1-25-24 - Amazed

You can listen to this reflection here. Sunday's gospel reading is here.

Amazement seemed to follow Jesus wherever he went. The healing of the possessed man in the synagogue, combined with his style of teaching, won him rave reviews:
They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.”

It’s hard to avoid the subject of evangelism with this week’s passage. We see us how powerfully people reacted to Jesus when he first came on the scene. Yet, looking back on those events through a 2,000-year-old telescope, we’re bound to lose some definition and immediacy. Our well-established church routines can dull our passion. When did we last say, “Wow! What is this teaching? Who is this guy?”

A domesticated Christianity is like lukewarm dish water. We can go through the motions but don’t really get the dishes clean. How might we reinvigorate our faith, our excitement at what God did in Jesus Christ, and what God is doing now through the Holy Spirit working in us? To my mind, the remedy is less talking about Jesus and more talking to Jesus; less observing from the sidelines and more personal experience. We need to do everything we can to put ourselves in the way of experiencing God directly, and then do everything we can to help others experience God.

This Jesus may not be new news to us, but in our culture now many people have only dimly heard of him – and their associations with those who bear his name might well be negative. We have a huge opportunity to introduce this guy to people who don’t know much of anything about him.

And what should we tell them? How we experience Jesus. Why we call ourselves Christ followers. What were the moments when he became real for us. Those are incredible stories! Our telling them will plant seeds in the people who hear them. A story about someone being rescued from despair, or empowered to work for justice, or healed, makes me want to know more about who made that happen.

All we need to do is initiate a curiosity – and be there when questions are asked. The only answers we need to give are our own stories of our own experience. We don’t need to explain why God allows suffering; we can say, “I don’t know why – and here’s a time when I felt suffering was answered by God with love,” or “Here’s a time when God worked through me to alleviate someone else's suffering.”

Sometime in the next few days, I encourage you to make an inventory of your “God-stories” and dust them off. I’m not good at this – my sermons are too often declarations of belief instead of stories of transformation. So I intend to hold myself to this discipline too. Our experiences with God are our richest resource in God’s mission.

When were you last amazed by Jesus? Remember – and tell someone that story. You're just making an introduction - the next move is up to God.

© Kate Heichler, 2024. To receive Water Daily by email each morning, subscribe here. Here are the bible readings for Sunday. Water Daily is also a podcast – subscribe to it here on Apple, Spotify or your favorite podcast platform.