Timothy’s mentor warns against the time “when people will not put up with sound doctrine, but having itching ears, they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own desires, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander away to myths.” It is easy for those in the Church to look outside and say, “Yep—that’s it! It’s those itching ears that lead people away from us.” On the other hand, we might look at folks inside the Church and see they too have itching ears as a result of having their ears stopped up by doctrine and dogma, the way we’ve always done it (tradition, in other words), or the “my way or the highway” approach to Christianity.

Whatever the cause of itching ears may be, we all need to have our ears spiritually reamed out in order to hear the Word of God, to recognize our name when it is called, to wake up to the reality of God’s presence in the here and now. In our busyness day-to-day, it is easy for us to be distracted from God’s manifestation of mercy and love in the circumstances of our lives, easy to forget God’s on-going creation in the world around us, easy to ignore God’s call for our service to those near and far.

God, the Source and Essence of all, is ever working to bring us, each and all, to health and wholeness, to draw us into the way of self-giving Divine Love, to transform us into the imago dei we were created to be. We can trust the Holy One to clean our itching ears and show us the way forward step by step, if and when we are open to receive what God has to offer--for sure, if we follow Jesus’ admonition in our gospel “to pray always and not to lose heart.”