Radical Amazement Part 2
Each morning, I get up, I stretch, I get out and drive to my outdoor gym about five miles up the road. I cross the old B&O train tracks into Historic Sykesville, the oldest continuous-running track in America. Some mornings, however, the lights are flashing, and an early morning train rumbles through. Often it will be a long line of coal hoppers filled up over the top, car after car after car, headed to south Baltimore from where it gets shipped out around the world.
Not long ago, in the early 20th century we thought The Milky Way was the entire universe, until Edwin Hubble photographed the Andromeda galaxy, 2.5 million light years away. Since then, we have captured images up to 12, 13, almost 14 million light years away. Light that stretched all those billion of years ago still traveling to where we can see it. I once read that to imagine how many stars are in the known universe, to think of these coal hopper cars passing by at the rate of one per second, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Instead of coal they are filled with grains of sand. If each grain of sand represents a star, it would take three years for all the hoppers to pass by to represent the stars of the universe. That’s just one way of trying to grasp just how vast the still expanding universe is, in which our Milky Way is just one of millions of galaxies. [i]
How do we even to begin to respond to information like this; images that have become part of our day-to day reality? With “Radical Amazement,” says Judy Cannato in her book of the same name. A phrase, she writes, that comes to us from the late Jewish scholar Abraham Joshua Heschel, who said “that wonder or radical amazement is the chief characteristic of a religious attitude toward life and the proper response to our experience of the divine.” [ii]
Take the boy Samuel who is “ministering to the Lord” with the elder and failing prophet Eli. [iii] We are told that Eli’s vision is dimming. The Word of the Lord no longer comes to him, largely because his sons were blaspheming the Lord. They would not get to take up their father’s important role in the community of God’s people. It is nighttime and the boy Samuel is asleep. Suddenly he is awakened, “Samuel, Samuel.” He jumps up, cries, “Here am I,” and goes to wake up Eli. Eli says go back to sleep. I did not call you. They are sleeping in the Temple, where the Ark of the covenant resides! It happens again. The boy is sent back to bed again. The third time Eli understands what is up. “Go back to sleep, and if the voice calls you again, it is the Lord. Respond, ‘Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.’” Sure enough, the fourth time Samuel says, “Speak, Lord, your servant is listening.” The boy learns that the house of Eli is finished.
Samuel does not want to tell Eli what the Lord had said, but Eli insists that he must, or suffer an even worse fate than he himself is going to. Samuel tells him everything. Eli confirms that this is the Word and will of the Lord. From that moment on, the Lord was with Samuel, letting no word from the boy “fall to the ground.” As he grew into this prophetic role, he was known to be a trustworthy prophet of the Lord. Try to imagine the wonder. Try to imagine the radical amazement for that young boy! Who learns from Eli that we are to listen, not speak. We are to invite the Lord to speak. For when we listen to the Lord, we too will be radically amazed!
Centuries later, Jesus’s disciples are gathering a meal from an open field. The custom in Israel, by commandment of the Lord, was not to harvest the corners of a field, nor harvest two rows along the road, so that travelers, resident aliens, and wayfarers passing through the land might grab a bite to eat. This is where the expression, “Don’t cut the corners,” comes from. It is the Sabbath – a day of rest. Some Pharisees, doctors of the Law, stewards of God’s commandments, take note and want to know why Jesus allows them to gather the grains for a meal. Jesus, demonstrating his command of Holy Writ, reminds them that when David and his companions were hungry, he went into the Temple, took the bread of the Presence of God, which was only for the Temple priests, and shared it with his friends. Jesus then declares, “The Sabbath was made for humankind, not humankind for the Sabbath. And guess what else? I am the Lord of the Sabbath!” [iv] But that’s not all. Jesus and his companions enter a synagogue where there is a man with a withered hand. Ha! Think the Pharisees. If he heals him, we can accuse him of working on the Sabbath! Not even God works on the Sabbath! But Jesus does nothing. He simply asks the man to stretch out his hand. And he does! No doubt everyone but the Pharisees were radically amazed. No one more so than the man himself! He just stretched out his own hand! The Pharisees say nothing, but go off to join with some Herodians to plan how they might put an end to this man from Galilee.
Then there is Paul, writing to the church in Corinth, a
people who have become so full of themselves, somehow thinking that now that
they are baptized they are better than anyone else. Paul reminds them, “It
is not about us! It is not about you! It’s about Jesus. We proclaim Jesus, not
ourselves, not the church, but Jesus! For it is the God who said, ‘Let light
shine out of darkness,” who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the
knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.’” The God who
set the vast and ever-expanding universe in motion gives us light so that we
might shine, shine, shine God’s steadfast love upon others. All others! [v]
Finally, once again, there is Psalm 139. A psalm like no other. The psalmist asks for nothing, but simply expresses radical amazement at just how close God is to us from before time, before Creation to the present. The God who says, “Let there be light to shine in the darkness,” is with us, by us, and literally, writes the psalmist, woven into us from the very moment that sparked the Big Bang, throwing out a whirlwind of stars, like grains of sand in hopper cars cast to the far reaches of a universe we are only beginning to explore and understand. It is a known fact that ever fiber of our being, mind, body, and soul, is formed of stardust from those stars that have already died billions of years ago. We are those people who carry the life and light of that very first light into the future, empowering us to serve others, to serve the Lord, to listen for the Lord’s voice calling us to be his people. Like Samuel, like the man in the synagogue, we are called to stretch out our hands to others. This ought to be cause for our total and radical amazement every single moment of every single day of our lives, says Abraham Joshua Heschel!
May the Lord God, his Son, and his Holy Spirit open our ears to hear his Word this day.
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