Like A New Creation

When I awoke this morning it was snowing. Just enough had fallen to cover everything with a nice soft layer of white.

I’m always excited to see the snow. Though I dislike driving in it--largely due to my fellow drivers who don’t seem to think slick streets suggest caution--I love looking at it. Its brilliant sparkle seems to give the drab, grey winter landscape luminescence. Bare trees glisten. Dead grass disappears. The leaves that have fallen since the last raking have their summoning voices silenced. At the early hour when I first looked out, not even tire tracks marred the black of the roadway. It was as if all of creation had been rendered a beautiful new creation.

Those who witnessed Jesus driving out the demon of the man in the synagogue (Mark 1: 21-28) were seeing a new creation too. “They were all amazed, and they kept on asking one another, ‘What is this? A new teaching-- with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.’" With authority! They weren’t used to that. This Jesus was something new and different—a force with which to be reckoned.

Two thousand years later, we aren’t much impressed. Jesus’ work and teaching, they’re old hat to us. No amazement. Too bad for us.

It’s not a terminal condition. We could, you know, listen to his words when they are read to us or when we read them and pretend we’d never heard them before. We could let our imagination go and see how we’d act if it really were a new teaching. When we head in the Eucharistic prayer the mighty works of God on our behalf, we could really listen for a change. When the recital of Jesus’ saving work is intoned, we could imagine we’d never heard such a thing before.

And if we did these things, what might happen? I’ll let you consider that for yourself.

Peace,

Jerry+