“Let anyone with ears listen” (Matthew 13:9).
I was recently reminded of (yet another) colorful Luther-ism. “Stick your eyes into your ears,” Luther said famously. “He who will not take hold with his ears but wants to look with his eyes is lost.”
I was reminded of Luther’s counsel just this evening, while reading my daily newspaper. Encounter with the daily news can become a harrowing experience, these days. I see desperate violence. I see cheap, sensational politics. Cruel barbarisms. Death and disease. There is good news, too, of course. But much of the news is calamity and chaos, it seems. Have you noticed?
This is the world that enters my eyes – and maybe yours from time to time, too. But then I remembered Luther. In matters of faith, Luther insists, our eyes are not nearly as significant as our ears. “The kingdom of Christ is a hearing kingdom, not a seeing kingdom,” Luther explained. Our eyes can deceive us. We “see” externalities and superficial layers, for the most part. But faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ (Romans 10:17).
The point is simple: our “eyes” – and the daily news – tell but a small part of the story. There is more to the story than we can see. We may believe that God is working his inscrutable will behind the scenes, convicting the world of sin and wooing hearts toward heaven. We do not always see it so plainly. This kind of “news” is announced. It is a gospel proclaimed. We “hear” it – whatever our eyes may see.
Luther was describing the believer at worship, as I recall. The worshipper should hear the Amazing Gospel – and not become distracted by his fumbling pastor, or shabby church, or personal unworthiness. But Luther’s counsel has wider relevance. It is good counsel for missionaries, as well. For we are sometimes discouraged by what we see. We see cruel persecutions of the church. We see doors for the gospel, once open, closing suddenly again. We may see strength failing, or opportunities missed, or work piled higher than we can manage. If that is the case, it is time to “stick our eyes into our ears.”
Listen to this: our Lord God is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the All-Powerful (Revelation 1:8). Nothing gets by him; nothing escapes his attention. There is no chaos in heaven.
And listen to this: you haven’t chosen God – our Lord God has chosen you! Jesus has appointed you to bear fruit for him. And he intends to make the fruit abide (John 15:16).
Listen to this: you weren’t chosen for your good looks. You were chosen by love and chosen for mission. Once you were nobodies. But now you are God’s own people! – royal, holy, and wired to proclaim him (1 Peter 2:9, 10).
Will you listen? Then you will go and make disciples – in spite of what you see. You will teach and baptize – though your eyes sometimes discourage you. Listen! “I am with you always, to the end of the age!” (Matthew 28:19, 20).
Another famous theologian, Karl Barth, said that Christians need eyes of faith like “cat’s eyes that see in the dark.” He is right. Perhaps we’ll learn to “see in the dark” when we learn to “look” through our ears.