When the companions of Jesus saw what was going to happen, they said, “Lord, shall we use the sword?” One of them went so far as to strike the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. Jesus said in answer to their question, “Enough!” Then he touched the ear and healed the man.
— Luke 22: 49–51
When the disciple who loved Him most unsheathed his sword and sliced off the right ear of the high priest’s servant, we all cheered and stomped the parquet floor in that February classroom where the steam pipes pounded hard to fight the below zero air seeping past the wall of cracked windows, and the purple crosses we’d drawn, cut and pasted that Lenten morning threw shadows over our desks as Sister shushed us with a wave of her pointer and pushed ahead to Jesus spending the last coin from his tattered purse of miracles, then ordered our shameful heads down on our desks after we hissed the return of the sword to the scabbard, all that surrender grinding again at my gut years later while I’m mudding-in cabbages in my garden, maddened by a week of rain, the news out of Kabul then Washington, the stench of decay from another long winter, until I picture that bloodied ear on the ground — the pale lobe mushrooming through the twigs and bits of leaves, a fly stuck fast to the black clot, struggling — before He breathed on it, passed His hand over the wound, and gave Himself up.
