The Opening of My Ears

The prophet Isaiah issues a Lenten warning not just to two infamously wayward cities of the ancient world but ultimately to anyone who would follow Christ today:  “Hear the word of the Lord, princes of Sodom!  Listen to the instruction of our God, people of Gomorrah!”  In today’s Gospel, the Lord Jesus performs a radical linguistic operation on three titles which had come to sound so familiar in the people’s ears as to become spiritually distorted sound:  Teacher, Master, Father.  Like Isaiah, our Divine Physician must work first on our ears to reach our hearts.

Although I have in these daily meditations reflected each day on my jaw surgery, I haven’t really mentioned exactly my how my ears were vitally involved.  They were in fact the gateway through which my surgeon reached exactly what needed work.  And I don’t just mean persuasive medical counsel---Dr. Piper literally cut open both of my ears!

To many who initially inquired about the “how” of my surgery, this revelation came as a great surprise---they had envisioned worse:  Will he break your jaw?  Will your mouth be wired shut?  How is he going to get that far back in your mouth to cut?, etc.  Sometimes in our medical imagination---as in our spiritual imagination---our ignorance of the most professional and excellent techniques makes a radical therapeutic intervention in our life sound more painful (even barbaric) than it really needs to be.

In any case, Dr. Piper made a very elegant and virtually hidden incision along the tragus of each of my ears to gain access from the outside to the joints of my jaw (the tragus is the cartilage flap just outside the entrance to the ear canal).  With careful attention to preserving the natural shape and normal appearance of the ear, the surgeon made his skilled entrance inside to do what he needed to do.  Afterward I received post-operative photos showing exactly the damage and mess that the good doctor found to repair when he had gotten into those ears!  As of now, the very fine stitches have dissolved and the tissue of the ears is completely healed.

The Letter to the Hebrews assures us that “the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart.  And before Him no creature is hidden, but all are open and laid bare to the eyes of Him with Whom we have to do” (Heb 4:12-13).

When the Word of God, Jesus Christ, uses what appears to be cutting words in the Gospel---for example, to relativize words like “teacher,” “master,” and “father” (and hence the earthly relations which they imply in our minds), He authoritatively and with great suavity performs this operation to “get inside” our very spiritual organs of hearing.  In this case, Christ will ultimately relate these three titles to His own Person:  “You call me master and teacher, and so I am . . .”;  “ the one who has seen me has seen the Father.”   From this new, divine starting point, the Spirit of the Risen Lord can re-form these words in the life of the Church to transform us.  We receive the gifts of spiritual teachers and masters and fathers whose vocation is to serve---in Christian wisdom, humility, and love through the household of the Church---the members whose ears must always be opened to inner conversion of heart.