A Life of Wonder

Today is the first Sunday of Lent, the first Sunday where we are “Cultivating a Sense of Awe and Wonder.”

Lent is always a time of reflection where we are to go deeper in our faith in God. We are to work intentionally, not that we wouldn’t at other times, but always to work intentionally during Lent on our relationship with God. This year, I know that we are finding it difficult to find awe and wonder. We are overwhelmed, we feel like every day is spinning us in different ways, and we don’t have stability. We have a lot of uncertainty, and we’re looking for something to hold on to.

What I’m suggesting is that God is what we hold on to.

Research has found that if you spend two hours in nature every day, it will change your whole life. It’s particularly helpful to be by water. That does not mean you have to be at the ocean, a small stream, brook, lake, river, pond, or any body of water. The energies of nature are things which we are called to. There’s a piece in our bodies. I talked on Ash Wednesday about the fact that the matter of our bodies is the same matter of creation. It all started as the same matter with this divine sense that it craves each other. So, give our bodies what it’s craving as best as you can.

Now that the weather’s warming up, it should be a easier this week to be out in it. Be out in the sunshine, be out even if it’s not sunny, just be around the trees, the grass, and as everything starts greening, it helps us in our moods.

One of the things that I have learned about myself is that in the dark of winter, where everything is resting. I know it’s not dead; it’s resting. We are to be resting, too.

But sometimes, all the gray gets the best of me. I know that what I need is color. Color changes things for me, and I need to smell the soil.

So, I went to Espenshades. Yes. That’s a picture of my trip to Espenshades where I bought myself a new blooming plant. I took this vibrant fuchsia color home with me because we need that. It awakens things within us that we don’t always see or that we don’t always notice.

I invite you to think about what is it that your soul longs for? Do you need to hear the water? Take a walk down to Brubaker Run and listen to our babbling brook. Maybe you need to be in a different space. Go out to Doorwork Park or another local park and be around other things. Because the point of getting to awe and wonder is that we have to be curious.

We have to Wonder about what we’re going to find.

I want to open up another wonderment for you. When we read today’s scripture (Matthew 8:5-13), I want you to think about what questions you have. That might be radical for you because many of you were not taught to question scripture, but it’s a questioning of, I wonder why, what, or how else? Does this story make you want to know? Know what this calls you to do?

My question for this scripture was the idea that this centurion called Jesus, Lord. That’s where my wondering was about because Jesus was just a Jewish peasant. He was like all the other Jewish peasants. A centurion is a Roman military officer, and centurion, think about century, means he has an army of a hundred men that he leads. What is the implication of him calling another person Lord? That would be a term to show his superiority by the centurion saying to Jesus, “You are more powerful and have more authority than I do.”

I want you to imagine. I put this in the frame of a social hierarchy, the Jews are at the bottom. They are the peasants. They are the poor. As a Roman centurion, he’s even above the Roman citizens, the military men, he’s up a notch. For him to say, Lord, was a big deal. It was important and shocking, and I think we glaze over it, but to the first hearers that he said to Jesus, I am unworthy for you to come under my roof. That was huge. A Roman centurion can walk anywhere he wants to go. He can tell his army to go where he’s directed, but he has full autonomy. To think that Jesus was too good to come to his house. I hope I’m helping you see this power dynamic that’s in this scripture that we often just glaze by, we don’t think about it.

The centurion in Greek calls Jesus curious, which means not only about power, but it also evokes Jesus’s divinity, which was only for Caesar. Now do you feel that power dynamic? If only Caesar is divine, and this centurion who follows Caesar looks at Jesus and says, Lord, I’m unworthy. One might say that the centurion has misunderstood the dynamics under which he works and lives. But that idea that it means Jesus’s divinity fits Matthew’s gospel to a T.

We were in Luke for a couple of weeks. This Lent, we’re going back to Matthew, where Matthew’s goal is to prove to us Jesus’s divinity, that Jesus is the Messiah.

Do you remember how Matthew’s Christmas stories are all about Jesus being the Emmanuel, the Messiah, God with us? Matthew loves this word so much that he used it 82 times in his gospel. He only has 24 chapters. It’s important to Matthew.

This story of the Centurion also exists in three of the Gospels, Matthew, John, and Luke. It’s slightly different in Luke because the centurion sends someone to ask for Jesus. That seems more like the role of the centurion. You don’t have that “I’m unworthy” piece in Matthew’s version.

In John, it’s an official of Capernaum who sends word to Jesus to have this healer. There were a lot of traveling healers at the time, whom we would call snake oil salesmen, going around, and it was easy to find one of them. But that’s not who the centurion wanted. He wanted Jesus because he knew Jesus.

I’m going to invite us this season to take time to be in wonder, or as Walt Whitman says, “be curious, not judgmental.“

Put our judgment to the side this season. Let’s be curious about ourselves and about one another. About the people God puts into our lives. What I want you to do is think about what you believe and why you believe it. We couldn’t tell from this scripture exactly why the centurion believed what he did. But why do you believe what you do?

I want you to think about that, and I want you to pray about who does God want you to share that with. God always wants us to tell someone what we’re thinking and why we think that. Pray about who that should be. Because God will put someone into your life for that conversation.

It’s probably the person that surprises you the most because that’s how God works. God is full of surprises. Then, start the conversation by asking them what they believe. This is not about you attacking their beliefs, I’m not suggesting that. But inviting a conversation about belief. Helping others to see the awe and wonder. Because there are a lot of people who need to see awe and wonder right now.

Last week, I said we need to think about what we’re teaching our children, because our children are watching us.

A friend reminded me that there is a song; it’s the finale in Steven Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”. These are the words, “Careful the things you say, children will listen. Careful the things you do, children will see and learn. Children may not obey, but children will listen. Children will look to you for which way to turn, to learn what to be, careful before you say “listen to me”, children will listen.“

Church of the Apostles UCC