Thursday, December 7, 2017

The Path of Discipleship - An Introduction to Awe and Wonder

In my first post, I described how I would talk about discipleship in terms of a collection of virtues.  The traditional (and not-so-traditional) practices of discipleship encourage and grow those virtues, helping us grow as people of faith.  When I was considering where to begin, I thought about awe/wisdom/wonder as a starting point. 

The author of Proverbs writes, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.”  Many people bristle at the first noun, “fear.”  One of the most common questions I receive about Luther’s Small Catechism is his use of that word in talking about the 10 commandments.  His definitions all begin with, “We are to fear and love God…”  Why should we have to fear God?

This question comes from the church’s more recent emphasis on the love of God in Christ.  We are always talking about love; God’s love; God loves you; for God so loved the world that he gave his only Son.  I frequently talk about the love of God from the pulpit because I believe that this love is a constant, a constant first made known to us in baptism; the constant that makes the life of discipleship possible.  Because we are sustained by the love of God in Christ, we are set free to live as disciples, to risk, to try, to fail and try again.

So why talk about fear?  The confusing thing about a focus on love is that it tends to put God on equal terms with us.  We act familiar with God as a constant friend and companion.  This is a valid way to talk about God, but it limits our understanding of who God is as well as the amazing nature of that love.  When I hear the word, “fear” in a theological sense, I tend to think about it in terms of reverence or awe.  I have sat at many campfires, amazed at the beauty of light in the darkness, warmth on a cool autumn evening, transfixed by the flit and flicker.  Yet as welcoming as that fire may seem, I also know how important it is to treat it with respect, how easy it is for fire to burn out of control, how dangerous it is to get too close.

The ancient Hebrews had the understanding that “you cannot look upon the face of God and live.”  You would be consumed by the glory of God.  It wasn’t that God was waiting to strike people down, but that God was simply too awesome for simple humanity to handle.  This glory was the reason that ritual became such an essential part of worship.  Any chemist in a lab can tell you that it is best to handle dangerous materials by having protocols in place, rules that walk the fine line between risk and safety.  Rituals are the repeated actions that allow for safe approach toward the glory of God.  It’s not that I think that the church will literally be struck by lightning if we sing the Hymn of Praise before the Kyrie.  Rather, I believe that our rituals of worship continue the tradition of approaching God with a sense of respect and awe.   I also believe that we can change our rituals so long as we preserve the sense of awe out of which they grew.

A healthy sense of awe makes the love of God an amazing proposition.  The God who formed the universe, the God who embraces infinity and yet knows the spin of every quark, the God of hurricane and subtle breeze is deeply in love of with you.  The God who is boundless chooses to be bounded in relationship to you.  The God who is formless chooses to be formed in the person of Jesus so that you can be drawn into a deeper relationship with God, so that you might see an example of what it means to love, the depth of that love, and the truth in that love.


                The next couple of posts will look more deeply at developing a sense of awe, wonder and respect for God.  A fundamental  place to develop the virtue of awe and wonder is in the universe that God has made.  We look at the scriptural stories of miracles as moments of wonder, and yet we are constantly surrounded by a creation that is wonderful.  As the theologian Richard Rohr puts it, “The first Bible is the Bible of nature. It was written at least 13.8 billion years ago, at the moment that we call the Big Bang, long before the Bible of words.”  You are not wrong to feel close to God in a sunset.  You are not wrong to feel close to God in walk in the woods.  Pay attention to all the wonder that happens around you and know that God is at work.

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