Introduction
When the angel announces
to Mary that she would bear the Messiah, he announces also the Messiah’s name
i.e. “Jesus,” in Hebrew “Jeshua,”meaning
Savior: “You shall conceive a son, and you shall name him Jesus, because
he will save his people from their sins” (Mt 1:20-21). The Messiah’s
name is Jesus because he comes to save us
(Is 35:5). Since the salvation which the Messiah comes to
bring us is rich and full, it is spelled out in many different ways. In today
first reading (23 Sunday) Isaiah spells it out this way: “Then
will the eyes of the blind will be opened, and the ears of the deaf will be
cleared; then the tongue of the mute will sing” (Is 35:6). The Messiah comes to
bring salvation for our eyes and ears and mouth.
When Jesus, the Jeshua, the Savior came, he
shouted Epheta (Be thou opened) at a man who whose ears were deaf and whose tongue
was mute, and both his ears and tongue
were opened (Mk 7:32-35). He shouted Epheta
(Be thou opened) also at the blind man from Bethsaida and the blind man
from Jericho, and the eyes of both were opened (Mk 8:22-25; 10:46-52). Jesus came to open the ears of the deaf. He
came to open the mouth of the mute. He
came to open the eyes of the blind. Jesus came to ephetize us, to open us
up and to set us free from the prisons of our spiritual deafness and
blindness. On the 20ieth of December,
the fourth day of the novena of Christmas, the church addresses the son
to be born of Mary as the “Clavis
David,” the “Key of David”:
“Oh Key of David who opens and no one closes, who closes
and no one opens, come and set us prisoners free who sit in the blinding darkness and the shadow of death.” Jesus,
the Jeshua, the Savior is a key that
opens us.
Like Jesus, the Ephetizer,
the Key that opens, good
religion opens us up but bad religion closes us. Bad religion brain-washes us but good religion washes the brain
of whatever makes us closed. To be
religious means, among many things, to be open and opened. To be Christian means, among many things, to
be open and opened, to be ephetized.
<<On
the feast of St. Thomas a Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, murdered in his
cathedral on the night of December 29th by King Henry II of England,
1170, his blood blends with the red of
the Poinsettias bedecking the altar of
the Christmas season. Like Jesus
he was an ephetizer, a key that
opens. As the King’s men are coming to kill him the Archbishop commands his aides:
"Unbar
the doors!
Throw
open the doors!
I
will not have the house of prayer,
the
church of Christ,
the
sanctuary turned into a fortress.
The
church shall be open,
even to our enemies. Open
the door!"
(Murder
in the Cathedral)
by T.S. Eliot
Like Jesus and the Archbishop, Good Pope John XXIII (beatified just
this past Sunday, Sept. 3rd
2000), was also an ephetizer, also a
key that opens. He took the Keys of
Peter, given him in his election as Pope,
and proceeded to open up the church and to set it free. Windows and
doors slammed shut for centuries were thrown open. He called a Council. "Unbar the doors!" he commanded.
"The Church shall be open, even to our enemies." Yes, to the Council
he invited even the "enemies": Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, and
Atheists. <<In view of the latest pronouncement from Rome about the
absolute uniqueness of our Roman
Catholic Church, you wonder whether Protestants, Orthodox, Jews, and Atheists
will be invited to Vatican III to be summoned by Pope John Paul III.>>
Some
years ago, a black youth with two
friends wandered into a mostly white community (Howard Beach, New York) after
their car broke down. He was chased off into a highway by white youths, and was
killed by a passing car. The gang then severely beat one of his companions. The
three month trial was all about black and white but the verdict came out gray: the white youths were
acquitted of murder but convicted of a lesser charge, manslaughter.
That
was back in the old days of Phil Donohue, the father of modern talk shows. When he featured the whole affair on his
program one day, his panelists and his
audience were either all black or all
white. There was no gray. I remember it
well because I can’t forget it. Everyone was screaming and yelling at each
other. No one was exercising either intelligence or restraint or openness. All were exercising their anger, but no
one was exorcising it, no one was casting it out. Everybody’s mouth was
open, and everybody’s ears were closed.
Everybody was talking, (or rather screaming and yelling), and nobody was listening.
All
the while Phil was pleading, "Epheta!
For
God’s sake, be thou opened and hear
what the other guy is saying! For God’s
sake, listen! ” But he pleaded in vain. Nobody listened. Phil had lost control, and the program that day
was total bedlam. That's precisely what made it a success. Powerfully you saw
how utterly wrong and futile the whole
thing was. Powerfully you saw the need for an authoritative command that
could shout out, “Oh you mouths, for
God’s sake, be closed, be silent!” Or better yet, “Oh you mouths, for God’s
sake, shut up!” Powerfully you saw that the only salvation that can save such a
situation is “Epheta.” "Oh you ears, for God’s sake, be thou
opened; listen and hear what the
other guy is saying.”
Things haven’t improved since Donohue; they’ve only
gotten worse with talk shows like that
of Jerry Springer, Jenny Jones, Maury Povich, Sally Jesse Raphael. Besides featuring prurient, itchy, sexy
revelations about this one sleeping with that one, these displays of low
intelligence feature screaming and yelling at each other as a form of entertainment. Watch the audience laugh and clap as the
screaming and yelling gets louder and louder. Like the violence in the
entertainment industry, it’s not ugly
or evil; it’s fun! It’s not so much the cheap revelation of one’s sex life that
is so annoying. It is the bedlam of
every body talking (or rather screaming
and yelling) and nobody listening. The
bedlam of everyone’s mouth opened and everyone’s ears closed.
Some
of the political talk shows are just as bad as the prurient talk shows.
They always feature one from the
extreme right and another from the
extreme left. That’s a perfect set-up
for conflict,but it can be quite disastrous for communication and compromise.
Both “contestants”pretend to be displaying intelligence but they don’t. Both speak at each other instead of with
each other. Both try to talk the other
down, as they speak loudly at each
other at the same time. And the
moderator then has to try to shut
them both up, and rescue some shreds of
meaning for the listening audience.
These
political talk shows don’t feature truth (i.e. reality as it really is) but
rather politics (i.e. reality as one
wants it to be). Furthermore, they don’t feature compromise and
communication but rather raucous conflict as a
form of entertainment. In
fact, the whole political arena today is blighted by this Culture of
Conflict. It wasn’t always that way. Republicans and Democrats have
always disagreed; that’s their function.
But they were basically civil
human beings in those days. Not anymore. The fault, I believe, is ours; they
give us what we want. If it is conflict that we want to entertain ourselves
with, they will give us conflict. Again, the annoying thing about it all is the
bedlam of both talking (or rather both yelling the other one down) and neither
listening; the bedlam of opened mouths and closed ears.
Let me tell you something
about religious obedience. It’s much more profound and much more spiritual than
simple obedience to a church law which
says we must go to mass on Sunday or a church law which says we may not eat meat on Good Friday.
Religious obedience is
obedience to the “Epheta” which Jesus shouts into our ears. He commands that they be opened. He commands that we
hear not what we want to hear but rather that we hear what’s really being
said.” That’s the obedience your spouse or your children or your mother and
father are crying out for when they
plead, “Can’t you hear what I am saying?”
Religious obedience is
obedience to the “Epheta” that Jesus
shouts into our eyes. He
commands that they be opened. He
commands that we see not what we want to see but that we see what’s really there. That’s the
obedience your spouse or your children or your mother and father are crying out for when they plead with you saying, “Can’t you see?”
Religious obedience is
obedience to the command that Jesus shout out over all our screaming and yelling. Twice in the
New Testament he cries out “Be silent!” Twice he cries out,
“Shut up!” (It’s a perfectly good translation of the Latin ”Obmutesce!”)
He cries it out once when a man possessed by a demon was screaming and yelling
in the synagogue (Mk 1:25) And he cries
it again when in a boat the sea and the wind were roaring and screeching (Mk
4:39). At both of them he shouts, “Be
silent” or “Shut-up.” They both calm down and fall silent.
When we heed the command of
Jesus to be silent, to shut up, then in the sound of the ensuing silence, we
will no longer be hearing ourselves or the other guy. Now with mouths closed
and ears opened, ears ephetized, in the
sound of silence that follows, we
will hear the beat of each other’s
human heart. And when that happens,
we’ve got it made.