Ordinary Miracles

Every year, between Pentecost and the Sunday after Thanksgiving, the lectionary takes us through week after week of “Ordinary Time,” a seemingly endless stretch of Sundays in green during which there are few special celebrations, no Advent or Lenten introspection and expectation, no thrilling Christmas, Easter or Pentecost celebratory remembrances, just a bunch of green week after week after week. A friend of mine once claimed that Ordinary Time is her favorite part of the liturgical year. I told her she was nuts.

But I’ve tried to pay better attention to the rhythm of Ordinary Time this year, and I’ve found a definite connecting thread between the readings that is easy to miss if I just show up on Sunday. Each year, for instance, the gospel readings during Ordinary Time take us through one gospel writer’s version of Jesus’ adult ministry—this year it is Mark. I like Mark’s style—he’s brief, direct, and to the point. And frequently, the point has been miracles. One week, Jesus calmed a stormy sea with a simple “Peace, be still.” Another week he raised Jairus’s daughter from the dead. Another Sunday, he not only heals people and casts out demons, but he also empowers his disciples to do so.

As Simone Weil wrote, “the stories of miracles complicate everything.” Such complications have popped up regularly in the essays I’ve written over the past three years, usually along the lines of “What are we supposed to do with such stories, especially since we don’t see people raised from the dead or storms dispersed by a voice command today? Did these things really happen? If so, why don’t they happen now?” The religion I was raised in explained some of this by dispensational theology, meaning that the dispensation of miracles, for some unexplained reason, ended with the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. Now that we have the Holy Spirit and the Bible, apparently miracles are old hat. I don’t buy it. But our current weekly stroll through Mark’s gospel raises the complications of miracles for me in a new way.

While riding in the car not long ago, Jeanne and I talked briefly about what it must have been like to be with Jesus and witness the miracles. How could anyone who observed such events have been as confused and often unbelieving as the disciples apparently were? Were the miracles daily events? Or does it just seem that way because the gospel writers are only hitting the high points, Jesus in miracle-working mode? Maybe the gospel versions of Jesus’ ministry are like a 90 second trailer for a movie. The trailer makes the movie seem like a “must see,” but when you see it you find out that the only funny, dramatic, or poignant parts are the moments you already saw in the trailer. Maybe life with Jesus during his ministry involved lots of down time with a few high points. Just when you think you’ve got this guy figured out and have rationalized an explanation for what must have happened when he calmed the sea several weeks ago, just when you’ve decided that he’s a very interesting and charismatic guy but nothing more, then he randomly raises someone from the dead and the confusion starts all over again.

The real confusion for me, I think, if I had been a disciple comes into sharp focus as Mark’s gospel proceeds and he tells the story of the capture and beheading of John the Baptist. If there’s anyone who deserves a miracle from Jesus, it’s his relative John. John’s whole ministry was to “prepare the way” for Jesus, to connect Jesus to Old Testament prophecies, to baptize Jesus, to identify him as “the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world,” then to step back. But John has a big mouth; he runs afoul of paranoid and crazy Herod Antipas and finds himself in prison. How hard would it be for Jesus to open the prison and set John free? Jesus wouldn’t even have to be there—he could have done it from a remote site, sort of like a first century wireless connection. But Jesus doesn’t work that miracle or any other, and John’s head is soon presented to Salome on a platter.

The randomness of the miracles must have struck Jesus’s followers then as powerfully as their apparent absence strikes us now. Miracles were no more predictable or formulaic in Jesus’s day than they are now. I suspect this is one of the reasons Jesus frequently used to tell those who received or observed miracles not to tell anyone (a directive that was usually disobeyed immediately). Following Jesus in the flesh would not have clarified the miracles confusion any more than following Jesus now. So the question remains—what to do about the miracles (or absence of them)?

A recent rereading of Marilynn Robinson’s beautiful novel Gilead reminded me of a much healthier and less stressful space concerning miracles, a space that I’ve only recently begun to occupy. In Gilead, a rural Congregational minister in his late seventies is writing a memoir for his young son, an only child unexpectedly born to Rev. Ames and his much-younger wife when Ames is seventy. Ames expects to die long before the child is grown, and Gilead is his love letter to his son containing as much guidance and wisdom as Ames can muster. One of Ames’ greatest continuing insights concerns the sacredness of all things. As he nears the end of his life, he pays close attention to the mystery and miracle of things most of us dismiss as “ordinary.” Toward the end of the novel, Ames writes

It has seemed to me sometimes as though the Lord breathes on this poor gray ember of Creation and it turns to radiance—for a moment or a year or the span of a life. And then it sinks back into itself again, and to look at it no one would know it had anything to do with fire, or light. . . . But the Lord is more constant and far more extravagant than we think. Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who has the courage to see it?

Good question. It takes a lot more courage to embrace this world with all of its imperfections and disappointments as a spectacular and continuing divine miracle than to step back and bemoan the fact that it seldom is the miracle we would have performed if it were up to us. It isn’t up to us—the power and glory of our created, sacred world is far above our pay scale.

Every week at my Episcopal church during the prayers of the people, the leader says “We thank you for all the blessings of this life. This week we are especially grateful for (individuals share personal thanksgivings).” It is always striking how few of us share our personal thanksgivings. Often at that point of the prayers, I flash back over the week just past and conclude quickly that “nothing special happened.” That’s the attitude of someone who is unaware or chooses to be ignorant of the fact that everything is a blessing, that it’s all a miracle. If I started expressing my thanks for everything that is truly miraculous—Jeanne, my sons, my dachshund Frieda, my love of my work, the beauty of autumn weather, and so on—I’d be filling in the blanks for several minutes. Some Sunday I’d like to be surprised at that point in the prayers as the congregation fills in the blanks for at least a full minute with our personal thanksgivings. As Rev. Ames writes, “Confusing as this world is, it is remarkable to consider what does abide in it.”