Luke 18:9 - 14

"Jesus’ Fingers that were in the Ears"

　

by: Pastor Hironori Furuya

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"Jesus’ Fingers that were in the Ears"

◆ There was a woman Pastor named Hatsune Hasegawa who was the founder of the Nishinomiya Koroen church. Ms. Hasegawa published a book titled “Gnashing by a Gomame". A Gomame is anchovy's child, nutritious food with abundant calcium that has been loved over the generations. The parents of this tiny fish having been used as bait in fishing skipjack, the Japanese Dictionary, Kojien explains the meaning of the phrase "Gnashing by a Gomame" as "The one who is not powerful loses his temper fruitlessly." "Gomame (a person to whom nobody listens)" makes a reckless rush dashing in vain but are finally eaten by others in the end. If nobody listens to him, he is such a little existence in the mundane world after all. In the world of Bible, however, there exists "the omniscience voice which reaches to the end of the earth though it is not to be talked and heard to the ears at all" too.

◆ In the foreign regions of the ten large cities, how did Jesus pronounce diagnosis to a man who was a deaf, tongue-tied, and with speech disorder, indeed just like "Gomame" ? Jesus inserted his fingers in both ears of the man, Jesus touched his tongue with the saliva and sighed with his eyes up to the heaven. Unfortunately, the Bible does not tell the name of the man nor about the people who brought him to the Christ.

◆ Sometimes, one encounters the other in a far distant place actually. In this episode as well, Jesus took the man to a distant place and treated him there. The man was a deaf; thus he was in need of a serious effort to talk because he could not listen to any words and remember them at all. If it was not possible for anyone to talk, he just could not convey his thought to anyone. He was not able to grasp how others felt. People who did not know anything about him just asked the Lord Jesus "Please put your hand on this person". And subsequently, people said "Everything he did was wonderful anyhow."

◆ Now, the season is handed over to September from August. All of our difficulty, uneasiness, and suffering are to be overcome by expressing gratitude "everything he did for us was wonderful anyhow” by our confession, to be made thanks. We wish to express our gratitude for everything and accept them.

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