Fear and Amazement

After years of careful study, hours upon hours of tedious research, and what seemed like endless rounds of clinical experience I have come to a conclusion – my grasp of the emotional spectrum is alarmingly inadequate. I am one of those people whose answer to the question, “How do you feel?” will be the same 90% of the time – fine.

But today, we encounter two emotions beyond “fine.” In Mark chapter 10, the story is close to its climax. The end is near. Jesus is headed to Jerusalem, just a few verses away is the triumphal entry. Today Jesus is on the road with a crowd in tow. Can you picture it? Mark tells us that Jesus was out in front of everyone else. It seems as though no one could keep up with God’s pace when He’s on a mission. Behind him were the disciples, and following them was the crowd that had come to see what this miracle worker would do next.

And what was the emotional state of mind of the crowd? Mark doesn’t leave us to wonder – “They were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.”

Amazement and fear. Two sides of the same, emotional coin. Amazement and fear – two emotions that made perfect sense there on the road to Jerusalem.

Jesus was everything the crowd could have ever hoped for. Soon Jesus would enter Jerusalem. Soon He would confront their Roman overlords. Soon He would overthrow the tyrannical rule of Caesar and set up the throne of David. Once more Israel would be a force to be reckoned with in the known world. Once more a Jew would rule and govern the Jewish people. Once more, David’s line would bring peace and prosperity to God’s people. This Jesus would do it all. He was meeting all of their expectations for who the Messiah should be and what He should do.

But then all that changed. Their joy melted away. Their excitement evaporated. Their sense of security that had sprung from a comfortable familiarity with who this Messiah was and what He came to do was slowly replaced by something different – fear.

This fear was kindled in the hearts of the followers by the very person that led them on their way to Jerusalem. Jesus was the reason for the fear. Why? Jesus caused them to fear because He was not meeting their expectations. His predictions about what would happen in Jerusalem didn’t coincide with what they had in mind. His plan to die at the hand of the Chief Priests went beyond the job description of Messiah that the people had written up. Jesus wasn’t following the program. They were afraid because this Messiah Jesus was radically redefining what it meant to be Messiah with each step He took towards Jerusalem. 

Have you ever been caught off guard by God? Has He ever surprised you with a change of plans that you didn’t account for. Has He ever failed to meet your expectations? Has He always lived up to your ideas of what you think God should be? You know that’s not a bad question to ask yourself – what do you think God should be like?

Do you think of God as a sort of spiritual vending machine – there to meet your felt needs and desires? Does God exist to give your life a little boost of cosmic significance? Is God there to give merely an explanation for why we are here? Perhaps, in your mind, God acts as a sort of divine therapist – someone who will always be there to listen to you and solve life’s complicated scenarios. Are you here, following Jesus because He is your ticket into the good life? A life filled with meaning, purpose, prosperity, and happiness? Maybe your idea of who God is, what He should do, and how He should act is a bit more refined than these. Maybe God is your Savior – someone whose job it is to save you from all pain, all disease, all sorrow, all despair – all fear from your life. That’s what it means to be God? Right? And so we join the company of the disciples and the crowds that have gathered, and we follow Jesus – our Messiah. We follow Jesus, the one who has come to satisfy every sensibility that we have about what it means to be God. We follow Jesus, eager to have our expectations met.

You follow Jesus – but life hurts. And no amount of faith is going to make it better. A stronger faith won’t heal you, it won’t fix a relationship, it won’t give you a sense of purpose, and it won’t put money into your bank account. Those things come from God, and He doesn’t need your faith to make them happen. And that’s exactly the problem. He is capable of doing all that and yet, at times He doesn’t. He’s not doing the things that you think He ought to do. He’s not taking away the pain; He hasn’t destroyed death. He hasn’t eradicated all disease, all acts of violence, or all hunger. He hasn’t put an end to corrupt government or done away with injustice. He hasn’t acted the way a loving God ought to act! Your expectations for who God should be and what He should do fall away, one by one under the unforgiving hammer of reality.  

And you are afraid. Together with the disciples on the road to Jerusalem, you see the God, the Messiah you’ve been given and He doesn’t match the Messiah you expected Him to be. Perhaps your palms are not sweating or your knees shaking from fright, but apprehension, uncertainty, doubt, and insecurity – they all fit underneath the umbrella of fear.

This fear is the emotion felt by a finite, fallible creature who has come face to face with the almighty God. Fear is felt when presuppositions about who God is die at the hand of God Himself.

Jesus did not come to bring health or wealth, peace or prosperity. Jesus did not come to set up a kingdom on this earth. He did not come to sit on a golden throne in Jerusalem. Jesus is not the sort of Messiah whose job it is to meet your exacting standards for who you think He should be. Jesus did not come to make you happy. Jesus is the sort of God who redefines what it means to be God with every step He takes on the road to Jerusalem.

Seeing your Jesus, your God, walking to His death, seeing Him hanging there naked, gasping for breath, you are filled with emotion. God dying is not something you are fine with. It shouldn’t be. You shouldn’t look at the bloody mess that your God has revealed Himself to be and feel fine about it. You want God to fix everything, to bring healing and peace, you want Him to wipe away the tears and take away the pain. But what does He do instead? He dies. Your expectations are unmet and you are afraid.

But fear of God, fear born from who He is and who you are, does not end in despair. No, not this time, not this sort of fear. This fear of God is joined inextricably with another emotion. The same emotion that was felt by the crowd on the road to Jerusalem. They felt fear and amazement. Amazement because of who this God, this Jesus, is. Amazement because Jesus is so much more than you could have ever imagined. In the person of Christ, God does the unexpected. He does the impossible. He suffers Hell, and He dies. Why? Because He loves you. He loves you! And that love drove Him to do something about the very things that separates you from the perfection that was meant for you. He dies for your brokenness and banishes it forever.

When you find yourself in the midst of pain, when the suffering is unbearable, when the relationship breaks beyond repair, when all hope seems lost, when you just can’t put your life back together, when the God, who has what it takes to fix it all seems distant, uncaring, or aloof – stop. Resist your natural inclination to despair over all the things that God is not doing. Do not despair that God is not the sort of God you’d like to have. Instead, look to the cross. Look at the corpse of Life and Light itself and remember who your God has revealed Himself to be: Love that has given Himself over to death in order that you might have life forever.

When you think about your God don’t limit yourself to just one emotional response. Avoid the temptation of giving in to a complacent attitude towards your faith that is marked by the emotionally vapid word: “fine.” No, feel fear because the God who lived and died and lived again for you might not always be the God you want.

But do not let this healthy fear of God lead to despair. No, fear must always be accompanied by her sister sentiment – amazement. Amazement because God hanging on the cross, risen from the grave, and descending on the clouds on the last day is exactly the God you need.