“For he shatters the doors of bronze and breaks in two the iron bars.” Psalm 107:16
All he has is a spoon. Carefully, secretly he sharpens the edges into a spike. The real work then begins. Thick prison walls. He has to get through them to the other side. Carefully, secretly he begins scraping his way through.
Ephphatha, be opened.
She caught meningitis as a small child, she became deaf and blind. She grew up mute, unable to speak, unable to communicate, cut off. Unaware that she was even a person. She was unaware that there was a world full of life and other persons, unaware that there was such a thing as communication, community, communion until one day.
Luckily her parents were wealthy enough to have a tutor for their daughter.
One day, on that day, everything changed.
Her tutor, Anne Sullivan, put her hands in water, and spelled out water in her hand over and over, and it happened, the universe exploded into being. Helen Keller. Helen Keller was born. Suddenly she knew that water was a thing, with a name, and that she was a person, and that there was another person out there in the void with her, communicating with her, and she knew that there was God.
Ephphatha, be opened.
He keeps on digging into the wall, progress is slow. He has to hide the grit and gravel that begins to pile up. Where to put it? Will he ever get through? What lies on the other side keeps him going.
Ephphatha, be opened.
His blood leaves him from one arm, goes through a machine and comes back to him in his other arm. Hours and hours every day. Dialysis. His kidneys have failed. So much of his life, what used to be his life, is cut off from him now. He is chained to this machine. He slips into despair, and misery.
The organ donor waiting list lasts for years, if ever. He has never really been religious, never really even prayed, never asked for anything. Now he does, in tears, in desperation. The next day the phone call comes, a kidney is available, and they rush out the door. He weeps and weeps and weeps, tears of thanksgiving and devastation because he is overwhelmed by God.
Another man sits there on dialysis, who has touched the lives of hundreds of others with his generosity and deep faith. A man of prayer. He waits and waits for an organ donor, praying, until late one night, with his wife and his priest by his side, he dies.
One was cured the other was healed.
Ephphatha, be opened.
His fingers get more and more calloused, more and more hard as every day that tunnel gets deeper and deeper every day that much closer to the other side.
Ephphatha, be opened.
The allied forces walk into Dacau, liberating the survivors of the Holocaust. The prisoners stand there in silence, unsure of what it means to be treated as human again. The soldiers stand in silence at what lays before them, unsure of what it means to be human anymore, some of them fall over and vomit into the dark earth.
The road back to humanity is going to be a long one.
Ephphatha, be opened.
She is addicted. Its not illegal. Its all those medicines. They keep giving her more and more of all these different kinds just so she can feel better. Until one day some one actually takes the time to look at all the things that have been prescribed, overprescribed it turns out.
She spends the next year in withdrawal as she slowly takes less and less each day.
It is torture, she is not sure what is real sometimes.
It feels like she is digging an escape tunnel with nothing but a spoon, and there is light ahead, way in the distance.
Ephphatha, be opened.
He thinks he is getting close to the other side of the wall. It has been so long. He starts digging more quickly, desperately, his fingers begin to bleed.
Ephphatha, be opened.
He has friends, but he can’t hear them and he can’t really talk to them, because he is deaf and he never could really learn to talk. Always has been. He has a few hand gestures and facial expressions, he can see, and touch and taste and smell but he can’t hear or talk.
He can’t communicate very much and he knows he isn’t as connected as everyone else. They all know something he doesn’t know. But he has friends, and he knows he is loved, he is cared for, and he is thankful for that. But so much is unknown, unknowable, unapproachable and mysterious.
One day his friends bring him before this man. He is taken aside and he puts his fingers in his ears and he spits and touches his tongue. His lips move.
And the Universe explodes, his ears are opened, his tongue is loosed and it hurts, this new thing, it overwhelms, a torrent of sound and none of it means anything, but it will, it will.
Ephphatha, be opened.
The walls falls away before him as the last bit is pushed outward through the other side. The universe explodes. He pulls his way through and out the other side and he stands there. Jesus has finally broken into the prison, all humanity waits, cut off until now.
Light shines in behind him as he pulls everyone out of prison, back into communion, back into community, back into communication, back into life, into healing.
The great prison break, the Kingdom of God has arrived.
“Say to those who are of a fearful heart, ‘Be strong, do not fear! Here is your God. He will come with vengeance, with terrible recompense. He will come and save you.’ ”
“Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then the lame shall leap like a deer, and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy. For waters shall break forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool.” Ephphatha, be opened.