The Opening: Living with Attentiveness to God and Neighbor

This article (used with permission) was originally published on The Listening Church Substack by Rev. Dr. Luke Edwards.

I’ve been a bit obsessed with listening for the past decade. It has changed the way I interact with others, impacted how I approach ministry, and given me a new perspective when I read scripture. One passage began to stand out to me as a poignant allegory for listening: Mark 7:31-37.

In the passage, Jesus heals a man experiencing deafness and a speech impediment. Jesus takes the man aside and heals him through a unique process that includes touching his ears, spitting, touching his tongue, looking up to heaven, sighing, and speaking the Aramaic word ephphatha, which means be opened. With Jesus’ command, the man’s ears are opened, and his speech is restored. As an allegory, I thought the passage emphasized the importance of attentiveness in the life of faith. A few years ago, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one.

The Ephphatha Rite

From early in its history, The Ephphatha Rite has been a part of baptism in the Roman Catholic Church. I’ve had trouble learning much about it until just last week, when I discovered a dissertation by Rev. Luis Guilherme da Silva Mendes, a vicar of the Catholic Archdiocese of Denver. His dissertation explained the long history of The Ephphatha Rite and its importance in the initiation of Christian converts. Here are a few highlights:

• In the first centuries of the church, conversion was a significant initiation that included a long and serious preparation that culminated during Holy Week and ended with the baptism of converts on Easter Sunday. In this period, The Ephphatha Rite would be performed as a preparation for baptism on Holy Saturday.
• St. Ambrose, the Bishop of Milan (373–397), was the first to note the liturgical practice as preparation for the baptismal rite. He wrote:
• “What have we done on the Sabbath? ‘The opening,’ of course. These mysteries of ‘the opening’ were celebrated when the priest touched your ears and nostrils… Therefore, the priest has touched your ears, that your ears may be opened to the sermon and exhortation of the priest.”
• There are several other shifts that occurred over the centuries, but the current state of the rite is found in the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which was adopted in 1972. The updated rite reads,
• “The celebrant touches the right and the left ear and the closed lips of each of the elect with his thumb and says the following formulary: Ephphatha: that is, be opened, that you may profess the faith you hear, to the praise and glory of God.”

A Life of Openness

Mark 7 and The Ephphatha Rite urge followers of Jesus to embrace a life of openness to God and neighbor and remind us that the only way to achieve this level of attentiveness is through supernatural intervention. Christ desires to meet us, to address the areas in our life that are keeping us separated from God and our neighbors, to open our attentiveness to God’s self and to others, restoring us to right relationship with God and our community. Restoration is available to us—we can be opened and restored to community—all we must do is ask.

Reflection Questions:

• Would you be willing to practice this prayer of the Ephphatha Rite as an action of opening? Consider touching your ears and lips while praying, “Be opened. May I profess the faith that I hear to the praise and glory of God.”
• How attentive are you to others around you? To God?
• In what aspect of listening would you like to grow?

Other articles on our website by Luke Edwards:

• Reading Your Neighborhood
• The Listening Church
• “Church Is Changing” Podcast

Rev. Dr. Luke Edwards is the author of Becoming Church: A Trail Guide for Starting Fresh Expressions. He is an elder who serves as the Associate Director of Church Development for the Western North Carolina Conference of the United Methodist Church. Luke has helped launch countless micro faith communities across western North Carolina and North America. Before that, he was the founding pastor of King Street Church, a network of Fresh Expressions in Boone, North Carolina. Luke has previous training as a social worker, which he has integrated into exploring holistic models of church-based community engagement that starts with deep listening. Be sure to check out his website, The Listening Church. You can download a free “Spiritual Listening Plan” at thelisteningchurch.com/plan.