Friends, today I continue my series on miracles. This fourth and final article focuses on the place of the miracles in our own experience.
+++
It is one thing to talk about miracles. It is another to talk about their place in our experience.
If someone asked me, “Have you seen miracles?” My first question would be, “What do you have in mind when you use the word?”
As you will have gathered from the first three reflections, I don’t believe miracles are God intervening in an otherwise natural world. So, I would insist that my imaginary questioner allow me to include events that involve our bodies’ capacity for healing and the contributions of medical science. They are all the gift of God. They are all a manifestation of God’s presence in the world.
But I would also insist that the presence of God in the world is manifest in daily realities that have nothing to do with healing. They are present in the beauty of the world. In the power of nature to restore itself. In the abundance that the earth produces.
And it is also present in the transformation of the human heart. Transformation that impels people to love and give sacrificially. The changes that take place in the lives of an addict, a criminal, or the heart of someone who is so deeply hurt that the freedom and peace they discover can only be described as miraculous.
My imaginary interrogator might argue, “Look it’s one thing to argue that God is the source of our intelligence and imagination or to argue that love can transform people’s lives. But some people are just good and good without believing in God.”
My response would be, I don’t believe that people are just basically good. What is good in them is the image of God (and that has been damaged in all of us). And I would also note that just because people refuse to believe in God has no bearing on the fact that God is both the author and sustainer of the world and all that is in it.
Of course, by that point in the conversation, my interrogator – and you, too, maybe – would complaining, “But you seem to seem to be arguing that everything good in the world is a miracle.” And – in one sense – my response would be, “That’s right.”
You see, if God is the author of creation and constantly breathes his life into creation, then everything is – to use the biblical language for miracles – a sign, an occasion for wonder, and a manifestation of power. We tend to see miracles as a one-off, otherwise impossible event that demonstrates that God is out there somewhere. But the Gospels look at what we call miracles as windows into the presence of God in Christ and the nature of God’s reign over God’s creation. In other words, the ministry of Jesus demonstrates that God is working in God’s creation all the time. He isn’t just dropping for a visit from time to time to do a card trick.
So, our capacity to recognize the miraculous doesn’t lie with God pulling off the biggest card trick ever, it lies with our capacity to be open to God’s work in the world around us. In a really telling story, Matthew describes the return of Jesus to his hometown in Narazeth.[1] It’s his first time back and he begins teaching in the synagogue.
The people are “astounded,” according to Matthew and they ask, “Where did this man get this wisdom and these deeds of power?” But in the same breath they make it clear that familiarity breeds contempt.
Matthew tells us they complained, “Is not this the carpenter’s son? Is not his mother called Mary? And are not his brothers James and Joseph and Simon and Judas? 56 And are not all his sisters with us? Where then did this man get all this?” The implication is obvious, Matthew recalls, “And they took offense at him.” As a result, Matthew goes onto report that Jesus “did not do many deeds of power there, because of their unbelief.”
What is interesting about the entire story is that the possibility of the miraculous is not the issue. The residents of Nazaeth accept God is at work in the world and they know Jesus has done “deeds of power.” The issue is that they won’t accept that Jesus is who he says is and that those acts of power mean what he says they mean.
So, while Matthew says Jesus “did not do many deeds of power there”, the real emphasis should fall on the reason he didn’t do them. It was “because of their unbelief.” To paraphrase Matthew, one might say, “He didn’t teach them anymore about himself or the Kingdom in either word or action because they refused to believe him.”
The issue, you see, isn’t a belief in miracles, it is belief in Jesus and – by inference – a belief in his embodiment of God and his description of God’s Kingdom.
We should keep this in mind as the modern-day followers of Jesus. Miracles aren’t the point. The claims of Jesus and the character of the Kingdom should be our focus. And signs, wonders, and acts of power – as the Gospels label them – are only important as one of the many windows into the work of Christ and God’s Kingdom.
They share a place with several other windows, including the everyday experience of God’s grace, the beauty of creation, the power of love, the work of the Holy Spirit, the message of Scripture, the church’s liturgy and tradition, and – above all – the life, death, resurrection, and ascension of his Son.
When we recognize this, the problems with both the tendency to deny that miracles happen and the preoccupation with finding miracles becomes apparent.
To deny that miracles happen contradicts the conviction that God is at work in the world. We tell ourselves that seeing is believing. But, in fact, believing is seeing. And if we do not practice openness to God’s presence among us, then – by a different route – we become like the people of Nazareth. God is never absent. But we can and do isolate ourselves. And we find ourselves in the Enlightenment’s world of machines where God doesn’t factor in at all. And we – each – as one more machine in a world of machines are left to navigate life on our own strength, until the day comes when that strength fails us.
That said, a preoccupation with miracles is problematic in a different way. God may be present, but only from time to time. And our spiritual lives hinge on getting a miracle for ourselves. I’ve known those people and it is a miserable place to live. They desperately san their lives for reasons that God does not give them a miracle. They swing between euphoria and desperation.
So, knowing that miracles happen but they are only one window among windows into God’s Son and his Kingdom, how should we live?
One, we should not let the passion for the exceptional obscure the everyday gift of God’s grace. Miracles are something like an exceptionally vivid sunrise in a life full of sunrises. You wouldn’t – or you shouldn’t – let that particularly beautiful morning obscure your gratitude for the sunrise you get each day you are alive. And a lifetime of daily grace is its own extraordinary gift. God is present in those experiences and registering them with gratitude changes us.
Two, we should remember that an appreciation for God’s grace, including the miraculous, is meant to move us to serve others in the name of Christ. Jesus calls the twelve his disciples and his friends. But he doesn’t treat them as the special objects of his love or as beneficiaries of his grace. They are raised up to be sent out — and so are we. If we become preoccupied with “getting a miracle” we are really no value to God’s Kingdom. And the world is desperately in need of your witness to God’s love.
Three, we should remember that miracles don’t happen to everyone, nor are they necessarily important. We have a dear friend who has a son who has Downs Syndrome.
A certain kind of person would argue that he needs a miracle and should be freed of his condition. Others would argue that God gave his son Down’s to teach his parents something. Still others would argue that he should have been aborted.
Our friend, David wouldn’t subscribe to any of those views. He doesn’t believe a miracle is necessary. He doesn’t believe that his son, Sean, has Downs because God made him that way. What he believes is truly important lies elsewhere. David writes:
Many people would think of life with Sean as a burden. That truth is borne out by the high percentage of pregnancies terminated when Down syndrome is detected in the fetus. I’ve never thought of Sean as a burden, though. No one in my family has. We love him, and love changes your perspective.…
I write about Sean so often because I’ve learned so much about the Christian life from him. He has taught me about the dignity of every person—our ontological dignity. Put more simply, our worth as humans is a part of our being, not a function of our doing. I’ve certainly learned patience by being Sean’s father. I’ve learned to laugh more and not to take myself too seriously. I have learned a great deal about love.
This learning is not a function of any particular acumen on my part, but of God’s mercy. We serve a God of love, one who cares for us and teaches us and puts up with us, and even forgives us. We are not a burden to God. Despite all the ways in which we resist his will, despite our stubbornness and the acts of great evil we human beings sometimes commit, we are not a burden. God wants us not to be strangers or his enemies, but his children….
Sometimes, our calling means entering into difficult situations, even extremely difficult ones. Yet God meets us in the midst of difficulty. He gives us strength and sanctifies us through the challenges we face. In other words, through our struggles, God makes us more Christlike people.[2]
“More Christlike people.”
You see, what I gather from David’s experience, my own, and that of others – what I gather from the life of Jesus and the witness of Scripture — is that becoming God’s children, entering more deeply into his life, showing others the same path — this is what God longs to do in us and through his church. And, based on the popular understanding of miracles, some would probably argue that David and his family have been led into that deeper experience of God’s love, because they have responded to Sean without the benefit of a miracle.
But isn’t that too narrow a definition of miracles? Isn’t the love that David writes about really a miracle? The miracle, in this case.
I think so. Especially in a world that does not recognize God’s role as creator, in world that defines a person’s worth in terms of their “value to society”, and in a world that aborts and euthanizes those who don’t live up to that standard? In that world David, his wife, Sean and his brother have been given a window into God’s love, and they are sharing that window with others.
I would call that a sign, a manifestation of power, an occasion for wonder – or if you prefer, a miracle. And in this broken world that path does not always include the kind of miracles we would prefer. But God is always present and his presence often manifests itself in ways we wouldn’t expect. What God longs for us to give us is an openness to his presence and lives that are also windows into his love.
Notes:
[1] Mt 13:54-58, NRSV
[2] https://davidfwatson3.substack.com/p/fatherhood-and-the-christian-life?utm_source=publication-search
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In