Lookahead:  Wherever the ear landed, it seems like Jesus took it in his fingers and “fastened it back on,” with or without Holy Fire being involved. 😊 To my knowledge, this is the only recorded instance of an instantaneous healing of an amputated body part (replantation) in the Gospels.  I think it gets downplayed, and even Matthew, Mark, and John evidently didn’t consider it a high priority.  But just think about it.  A team of micro-surgeons will operate for 6, 7, 8 hours  to attach a severed finger with a myriad of stiches (sewing together the nerves, blood vessels, rejoining the bones with screws and plates or wires).  But the ear covers the site when a doctor is trying to reattach it. How do you line up/re-attach to an ear canal?

Over the years the shock value of the crucifixion has never diminished for me.  I still have trouble watching the crucifixion scene in movies, and when someone starts preaching about it, I can go from carefree to sad-and-serious in a heartbeat; this despite being raised in a mainline denomination in which we commemorated the crucifixion every Sunday.  So I’ve been exposed to the shock of it hundreds and hundreds of times.  But my heart has never calloused over in this area.  I believe that this sensitivity is something supernatural that I have nothing to do with. 

Anyway, I came across an article in a Christian magazine’s 2021 Easter edition and immediately knew that I didn’t want to go there.  It is entitled, “What Really Happened to Jesus on the Cross?” by R. T. Kendall.  Today I am excerpting from it exclusively (unless otherwise footnoted) in this blog post. I additionally inserted my comments in parentheses.  

“Jesus ‘breathed his last’ Mark 15:37 These words describe the end of the most painful suffering of any human being in the history of the world.  It is not possible for us to know which was greater for Jesus:  His physical suffering, which includes emotional and bodily torture he endured, or the spiritual suffering…‘My God, My God, why have You forsaken me?’  Mark 13:34…

 “What kind of pain did Jesus endure?

“Loneliness. (In Gethsemane,) His agony brought sweat ‘like great drops of blood falling to the ground’ Luke 22:44  He tried once then twice to get His inner circle to be there for Him.  But they kept falling asleep.  After the third time He gave up. (Welded to His side, watching LOVE personified for more than three years, the apostles were still so self-absorbed that they were unable to love Him back.  Instead, they betrayed Him, left Him, denied Him.  And that’s to say nothing of the abandonment by  hundreds of people whom Jesus had saved over these years.)…But the loneliness was suddenly intensified beyond all expectation…even His Father turned His back on Him.

“Silence. ‘Like a sheep before its shearers is silent so he opened not his mouth’ Isaiah 53:7…Anything or any word that might cause Jesus to lose his temper was hurled at Him…but Jesus never—ever—lost His temper or grieved the Holy Spirit by an angry word…Jesus was tempted to sin right to the end by what He would say.  satan motivated everyone—from Herod to Pilate, from the priests to the Roman soldiers—to catch Jesus with words…He would have sinned because that would have been an attempt to clear His name or vindicate Himself…(When He broke the silence, it was to pray a sincere heart-rending prayer for the Father to forgive His tormentors…and later to save a despicable criminal who, initially, had spoken these same verbal taunts directly into Jesus’ ear from his adjacent position in the air.)…There was yet another kind of silence that Jesus had to accept.  He was not allowed to explain to anyone why He let the Jews arrest Him or the Roman soldiers crucify Him…(so He was unable to comfort the faithful remnant who were inconsolable, at His feet).

“Bodily pain.  The ancient Roman crucifixion is regarded as the worst kind of pain ever devised in the mind of human beings…nails (5 to 7 inches) were driven into the wrists for extra pain in a way that caused little bleeding but severe pain.  Nails were driven into the ankles to extend the suffering…Gravity was the real executioner.  The body hanging was what killed the person… As the condemned continually pulled himself up to breathe and then released in exhaustion, the person’s back would rub up and down against the raw wood of the cross (–a back which became more lacerated as He pulled and pushed upward to get air, causing Him to feel horrifically searing pain from extremities that had been staked to the cross).”

Can you imagine living life every day if you knew this was an unavoidable end game?  But this unparalleled pain was not in vain.  It purchased something…for the very people who caused it—the sinful human race.

Isaiah 53:4-6  Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; Yet we esteemed Him stricken, Smitten by God, and afflicted.  But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities; The chastisement for our peace was upon Him (He was publicly shamed so that we could have peace), And by His stripes (“cat-o-nine-tail” lashes at the hands of the Romans) we are healed.  All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.

Earlier in the week, I felt led to locate an unpublished post, about Jesus healing an enemy who had come to arrest him, just prior to the crucifixion.  This also addresses Jesus’ incredible healing power…and what His whipping purchased for us: 

While he was still speaking a crowd came up, and the man who was called Judas, one of the Twelve, was leading them. He approached Jesus to kiss him, but Jesus asked him, “Judas, are you betraying the Son of Man with a kiss?”  When Jesus’ followers saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, should we strike with our swords?” And one of them struck the servant of the high priest, cutting off his right ear.  But Jesus answered, “No more of this!” And he touched the man’s ear and healed him.  Luke 22:47-51

When I read this translation, of course the left brain kicked in.  The ear was totally severed, per the Greek (cut off, remove, take away).  So did Jesus touch the severed ear? Or the wound site, creating a new one?  Or did He reattach the ear? Touch:  ἅπτομα – properly, to fasten to, make adhere to; hence, specifically to fasten fire to a thing, to adhere, to touch, to have contact with, to lay hold of, hold fast, appropriate; to touch by the hand, to handle for a purpose

Wherever the ear landed, it seems like Jesus took it in his fingers and “fastened it back on,” with or without Holy Fire being involved. 😊 To my knowledge, this is the only recorded instance of an instantaneous healing of an amputated body part (replantation) in the Gospels.  I think it gets downplayed, and even Matthew, Mark, and John evidently didn’t consider it a high priority.  But just think about it.  A team of micro-surgeons will operate for 6, 7, 8 hours  to attach a severed finger with a myriad of stiches (sewing together the nerves, blood vessels, rejoining the bones with screws and plates or wires).  But the ear covers the site when a doctor is trying to reattach it. How do you line up/re-attach to an ear canal?

From a medical article…you tell me what it means: 😊  “Reattachment as a composite graft of the total or subtotal amputated ear is unreliable. Replantation of an amputated ear, with microsurgical techniques offers the best reconstructive results; however, technical complexity and numerous limitations do not allow for wide practice…Therefore, numerous techniques that increase the chance of survival of the replanted ear segment have evolved in the past. Ear salvage using the modified pocket technique, coverage with temporoparietal fascia flap and skin graft, or recreation of the cartilaginous framework using autologous tissues are some of the described surgical techniques.”¹

How about our Master Microsurgeon!  This Gethsemane miracle could only have been accomplished by a Master Designer who understands the human body that He created on a sub-cellular level: Psalm 139:13 For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb.  We cannot conceive of the power, ability, technology that it would take to accomplish this within mere seconds.  What a God we serve!! But that’s only the beginning—the most amazing thing is that, after He put the brakes on the apostles, He un-did their damage.  The One Who would, in less than twelve hours, be tied to a whipping post and mercilessly lashed to the point of being unable to convey the cross by Himself—put heaven and earth on pause, to heal one of His future murderer’s servants.  And then He continued executing perfectly to plan—carrying the sins of the human race upon Himself, so that we ourselves could escape the punishment that we deserved.  As the song goes, LOVE conveyed Him to the Cross—and not the nails, but LOVE, held Him up there, until His mission was 100% complete. 

John 3:16 and Isaiah 53:5b reveal the incomparable gifts that Jesus is offering today.  I pray that we can all find it in our hearts to accept them. 

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¹ jpma website:  /article-details/7912