Astonished.
It is the word that Saint Matthew selected, in his Gospel, to describe the reaction of the audience which heard Jesus of Nazareth share the Sermon on the Mount.
Some synonyms for astonished:
- Shocked
- Confounded
- Bewildered
- Astounded
- Flabbergasted
- Startled
- Stunned
- Dumbfounded
- Blow your mind
Astonished is a word that combines impressed and alarmed.
It is the way Matthew perceived the mood of the hearers.
He added that they felt that Jesus had more “authority” than the scribes. As you probably know, the scribes were not the Pharisees. The scribes were the local ministers in charge of writing and reading the Law of Moses.
The style they imparted in sharing those ancient words was: read, said, dead. When the scribes read, they said what was exactly there–as dead as they possibly could, so as not to add too much flavor.
So as you can see, it was not a roaring accolade, to say that Jesus exceeded the knowledge or enthusiasm of the scribes.
The importance to the verse is that the people departing that day were “astonished.” What do people do when they’re astonished?
On the way home, as the afterglow disappears, they begin to pick at the corners of great ideas until they disassemble them, convincing themselves that these principles are implausible.
How do we know this is true?
Most of them do not follow Jesus down the hill, but instead, go to their homes, where they justify their disbelief.
Meanwhile, Jesus, who has just delivered the most radical, truthful and practical message ever heard on Earth, descends the hill, and is greeted by one leper, who asks for healing–who had probably missed the sermon.
After twenty-two years of traveling with my dear friend Janet Clazzy, to thousands of churches, I will tell you this:
It is very possible to stir up a congregation, and even their local shepherd, to the point of astonishment.
You can raise dead spirits that haven’t been alive since Grandma and Grandpa sat in the pews.
You can get people to clap, think, react, smile, and even do their best impersonation of loving one another. But you can’t go home with them.
And home is where they rationalize all their present actions–to avoid the horror of repentance.
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