Astonished At The Majesty And Power Of God

Saturday of the 25th week in course 2023

“All were astonished at the majesty of God.” Of course, anyone who has gone a hundred miles from bright city lights into a cloudless countryside and has looked up knows this to be true. God’s creation, sustained in existence by His mighty hand, is astonishing. His crafting so expertly of the human body, even more so. But what is being referred to here? One has to look a bit earlier in Luke’s narrative.

This chapter 23 starts off with majesty shown in Christ’s multiplication of the loaves. Then Peter declares that Jesus is the Messiah, after which He tells the disciples that He will be arrested, tried and found guilty and murdered, but then will rise again. And just now you heard it again, but without the promise of Resurrection. It seems like the awe that struck those around Jesus had to do with the almost effortless casting out of a convulsing demon from a man’s only child. Christ’s disciples had not been able to do anything for the lad. The boy’s father was frantic with worry that the devil would kill the child. But with Jesus on the scene, the boy was returned to his father completely calm and healed with no obvious ill effects. Of course they were all astonished at the majesty of God, a majesty revealed in this man, who was certainly more than a mere man.

Christ’s key disciples, Matthew, Andrew and John, had a special reason at this time to be astonished. Moments before, they had come down from Mt Tabor after witnessing Jesus being transfigured into glory, and doing so in the presence of two heavenly visitors, Moses the Law-giver and Elijah the prophet. They heard the heavenly visions speaking of the coming Passover of Jesus in Jerusalem. Just imagine their astonishment that this signal messenger from God, Jesus from the nothing town of Nazareth, was doing incredible deeds of power but was predicting His own execution at the hands of His own people. Astonishment to the nth power.

But the prophet Zechariah generations earlier had looked beyond Christ’s spiritual redemption of His people to the true end times. The words “the Lord is in your midst” is reminiscent of the angel’s words to the Virgin Mary, “the Lord is with you.” And the prophecy continues: “many nations shall join themselves to the LORD in that day, and shall be my people; and I will dwell in the midst of you, and you shall know that the LORD of hosts has sent me to you.” The redemption of Christ is not just for the Jews, not just for the people of His time on earth. His redemption is available to every man, woman and child in this world, in every time. We come into His kingdom, His everlasting kingdom, through faith and sacramental participation in His very Life. Let’s daily be astonished at the majesty of God in Christ.