Do you believe in miracles? (sermon 8/3/08)

Grace and peace to you from God our Father, and from the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

08.08.08. Do you know what I’m referring to? Let me give you a hint…(Olympic theme). 888. That’s the opening day of the Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. Coming up this Friday. So there’ll soon be hours of television coverage of events—swimming, diving, track and field, team sports like softball and basketball, and of course that timeless classic Olympic sport—beach volleyball! Not to mention the gymnastics. I’d like not to mention them, since they overshadow most of the other less popular sports like the equestrian events and archery for instance. That and I find gymnastics to be frightfully boring. Sorry, I’m just saying—it does nothing for me. It’s okay if you like it—just me, not so much.

In fact, truth be told (and church is the place for truth) truth be told—I don’t find the Summer Olympics to be enjoyable much at all. You won’t find me glued to the old flat screen, watching China and Japan battle it out for Ping Pong gold. I won’t be rushing out to get HDTV so I can count the beads of sweat on the weightlifters’ mighty brows. I just don’t find the summer games to be terribly compelling. Maybe it’s because it’s summer and it’s hot and I’m cranky.

Because I don’t feel the same way about the Winter Olympics. Those I love. Slalom, the super G, ski jumping (the thrill of victory the agony of defeat), the luge, biathlon, and curling (which, by the way is still only a demonstration sport!). The sports are just way cooler in my humble opinion. And the athletes are way more colorful as well. Who could ever forget the Jamaican bobsled team, for instance, or Eddie the Eagle, or Tomba.

And, of course, the 1980 American Olympic hockey team—made up of college students, not professionals like it is now. Kids really, vying for Olympic glory against the mighty Soviet Union team in the semifinals, and the Finnish team for the gold. Who can forget those last ten seconds of the final game? America up 4 to 2 after trailing the Finns for most of the game, crowd going wild, announcers screaming the countdown—6,5,4,3,2,1 and then one of them breaking in over the buzzer that ended the game, shouting, “Do you believe in miracles? Yes! Unbelievable!” The United States had been granted a miracle—a win over Finland. (Sorry Arja!)

And what I want to know is this: Do you believe in miracles? Well, do ya?

Biblical miracles, that is. Like in today’s gospel, in which Jesus serves over five thousand folks dinner al fresco. On the menu… five loaves of peasant bread and two dried fish, graciously donated by a young boy in the crowd. Slim pickings for such an endeavor. Hardly enough for just Peter, to say the least. But somehow, it was enough…and there were twelve super-sized doggie bags filled with leftovers once every one had had their fill. (Someone had a tasty leftover fish sandwich that night!) Jesus had fed a multitude with a handful of food! A miracle! A miracle?

Most of us have no problem believing in Jesus as the Son of God. But the miracles of Christ—they present a problem for our scientific reasoning minds. So, some interpret this fantastic feeding as a “lesson in sharing.” The thought being that when Jesus had the crowd sit down for supper, and he publicly blessed the little boy’s meager, yet enthusiastically offered loaves and fishes, it shamed those who had also brought food along with them but hid it for themselves. Shamed them into pulling out their loaves, fishes, tuna sandwiches and hardboiled eggs to share with their neighbors. Somehow this seems more plausible for those who are a little uncomfortable with Jesus’ miracles.

And, just like with Olympic gymnastics, you can hold to that theory if you want and I promise not to order you burned at the stake. But it seems to me to be what theologians like you and I would call a “hermeneutical jump,” an “exegetical leap”—or, to use the vernacular, reading between the lines. Down south they’d put it this way—“That dog just won’t hunt!” Do you believe in miracles? I don’t think so.

What is a miracle after all? Philosopher David Hume wrote that:
A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined. Why is it more than probable, that all men must die; that lead cannot, of itself, remain suspended in the air; that fire consumes wood, and is extinguished by water; unless it be, that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature, and there is required a violation of these laws, or in other words, a miracle to prevent them? Nothing is esteemed a miracle, if it ever happen in the common course of nature. It is no miracle that a man, seemingly in good health, should die on a sudden: because such a kind of death, though more unusual than any other, has yet been frequently observed to happen. But it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country. There must, therefore, be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation....

So a miracle is something that defies experience grounded in the laws of nature. It’s something that has no logical, natural explanation. Like turning water into wine. Like healing a blind man. Like calming the wind and waves of the sea. Like raising the dead. Like feeding five thousand men with the equivalent of a value meal from McDonalds. In Hume’s thought, these all would qualify as miracles—if they proved to be true.

And how does one go about “proving” a miracle? Hume answers this as well:

The plain consequence is (and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention), 'That no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavours to establish....' When anyone tells me, that he saw a dead man restored to life, I immediately consider with myself, whether it be more probable, that this person should either deceive or be deceived, or that the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority, which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous, than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.

If the miracle not being true is more implausible than the miracle itself, then you
can say you’ve got a miracle on your hands. Using Hume’s definitions and theories, then, the likelihood of a miraculous event are slim to none—even biblical ones. So, parting of the Red Sea? More likely the wind and the currents did it. Noah and the flood? Melting polar icecaps are a reasonable explanation. Jesus walking on the water and Peter sinking? Didn’t Jesus tell him where the stepping stones were? Feeding five thousand with loaves and fish? They shared—makes sense.

Except that is not what the text says! It says Jesus took the food, looked up to heaven, blessed it, and then broke it into pieces for the disciples to hand out to the people And all ate and were filled. That’s what Matthew says. That’s what Mark says too. And Luke. And even the gospel of John reports this occurrence. It’s the only miracle story to make it into all four accounts of Jesus’ ministry. In biblical scholarly circles, that spells confidence high of the event having happened.

Do we have proof? Quite the contrary, according to Hume. But we don’t need proof. Why not? Because, as even Hume admits, religion requires not reason and logic, but trust and faith. Faith in that which cannot be seen, heard, or explained away by human beings. Miracles, it has been said, are experienced most through eyes of faith—in which even the mundane can be miraculous, and the miraculous can become mundane.

So is that the “moral of the story?” That we should have faith and believe in miracles? That if we say, “I believe in miracles!” loud enough and long enough our wish will come true like with Tinkerbell at the end of the play Peter Pan? That God will provide miraculously for those in need—even those in need of a win over the Finnish hockey team? (again, sorry Arja!)

We know, through experience, that this isn’t the way the world works, nor is it how miracles work. Five thousand not counting the women and children were fed that night in Israel. That doesn’t mean they never went hungry again. And there are millions of people starving to death—right now—and God doesn’t feed them miraculously.
We say things like, “God will provide,” and “God never gives you more than you can bear.” We sing hymns that say, “I’m leaning on the everlasting arms—what have I to fear…safe and secure from all alarms?” Do we find any of these to be the way we experience hardship and loss and pain? Do we see it reflected in our world? No…and yes.

No, we aren’t cured or fed by platitudes, and though we may be comforted by a familiar hymn, there’s part of us, I think, that just can’t believe God is even present, much less in their corner, doing something!

But yes. Yes, with the strength of a community of believers surrounding us, we can experience peace and fulfillment where it seemed impossible to do so before. The sick can experience healing, if not a cure. The hungry can be fed, if we have the will to do it. There can be heartache and strife in our lives, and still we can feel cradled in God’s arms through the arms of another.

Yes, Virginia, there is a God and we know that God is loving and cares for the creation, especially for us. We know because the miracles point to it—even if you don’t believe they actually occurred, or if you want to explain the away logically. The miracle stories of Jesus are a testimony—a testimony that Jesus of Nazareth, is God’s Christ, and even more so, with the Father and the Spirit, Jesus is God! A testimony that comes to us over the ages, through the mouths of hundreds of witnesses to the gospel, passing through the pens and minds of those who captured it for eternity on paper. Jesus told his followers that if they could not believe through his words in teaching with parables—then to believe because of the signs. In the same way, I encourage you to use the miracle stories as signs. Signs of a reality that is here now in Jesus Christ. Signs that point to the way God’s kingdom will operate, some day. Signs that reveal the kingdom operating in our broken world already in fits and starts. Forget proof and logic and believe that this story shows us a God who is compassionate, who works to relieve people’s problems, who uses a scarcity of earthly things to do things abundantly, who uses followers to distribute blessings to everyone, and who feeds us still with bread broken and wine poured.

Do you believe in miracles? This sermon perhaps raises more questions than it gives answers. Sometimes a sermon does that. But questions of faith will always outnumber the answers we come up with. And sometimes the answers we come up with are fairly ambiguous. And that’s okay. It’s when we think we got it all figured out that the real problems begin! AMEN