He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. - Matthew 11.15

The shape of your ears affects how you hear.

Scientists tell us that we judge the direction of a sound by which ear it reaches first: Let the faucet drip from my left as I bed down for the night, and my insomnia will begin on that side a millisecond before it does on the other. Height, however, works differently: The brain calculates the ricochet of a noise off the various moguls and arroyos of your outer ear and determines its origin.

To test this theory, a group of researchers at the University of Montreal fitted subjects with slices of plastic that subtly changed the topography of their ears. Result: They miscalculated whether noises came from above or below them. An MRI showed that neurons in the relevant portion of the brain misfired badly. In a week or so, the brain adjusted and subjects' scores returned to normal. 

He that hath ears to hear, let him hear. 

Jesus says that our hearing has less to do with physical function and more to do with the spiritual ability to tell whether a word comes from above or below. On one level, the vast majority of people can hear or read Our Lord's teachings. Speaking spiritually, however, many of us - like the majority in Jesus' own time - lack the discernment to peg the divine origin of the message. Sin works like a skin-tight distortion device which scrambles the neurons of the soul. 

The hearing ear and the seeing eye - the Lord has made them both - Proverbs 20.12. May God peel away the foreign objects that cling skin-close to our souls and distort our spiritual hearing. May we indeed receive ears to hear the divine word that comes from above.

The Pharisees went out immediately and conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him. - Mark 3.6

"Take the guns first, go through due process second." Our President said that in an open meeting to discuss policy following the recent school shooting in Florida. In context, President Trump referred to regulations that would allow law enforcement to seize weapons from a person who displayed warning signs but had not yet committed any actual crime. The government would have to follow the standard legal path in order to make the action permanent. 

Still: It at least sounded as if the head of the executive branch of the most powerful government on earth publicly advocated violating the nation's core legal code on nothing more than his own preference. I was furious.

I take you now to first century Palestine where Jesus' enemies plot his death. The important thing to note is that the triggering event is the healing of a man with a withered hand. The problem is, he does it on the Sabbath. And while Jesus' act does not violate the Scripture, it violates their traditional and longstanding reading of the Scripture. Just a few verses earlier Jesus gave his defense for doing this kind of thing: The Son of Man is lord even of the sabbath. (Mk 2.27) Call it the "because-I-say-so" hermeneutic! The person who offers himself as king of the very rule of God which will encompass the entire earth advocates violating the nation's legal precedent on nothing more powerful than his own preference. They are furious.

Remember that Jesus has done a number of things that tend to back his claim: He's healed sick people, eighty-sixed demons, and raised a cripple to his feet. None of that is good enough. In the emotional world of their brand of Judaism, Jesus just can't be a good guy.

Now I wonder: If our President had made his statement after, say, visiting Bethesda Naval Hospital where he soothed PTSD victims with a single touch and restored the amputated limbs of combat veterans, then went to Arlington National Cemetery and raised a dead soldier from the grave, would I be able to embrace his claim to rule the United States at his own discretion? More likely, my ingrained sense of what it means to be an American would have me calling for his impeachment. 

It is so easy - too easy - to dis the scribes and Pharisees as calcified traditionalists and cast myself in the role of, say, one of the disciples. In fact, I share more with them than I would like to admit.