The Wow Factor
Two and a half decades ago there was a movie that got my attention and it keeps working on me. It was Phenomenon starring John Travolta and Kyra Sedgwick, co-starring Forest Whitaker and Robert Duvall. The movie was about so many things, which is why it captivated me. It is about the inexplicable in life, and the community’s reaction to that. It is about the power of good-heartedness and the destructive nature of fostering suspicion and fear. If something is beautiful and beyond explanation, the response can be a delight, but why can it sometimes prompt fear, the attempt to control, to explain away, or even to destroy?
Travolta plays George O'Malley, a lovable, slightly dimwitted character in “small-town” New Mexico. Something happens, and he is transformed into a genius with telepathic powers. At first, all the town folk are thrilled and fascinated with things emerging from his abilities, but that does not last. It is fine when O’Malley’s unstoppable aptitude allows him to learn a new language on the truck ride over to an emergency to save a child’s life. But when he finds the capacity to sense minimally detectible seismic waves without equipment and to move objects with his mind, people freak. First, they fear him, then they vilify him, then they determine he is tricking them. Despite the reality that George does all without guile or hype, full of love and goodwill, only his beloved friends stand with him. George is amiable and sweet before the change, and after the change. The community reaction is truly pitiful.
Every year by the fourth Sunday after Epiphany, our lessons in liturgy turn us toward noting how the first miracles in Jesus’s earthly ministry serve as elements of epiphany. When Jesus heals, the glory of his divine nature is shown. When people are delivered from harmful spirits, healed of sickness, or when mobility, sight, and hearing are restored to them, his power is manifested, and his divinity shines out. In John’s gospel, the first sign is water turned to wine. In Mark’s gospel, the first miracle recorded is his rebuking of an unclean spirit to call it out of the man possessed. The onlookers react with amazement: “What is this? A new teaching—with authority! He commands even the unclean spirits, and they obey him.” —Mark 1:27.
Jesus does not change: his reason to heal is all about revealing the Kingdom of God and inviting people to believe and to receive eternal life. The people’s reaction is all over the map as you read the gospels completely through. We find the wow factor, and we find suspicion, the sense of threat, and the second-guessing. It does us good as Christians to hold up the signs and wonders of Christ’s goodness and love for what they are: epiphany-showings. Something to marvel at—opportunities to be moved to worship our loving Savior! Let these verses from our Psalm this Sunday be your personal declaration:
Great are the deeds of the Lord!
they are studied by all who delight in them.
His work is full of majesty and splendor, *
and his righteousness endures for ever.
He makes his marvelous works to be remembered; *
the Lord is gracious and full of compassion. —Psalm 111:2-4
The Epiphany season moves us into the mission. The works of Jesus, the deeds of mercy he showed, and the marvels of the Holy Spirit today, inspire our own participation in the purposes of God in the world. Great are God’s deeds. And great is your own phenomenal transformation as you fold yourself into the wondrous life of God.