition that spitting on someone may not be the type of physical contact necessary to transmit disease. A lesson we should have learned from the AIDS virus.

 

Regardless, Jesus is spitting today and we know it is not Him engaging in aggravated assault. Or is He? Not assault against the deaf and dumb man, but against the demons and the sin holding this man in prison and preventing his hearing the Gospel and confessing it correctly.

 

And it is not about impurity either. In fact, Leviticus agrees with the alleged state law by saying that even if someone is sick and they spit on you, all you need do to become clean again is to launder your clothes and take a bath and you’re purified, able to come back to church in a day (Lev 15:8).

 

And that’s it. That is the extent that spitting goes in the Bible, in regards to us. For this we repent. We have discovered nothing useful so far in hearing God’s Word, which could be seen as spitting on God, which is an abomination. For all of God’s Word speaks the Gospel and brings faith to the hearer. So what are we missing? The usual.

 

That is the extent of spitting as regards us. But that is not the end of God’s Word on the subject. Indeed, the very first thing that should come out of the Christian’s mouth, when talking or thinking about spitting, is the Passion of our Lord.

 

Listen to the other half of the Old Testament verses talking about spitting:

Job uses the word after he calls his friends “miserable comforters” (16:1) and wonders out loud where his hope will come from, as he is “a man before whom men spit” (17:6) and towards the end of his argument in chapter 30, “They do not hesitate to spit in my face” (v.10).

 

Jeremiah, in 51:34, says “the king of Babylon

Has devoured me, he has crushed me;

He has made me an empty vessel,

He has swallowed me up like a monster;

He has filled his stomach with my delicacies,

He has spit me out”.

 

And of course, everyone’s favorite from Handel’s Messiah:

“I gave My back to those who struck Me,

And My cheeks to those who plucked out the beard;

I did not hide My face from shame and spitting” (Isa 50:6)

 

In all of these instances, we hear of man spitting on man, and since God was made man, now man spits on God.

 

It is not for nothing that Jesus predicts His suffering and death 3 times and the third time says, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be betrayed to the chief priests and to the scribes; and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him to the Gentiles; and they will mock Him, and scourge Him, and spit on Him, and kill Him. And the third day He will rise again” (St. Mark 10:33-34).

 

And spit they did. The priests (Mk 14:65), the Romans (Mk 15:19), and possibly everyone that saw Jesus, as Psalm 22 says, “all they that see Him, laugh Him to scorn; they shoot out the lip saying, ‘He trusted in God that He would deliver Him let Him deliver Him if He delight in Him.” “Shoot out the lip” could mean “spitting”. 

 

In any case, the spitting that is done is done by the sinner towards God. And when 1 John 3:2 says “we will be like Him”, the deaf and dumb man in today’s Gospel is getting a physical picture of what is to happen to his Savior and is spat upon. This man is getting the picture book version of just how much the opening of ears and loosening of tongue costs. 

 

It is not right that people cannot speak. It is not ok that people cannot hear. It is not right for people to spit in the face of their God and laugh while He is crucified. In sin, out of one mouth comes blessing and curses, as Sirach 28:12 says, “If you blow the spark, it shall burn: if you spit on it, it shall be quenched: and both come out of your mouth.”

 

Why is spitting on someone an insult? Because God was made man and every time you spit on someone or do harm to another, you are seeing their face and it is the face of your Crucified, Creator God Who was made just like them in everyway, except without sin.

 

Yet, even this, Jesus endures. Even the shame of being scourged, of being forsaken, of being falsely condemned, and of being spat upon by you. The God-man Christ, carries it all upon His back, carries it all in His wounds, and carries it all to hell, for those transgressions never to resurface again.

 

In the suffering and resurrection of Christ, God spits in the face of sin, death, and the devil. He does not spit back at you for revenge. He spits, in today’s Gospel, assaulting and battering the demons and sin that hold the deaf and dumb man captive and allowing us to spit on His Christ, Who then harbors all that evil on His way to the cross. 

 

Instead for us, Jesus regenerates this man’s ears and tongue, that He created, in order that this man…what?…speak plainly? No. The word there is orthodoxy. In other words, Jesus frees from sin, death, and the devil in order that we speak correct doctrine. What doctrine is that, you ask? The doctrine of the shamed Son of God Who raises you to His seat of Honor and opens the entire kingdom of heaven for those who spat upon Him.

 

If we only operate and read holy Scripture with the hygienic and social notions of purity, we will never understand what God is doing. When dealing with sickness, or spit, or things filled with “germs” we are not just dealing with the physical and biological, but the spiritual. 

 

Therefore, these impurities are eternal matters. Your Lord treats them as a ritual, theological problem. They are not to be seen as some sort of supernatural substance that either banishes you from the realm or exalts you to a state of nirvana. There is no super-spit. There is only the spat-upon God who suffers, dies, and reveals Himself in His Holy Supper for the forgiveness of your sins.