Wonder of Wonders

We, who find ourselves in the Reformed theological tradition, are very good at exegeting, explaining, rationalizing, and reasoning. But sometimes I question if we have squeezed the wonder out of worship; if we have drained the mystery out of the Mass; if we have constricted the celestial.

I resonate with Kathleen Norris, when after thirty years away from Christians, she finds herself in a room full of them and mutters to herself, “My God, they’re still at it, still trying to leach every bit of mystery out of this religion, still substituting the most trite language imaginable.”

Enter Karl Barth, the theologian ready to obliterate our finite and small conceptions of God; the theologian ready to sound the siren, stirring us from our secular slumber; the theologian who knows a thing or two about removing the retractable roof.

In his little book Evangelical Theology, Barth writes, 

If anyone should not find himself astonished and filled with wonder when he becomes involved in one way or another with theology, he would be well advised to consider once more . . . what is involved in this undertaking. . . If such astonishment is lacking, the whole enterprise of even the best theologian would canker at the roots. . . He remains serviceable as long as the possibility is left open that astonishment may seize him like an armed man.

Barth’s wisdom does not apply only to the “professional” theologian. His wisdom is for each and every Christian, for a Christian who has lost wonder and astonishment with God will indeed canker at the roots, with no nutrients or imaginative hope to nourish our love-deprived souls. 

In the book, Barth considers three aspects of wonder in the life of a Christian. First, we experience wonder when we encounter something new. This experience is something, according to Barth, which is “uncommon, strange, and novel . . . He cannot even provisionally assign it a place in the previous circle of his ideas about the possible.” This first sort of wonder leads to curiosity. Because one’s mental models are insufficient (or to put it positively, always expanding and redrawing), one seeks and pursues what is behind the wonder or beyond the wonder. Not that we as Christians will ever “domesticate this wonder”; nonetheless, the experience of wonder charts the course for a faith seeking understanding. 

Second, wonder is more than a feeling. It references an occurrence or presence or activity which is from first to last invigorated with wonder. We wonder at wonders. The Bible is replete with accounts of the wonders of God. “Theology is the logic of wonders,” writes Barth. 

But, instead of being freshly astonished by these wonders, we domesticate the stories of God in the Bible. We have ceased to be astonished by the workings of God, the newness of God, and the grace of God. Our eyes glaze over as we hear again the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand. We know how it ends. It’s just another re-run on television. Or, instead of tuning the story out, we excise God from it in Jeffersonian fashion, expounding the story from the vantage point of a world cut off from transcendence.

American evangelicals defend the truth of the story to the degree that the life and mystery of God is extinguished from the picture. Mainline Protestants explain the story through science and realism, but in so doing yield the same effect—a story sapped of all the good parts, a story cut off from its source. What if these stories, such as the crossing of the Red Sea or the feeding of the five thousand or the Annunciation, are in need, not of explanation, but of astonishment? Barth shakes us awake from our complacency, our domesticity, because the astonishing wonders of God function as an “alarm signal” blaring us to attention. 

This curious wonder and this astonishing wonder prepare us for the third aspect of wonder, who is the wonder of wonders—Jesus Christ. Remember, for Barth, wonder occurs when we encounter something we have not encountered before, that is to say, something that is new. And while we preachers talk frequently about the new thing that God is about to do, or the new creation or the new heavens and the new earth, none of these amaze us or astonish us or cause us to wonder. Because almost always these conceptions lie within our current frame of vision. Something genuinely new comes from outside of us. That something new, according to Barth, is Jesus Christ. This new event is reconciliation and the forgiveness of sins. This new event is a new covenant between God and humanity. This new event is the free love and grace of God. “Christ,” says Barth, “is that infinitely wondrous event which compels a person, so far as he experiences and comprehends this event, to be necessarily, profoundly, wholly, and irrevocably astonished.”

The challenge of the witness of the church in our secular age is, “Can people be astonished at the newness of Jesus Christ?” As we answer this question, we will need to answer another one regarding the worship of the church in our secular age: “Can, we, the people of God be newly astonished by the wonder of Jesus?” 

And so we pray together: Let there be wonder on earth, and let it begin in the body of Christ.