Maybe you’re like some of my friends who seek the truth, respect science, try to see the world as it really is, and thus are skeptical of all the miracles in the Bible. For a variety of reasons, the seeming centrality of miracles in the Bible keeps them from believing it to be a trustworthy source of wisdom and revelation. I sympathize with them.
I used to pray for miracles. When my youngest brother Ben was 13 he went blind due to a small brain tumor, and then died later that summer. We begged God to heal him. My dad was diagnosed with an aggressive brain tumor a few years ago. We begged God for a miracle. We didn’t get the one we prayed for. I admit I was angry and disillusioned.
These are two ways I have tripped over miracles. We trip over miracles when we make them a bigger deal than they really are – both in the Bible and in our modern life. We trip over miracles when they become the object of our attention instead of their context. I think there are healthier ways to put miracles (of the Bible and the ones we beg for these days) in perspective.
For example, in the gospel Mark writes about two stories where Jesus heals a man who is deaf and mute, and then feeds four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish. In our scientific era, it’s easy to react skeptically to this account. It’s also a spiritualist era, and we can too easily focus on the miracles as proof of the divine. But this is tripping over the miracles and missing the point.
In this story, Jesus was approached by friends who begged him to heal their deaf, mute pal. Because of compassion, Jesus took him aside, away from the crowd, and healed him – and then “commanded them not to tell anyone.” What kind of ruler does that? If Jesus was a typical Israelite or Roman or American king, when he healed someone or fed four thousand people with a few pieces of bread and fish, he would make a grand speech demanding loyalty, making more exorbitant promises, and leveraging the crowd’s energy for political power.
That is not King Jesus does with his power. When he heals and feeds people, it’s out of compassion, it is to embody the gospel, to inspire and empower people to join in this power-full mission of healing and flourishing. What kind of king would do that with such power today? It’d be a miracle if they did….
I’m not saying that God doesn’t do miracles anymore. I’m just reflecting on the gospel and reminding myself not to trip over the miracles. I’m not asking skeptics to believe in miracles. But I am inviting you, when you read the gospel, to not focus on “miracles” but instead on the compassion that generated the healings and feeding, and how King Jesus leveraged that power. If you don’t trip, you’ll see that this is the bigger miracle.
If you do believe in miracles, and pray for them, and have witnessed them, and benefitted from them, don’t trip over them. Don’t set your heart on miracles at the expense of setting your heart on Jesus. Not getting the miracles we beg for can trip us into resentment and bitterness towards God. We then miss the real point of the miracles: Jesus demonstrating to his followers – heal with the power you have been given, feed with the resources you have received.
We might think we don’t have much to offer, but then we are missing the point of the story: it was trust in God and compassion for humanity that drove the work of Jesus, which was also the source of his power. This is what we are saved to do, in Jesus’ name.
The real miracle is not that we are healed or fed, but that we become more love-full and actually do the work of alleviating hunger and sorrow in our community amidst our ongoing struggles Even while are ill or under-resourced, or busy or anxious.
When Jesus inspires you to do that, we won’t be tripping over miracles.
