A Reflection for Monday of the First Week of Advent
Find today’s readings here.
“When Jesus heard this, he was amazed.” (Mt 8:10)
The creator of Luke’s Gospel clearly had a thing for amazement. Thaumazo, the Greek word roughly meaning being amazed, being in a state of wonder or marveling at something appears thirteen times in Luke’s Gospel. Individuals are amazed by the shepherd’s testimony after the birth of Jesus. Mary and Joseph are amazed on the prophecies of Simeon and Anna about Jesus. The people around him are amazed when Jesus performs miracles and preaches, and Peter is amazed when Jesus rises from the dead.
But Jesus himself? In Luke’s telling, he is just amazed a number of times, and one in all them happens when he witnesses the religion of the centurion (the identical story that’s told in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew). Likely a Roman pagan who worshiped Roman gods, the centurion takes a risk by putting his faith and the lifetime of his beloved within the hands of this Jewish healer everyone’s talking about. (The character of the connection between the centurion and his servant has been debated for hundreds of years, but there’s clearly a closeness here that transcends the common boss/underling pairing.) It’s what we’d call blind faith: the hope that the riskiest and impossible thing will likely be the one which brings about healing.
If Jesus himself could be amazed by the religion of other people, perhaps we also can feel that way now and again.
Luke’s creator or authors knew what they were doing by selecting thaumazo to explain Jesus’ response. For the reason that Mass texts modified in 2015, we’ve (mostly) gotten used to quoting the centurion’s words to Jesus each time we take Communion. “Lord, I’m unfit to have you ever enter under my roof” felt like a drastic change from “Lord, I’m unfit to receive you,” but they each imply the identical thing: that we’re those who, just like the centurion, have to humble ourselves and be amazed.
But within the central message of the Gospels concerning the upside-down kingdom of God where the lowly are raised up, the poor fed and the broken-hearted mended, there’s also room for Jesus himself to be humbled and amazed. The centurion’s faith, coming from someone who normally humbles others, is what amazes Jesus. It is far harder to feel this today.
On this overwhelming, cynical, offended time that we live in, seeing a pacesetter or an individual of great power or wealth do good for others is so rare as to be shocking. However the CEO of Patagonia recently gave away the 3-billion-dollar company’s wealth in its entirety to fight climate change. The actor Emma Thompson quietly adopted a teenage Rwandan refugee who was a former child soldier. McKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon owner Jeff Bezos, has given away nearly ten billion dollars, much of it to small, off-the-radar charities run by women and other people of color.
These are, after all, the exceptions to most wealthy people and most world leaders. But faith in the ability of charity is amazing. Within the climate of suspicion, distrust and conspiracy that surrounds us, the religion of anyone who’s willing to be vulnerable enough to place their trust in a stranger is a marvel. No, it shouldn’t be. But in our world, it’s.
So if Jesus himself could be amazed by the religion of other people, perhaps we also can feel that way now and again.