Philosophy professor Jacob Needleman recalled his experience at the launch of Apollo 17 in 1975. “It was at night, and there were hundreds of cynical reporters all over the lawn, drinking beer, wisecracking.”
Then came the blast-off.
“The first thing you see is this extraordinary light, which is just at the limit of what you can bear to look at. Everything is illuminated with this light. Then comes this thing slowly rising up in total silence, because it takes a few seconds for the sound to come across. You hear a ‘WHOOOOOSH! HHHHMMMM!’ It enters right into you.
“You can practically hear jaws dropping. The sense of wonder fills everyone in the place as this thing goes up and up [and] it becomes like a star. And then there’s total silence.”
He remembered what happened next to the people around him. “People just get up quietly, helping each other. They’re kind, they open doors. They look at one another, speaking quietly and interestedly. These were suddenly moral people because the sense of wonder, the experience of wonder, had made them moral.”
Psychology researchers have recently found that moments of awe really do lead to feelings of humility and closeness to others, just as Needleman described. The research has been reported in recent articles in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Scientific American.
Reading the first 14 verses of John 18 should leave you awestruck—with all the positive changes that accompany the experience. In these verses we discover that Jesus knew what was about to happen to him and we learn he had the power to stop it. And yet he didn’t. The knowledge and power of Jesus that is revealed in these verses should amaze us. But then, even more, the sacrificial love of Jesus should astonish us.
Read these verses now, and then study the passage with us this weekend. We’ll begin our worship service online and on campus at 10am.
--Tom
(Jacob Needleman shared his recollections of the rocket launch with Bill Moyers in A World of Ideas II.)
Tom Goodman serves as pastor at Hillcrest Church in Austin, Texas. His sermons are available on YouTube and the HillcrestToGo Podcast and you can find him on Facebook and Twitter. If someone forwarded this email newsletter to you, sign up here to receive Tom’s weekly devotional in your email inbox.