Amazing Jesus

“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed...” Luke 7:9, NIV

In Michael Card's wonderful phrase, Luke is “the Gospel of Amazement” (see Biblical Imagination Series by IVP, Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, © 2011). Every where you look, people are agog at the work of God connected with the man Jesus

 

A very good read

They were, all of them, quite simply amazed. Zechariah's friends, the shepherds, all who heard the shepherds, Joseph and Mary, the people in his hometown of Nazareth, those in Capernaum, those who heard the boy Jesus in the temple, the disciples, the parents of the girl who had died, even the Pharisees: all were amazed, astonished, in awe and afraid. Three decades later, as Luke interviews the ever-decreasing group of eyewitnesses, he finds them still amazed, still struggling to put into words just what it was like to encounter the rabbi from Nazareth. And thirty years away from the event that was Jesus' life, Luke still finds himself amazed as well.

Luke exhausts the language of amazement. They were “amazed,” “astonished,” “in awe,” “astounded,” “spellbound.” Surely Matthew, Mark and John were amazed as well: Matthew speaks twelve times of the people being amazed, and Mark does it fifteen times. John only uses the term six times. There are five Greek words that can be translated “amazed,” and only Luke uses every one of them. Sometimes he uses two different words in the same sentence (see Lk 5:26)! (Luke: The Gospel of Amazement, p. 22)

Rich, poor, outcast, religious and nonreligious alike, they are all “amazed” at Jesus – the things he does, the things he says. Imagine being audacious enough to touch a leper or uninhibited at plopping himself down upon the luxurious cushions in Levi's home right next to some of his disreputable friends. In the first seven chapters of Luke there are already a plethora of those OMG moments. But one day in Capernaum, it's Jesus who is the one who is amazed, by a Gentile and a Roman officer no less.

He is man of important rank and a hated member of the occupying army but in his case locally much beloved for the simple fact that he has done much for the people of Capernaum and built the house of worship at which they gather every Sabbath. His favorite servant is deathly ill and so when he hears Jesus is in town, he asks the Jewish elders if they might ask him to come and minister to his servant. They are eager to do just this and implore Jesus to come and heal the centurion's retainer. Jesus agrees to accompany him but no sooner does he set out for the man's quarters when a messenger arrives with another message from the commander, countermanding his previous request. “You don't need to come to my house, Lord. Just give the order and my servant will be entirely whole” (see Luke 7:7).

Jesus never saw it coming. He was, as we used to say, totally “blown away” by the message of the centurion. He stops in his tracks and lets the message sink in. How is it that this outsider intuitively understands what his fellow Jewish brothers cannot comprehend? “Taken aback, Jesus addressed the accompanying crowd: 'I've yet to come across this kind of simple trust anywhere in Israel, the very people who are supposed to know about God and how he works." When the messengers got back home, they found the servant up and well. (Luke 7:9, Msg)

Here's my question: has Jesus been amazed since? Are there actions or statements that we mortals do and say that still get his attention all these millenia later and cause him to be amazed? I know he loves us passionately and is committed to our transformation but from time to time do any of us still surprise him? Or after 2,000 years and how many people later has he seen it all?

Betsie & Corrie ten Boom left and center

I realize God knows all things but this world is not a computer program running as originally planned. We remain free-will agents with the potential to say “yes” to him every day and with the same potential to say “no” to him as well. The further along you go, the more difficult it is to bail but people who are Christ-followers still are known to do so anyway. So, do any of us even come close to amazing him still? Surprise him by our response to his invitation? I think there must be. I think when two old ladies from Holland chose to forgo their fears of the Nazi occupiers and hide and give aid to Jews anyway, he was amazed. Or when President Nixon's former “ax-man” Chuck Colson sat in a federal prison and learned that Christ followers who were also Democrats were willing to exchange places with him, Jesus was amazed. I think any time any of his followers resist the natural desire to preserve our life and enjoy what creature comforts are provided to us to embrace a life of love and service and sacrifice he is wowed.

Last summer I was surprised when Troy announced that he wanted to be born again the Sunday next. That day remains an amazing event to me. [See Being Born Again On Sunday] My recent journey to Africa and the fact that the five members of our team were on it was amazing to me. A few years ago, none of us were in a place of saying “yes” to such an invitation and yet there we were walking in the red, Ugandan dirt and sharing at worship gatherings held in church buildings, a Gothic-looking prison or under a large shade tree. Was Jesus amazed? Or just pleased? I don't ask because I seek to do something that will impress him. I just wonder that though he is God and knows acutely what we are made of, are any of us able to make him shake his head twice to comprehend what he is seeing? I want to take to heart his exhortation to Thomas the week after that first Easter Sunday, “be not faithless, but believing” (John 20:27, KJV) and walk, with his invitation, on water be it all the way back to Africa or just across my yard.