“Amazed and Astonished”
Have you seen the breathtaking photos from the MER “Spirit”? Can you hardly wait to see what “Opportunity” transmits once it lands? But stop! There’s some serious editorializing going on here. Perhaps you don’t find the photos of Mars’ surface to be “breathtaking” at all, and maybe you aren’t eagerly awaiting the second rover landing any more than you did the first. After all, as we are fractionally a century past our specie’s first powered flight, the whole matter of venturing into outer space has come to seem pretty commonplace.
During our recent “Grand Christmas Tour” we were recalling Rachel’s reaction to her first plane trip. Asked upon arrival by anxious relatives what she thought of the experience, her childishly innocent response: “It was boring.” Only a four-year-old could be capable of such direct and non-judgmental honesty. The truth of the matter was that she had no basis of comparison to other forms of travel, and so for her the several hours spent in a crowded cabin staring at the bulkhead was a truly ho-hum experience.
As she matured, and in the process witnessed firsthand how long it takes to cover the same distances by car, Rachel gained a new perspective that would probably make her less apt to answer the same question in the same way. She still might not go so far as to use words like “amazed” or “astonished” to describe how the six-hour drive from Phoenix to Las Vegas is reduced to a one-hour flight, but her newfound appreciation for the difference makes it much less likely that she will ever again think of it as “boring.”
According to the NRSV Exhaustive Concordance (1991, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville) the word “amazed” appears 53 times in the Holy Bible with the Apocrypha. Somewhat amazing in and of itself is that it is found only once in Hebrew scripture (Old Testament; Ecclesiastes 5:8). It is used predominantly by the authors of the synoptic gospels (and the Lukan Acts), interestingly found not even once in the Gospel of John. Nearly every time “amazed” is used it is to describe the reaction to Jesus by those with whom he comes in contact.
By contrast John prefers to use “astonished”. This synonym appears more frequently in Hebrew scripture, as well. Only in Acts 2:7 do the two words appear at the same time in the context of Pentecost: “Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans?’” But the larger message seems to be clear that to encounter the Holy Presence results in a profound sense of awe and wonder, not unlike the profane parallel attempted by the coalition forces in Iraq with their strategy of “shock and awe.”
This is mildly interesting, you may be saying to yourself, but what in heaven’s name does it have to do with practical theology? Only this: our quest for the ultimate may not be viable if our mindset is jaded by passivity and apathy. If we cannot manage to be amazed and astonished by the landing of a robotic rover on the surface of Mars, how much hope can there really be for us? If we cannot be amazed by the miracle of new birth in our midst, what kind of a future is there for our kind? Speaking of the goings on in Washington, D.C. Stewart Udall told Bill Moyers on NOW, “The shocking thing to me is that nobody is shocked!”
The promise of the Christ is for the New Life symbolized by the birth of Christmas and the resurrection of Easter. For such a promise to have any genuine meaning, however, is going to be determined by our capacity to be awestruck by the prospect of the reality. The quality of the relationship we share with our Creator will become all the greater to the degree that we are able to be amazed and astonished by the realization that such a thing is even possible! May God grant to each of us the wisdom and maturity necessary to greet each new day with the Psalmist’s elation: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” Amen.
