Today’s gospel reading is a quite a collection of miracles: A storm is calmed. A man who is violently demon possessed is cured and a herd of pigs is drowned. A woman is healed. And a girl is restored to life. In these miracles Jesus shows he has power of the forces of nature. He has the power to cure people’s mental and physical problems. He even has the power to bring people back from the dead. It’s enough to make us jealous. Why can’t we have such things in our lives today?
In the first book of the Harry
Potter series Harry is told by Hagrid, a failed wizard, that he has magic
powers and is to go to school to be trained on how to use them. Harry asks that if there are still magicians
everywhere why do they stay secret?
Hagrid replies, “Blimey, Harry, everyone’d be wantin’ magic solutions to
their problems. Nah, we’re best left
alone.”
Indeed, I would go for magic
solutions to life’s problems. I’d love
to be able to wave a magic wand and have someone be cured from a painful
ailment. I’d love to have some magic
that would make the check engine light go off in my car when it comes on. It would be great to be able to fix a broken
glass or clean up a mess with an incantation and the wave of a wand. Also, wouldn’t it be great to be able to
prevent earthquakes, calm hurricanes, and put out wildfires?
I think we have every right to look
at the biblical stories of Jesus’ miraculous powers and wish we could
experience them ourselves.
There have long been attempts to
dismiss Jesus’ miracles. For centuries
rational thinkers have dismissed them as made up stories or wishful
thinking. They point out that many people
in the ancient world across many faiths have been credited with miraculous
abilities. Jesus is just one more of
them.
They make a good point. And yet, many critically thinking scholars do
point out that given the diversity of sources and the variety of miracles Jesus
is credit as doing, there has to be at least some measure of historical reality
behind them. In other words Jesus really
did have the power to perform miracles.
So our jealously is well
founded. When we see others hurting, or
when we’re hurting ourselves, we want help.
Perhaps the problem has been caused by our own greed or stupidity. That’s one thing. We can accept that we’re not going to get
help from God. We’ll learn our lesson
the hard way. But there are too many
things that are not at all our fault.
I’m reminded of the news story recently about a Rochester area high
school senior who was hit by a drunk driver who was traveling at a high rate of
speed. The car was so badly damaged that
it took emergency crews over an hour to get him out of the vehicle. The boy was severely injured and went into
surgery. He is expected to recover
fairly well, but he’s a track star and had received an athletic scholarship to
a Division 1 school. Those days are
over. The accident has ruined his
athletic career and will impact the rest of his life. If God has miraculous powers, where were
they? Why didn’t God prevent the
accident? Why didn’t God tweak the
circumstances so he wasn’t injured as badly?
Or why didn’t God fix his injuries fully and completely? And why should he suffer so much pain when it
is in no way shape or form his fault?
Even if we weren’t the recipients of
miracles, wouldn’t credible stories about them strengthen our faith? Wouldn’t it be great if living a faithful
life made a measurable difference in a person’s health, well-being, standard of
living, and all of that? At best you can
reach some slight conclusions to that effect, but you can also argue that
authentic Christian faith is just living by healthy life-principles, and so
statistically you could expect marginally better lives for people who live that
way.
Let’s put a philosophical twist on
this. We’ve traveled down this path in
sermons before. We’ve all been
born. There’s no debating that. And somewhere along the line a sense of
consciousness developed within us. We
know that we exist, and we can think about what it means to exist. We also know that we are individuals, but in
community with individuals. And then
like Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, God has given us a sense of time and
eternity. We know that the world existed
before us. It will exist after us. We did not create it. Something or Someone has created this
universe and us in it. We have no power
over any of it. We just came to be
without any say so on our part. But is
there existence after death? Is there
eternal bliss? Is there eternal
damnation? How do we please God so as to
be sure God will be good to us?
Good luck coming up with sure
answers about any of that! From a
critical thinking perspective, we know we owe our eternal existence to a Being
we cannot understand, control, or even influence in any certain way. Yet all of this is ultimate for us! Eternity depends upon it!
Our American society today is a mess
beyond all measure. I’m not talking
about the world of politics. I’m saying
that our society is a secular, wealth-oriented, shallow, pleasure-seeking pit
of filthy over-consumption. In the midst
of this septic tank of vileness that we swim in, how do we know what is right
and what is wrong? Our society no longer
has roots for meaningful ethical conversations.
I recently heard
an interview with a former politician.
He was asked what he thought of President Trump undermining so much of current
environmental protection policies. He
said it didn’t really matter all that much because we’ve never had meaningful
environmental policies. We just do token
things to make us feel better about ourselves and ignore the mess we make.
So, how do we even
know what is right? How do we even know
what God wants? We regularly pray, “Thy
kingdom come. Thy will be done,” but what
does that mean? How do we live that
out? Martin Luther’s morning prayer in
the Small Catechism includes, “I ask that you would also protect me today from
sin and all evil, so that my life and actions may please you.” But what does that mean? With our limited knowledge and the complete
mess that we are as a species, how can we even begin to know that we are pleasing
God?
Yes, we have every
right to want miracles, and to want clear teachings from God. And we have every right to be scared or mad
because of the absence of them. But
unless you have an inside track into the mind of God that I don’t have, we’re
all in the same boat here.
So thus enters the
real truth that we need. It is the truth
of God’s grace. God knows our needs and
our yearnings. God knows they are deep
and that they are ultimate for us. And
yet God, in God’s infinite wisdom (or perhaps foolishness depending on your
point of view) does not give us magic solutions to our problems. Yet God does not let us wallow around
abandoned in our mess either.
Grace is defined
as unearned, or unmerited favor. If God
gave us miracles to turn us to Him, we’d be missing the whole point. We’d turn to God because we wanted more, not
because we felt loved. And if God gave
us clear answers to everything and the will-power to do it all on our own, then
we’d be able to earn our way into deserving God’s love.
The only way our
faith can be truly authentic and not coerced, is if it is based on grace. Ironically we need to realize that we are in
a mess that we cannot get out of. We need
to know that we are absolutely deprived of the ability to reach God or to do
things that God wants. If we could do
those things we’d pat ourselves on the back for how good we are, or were
capable of being. But as it is, the only
thing we can say for sure about the human condition is that we can mess things
up particularly well.
What God truly
wants from us, and what truly brings about God’s kingdom is not a righteous set
of actions or a superior ethic, or a truly good environmental protection
policy. It is a relationship with God
based on knowing that the goodness only ever flows one way – from God to
us. In the midst of our powerlessness,
God invites us to trust in the power of his love.
Miraculous
solutions to problems only builds a shallow consumptive love and a weak
faith. Crying to God in helplessness
opens us to the amazingness that God loves us unconditionally. If you plan to exploit that unconditional
love you’ve missed the point. If you can
be in awe of it, then it becomes powerful in your life. It is a source of true life and energy.
Yes, on one level
I deeply want miracles to happen all around me.
But at a deeper level I’m glad they don’t. Jesus performed miracles to prove that he
indeed was the Son of God. He was both
divine and human. But he did not perform
miracles in order to convert people.
Over and over again he rejected those who wanted miracles and deeds of
power from him.
Instead, well, you
know the story well. Instead he died in
the midst of the mess we people make.
There was nothing miraculous there.
It is actually the powerlessness of our faith that is the strength of
our faith.
So, cry out to God
with the broken mess we live in. Use
that as a foundation to receive God’s grace.
And then, discover what it is to be truly fully human and alive.
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