This morning Jesus comes home, and his own people don’t know what to do with him. Their initial response to his mighty deeds and to the wisdom of his teaching is astonishment. They begin in wonder. ‘Where did he get all of this? What kind of wisdom is this? What mighty deeds!’ Sadly enough they refuse or simply cannot remain there. And soon the whole thing unravels. They pry and categorize and trivialize Jesus. They talk themselves out of wonder, and they try to make Jesus somehow manageable. They reduce him. “He’s only a carpenter after all. Mary’s son. We know his relatives. Come on. We know where he comes from.’ They find Jesus offensive, and intrusive. In the end, they are scandalized by him and find him altogether too much for them- that divine power could be so mundane, so accessible and so ordinary. To have remained simply in a place of awe and wonder at the person of Jesus was perhaps too frightening. And the result is tragic indeed, the tragedy of the loss of wonder. Jesus finds himself unable to perform any mighty deeds in their midst, he’s so amazed by their lack of faith, absolutely dumbfounded. He finds that it has somehow sapped his energy. And he’s as powerless as Samson with his hair cut off.
So how to welcome wonder? Clearly, these folks in Nazareth cannot do it. But can we? It’s a big question for us as monks and contemplatives. For wonder is the gateway to the contemplative gaze that allows God to be God, and allows us to be amazed at his marvels, at the beauty of his creation, at the marvels he has wrought in each of our lives. Wonder says: ‘You are God, you can do all things.’ Wonder believes that God wants to act on my behalf. Wonder beckons us to be aware, to step into God’s world, to see as God sees, and to take nothing for granted. But when our antennae get drawn in, and we refuse to wonder, refuse to notice God being God in our lives, the whole thing falls apart just like the Gospel story we just heard. ‘So what. Big deal. I know where this is coming from. It’s all too familiar.’ Wonder is then poisoned by cynicism and the need to analyze or trivialize or dissect. Wonder at turns into wonder about. And our response may become: ‘It’s just too ordinary after all’- whether it be the subtlety of light falling upon a monastery wall, a butterfly bobbing over a garden full of lilies, or the kindness of a friend in a conversation. Whatever.
Noticing the Lord's presence begins with wonder, like a whispered ‘Wow’ or ‘How’ or ‘I don’t understand.’ And perhaps that’s the point, even the most difficult thing. You don’t have to understand- it’s alright not to understand. To allow Christ in means I don’t have to understand only believe and hope and wonder. I pay attention to his move towards me, drawing me. Faith gives me permission to gaze on beauty as well as confusion and hope against hope and dare to believe that God is working. And we allow ourselves to be disarmed by God’s inbreaking, and we respond with reverent awe.
‘Wonder requires us to acknowledge what we do not know or may never understand, to acknowledge our limits and finiteness. It is then a different kind of knowledge, a way of knowing that does not lead to certainties or truths about the world or the way things are or ought to be. It is a state of mind that like being in love colors all we know.’ (See Peter de Bolla) Such wonder is born of faith and leads to deeper faith, and deeper love. It allows uncertainties, hurts, and failures.
Wonder lets God be God, magnificent, and extravagant but also hidden, quiet and unremarkable. Wonder says, ‘Yes.’ It does not demand certitude but relaxes into a way of knowing that is beyond neat categories and complex argument. We are mindful of what God is doing moment by moment. And so we step out into the kingdom, a place of reversals and new possibilities.
God in Christ is playing in our midst right now- in what is beautiful and ordered and in what is not so beautiful, in what is hard and confusing and irregular and difficult to unravel. God is doing something, and if we don’t understand perhaps it’s all the better. For then we get to wonder, let go and watch for what God will do next. Faith allows us to wonder, and wonder fortifies our faith.
Photograph by Brother Brian. Reflection by one of our monks.
