A lexicon of faith Miracles
M
ost people spend precious little energy thinking about miracles—that is, until they need one. When the desire for a miracle becomes urgent and personal,
one’s imagination begins dreaming of an eye-popping dis- play from God. This is how we tend to define miracles—as eye-popping
activities that create astonishment. Whenever there is a disruption in the created order, or nature gets invaded, or seemingly impossible things begin to occur, a stupendous response becomes our measure of a miracle. The problem with miracles being hinged to our reaction
is that we all react differently. This makes the very idea of a miracle a floating target. What astonishes or amazes you on a given day may not astonish or amaze me. A person with precarious health may consider her inhalation and exhala- tion of air at 16 times a minute to be nothing short of a mir- acle. You, in contrast, may be busy living out the fullness of your day so vigorously that the behavior of your lungs hardly strikes you as activity in the realm of the miraculous. Our varied responses to events may be what prompted
Albert Einstein to leave us words that have found recent popularity below email signatures: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; you can live as if everything is a miracle.” How we view the world and
and make you feel better? For his part, Jesus never
healed people for the sake of some response that this might elicit. He performed miracles to address human need. Some- times I think of all the miracles Jesus did not perform, all of the ailing bodies he passed by, all of the diseases he never cured. Those numbers are staggering. The Gospels attribute no more than 35 miracles to Jesus. That’s a small number on the map of human distress. So what do we make of this? Jesus seemed wary of faith produced by miracles. This
We might think of Jesus’
appreciate God—or not—frames our perspective on miracles. Thousands of miracles happen in hospitals every day. We just spend a lot of money and call them wonders of modern medicine. As tempting as it is to make miracles the ground of faith,
miracles as morsels of grace, each pointing toward the kingdom of heaven.
there are problems with this approach. For one thing, if you hang your life on miracles, you will always need a fresh one to prove that the last one wasn’t all there is. This is not only an exhausting way to live, but it also fosters an addiction to miracles, which is not the same thing as centering one’s life in God. The other problem with expecting God to perform reg-
ular miracles for our personal lives—“Grab me, Lord, if I should trip over that step I didn’t see”—is the implicit nar- cissism that goes with placing ourselves at the center of the universe. The God of Scripture is hardly a magician waiting for the phone to ring with our latest request. If I should hurt your feelings, is it really God’s job to swoop in miraculously
may be why he repeatedly asked people to remain silent about what they witnessed. While many followed Jesus to see what they could get from him, he seemed more inter- ested in who they might become through him. As far as he was concerned, long-term fidelity beats short-term amaze- ment. We might think of his miracles as morsels of grace, each pointing toward the kingdom of heaven. None of us has a hand-me-down
lease on good health and personal contentment. In fact, we all die, including those of us who receive
miraculous healing for a particular disease. Miracles are not the answer to the suffering that you and I do not want to experience. They’re more like unanticipated signs that God is alive, Christ is Lord and suffering does not have the last word. A miraculous healing of a physical illness is wonder-
ful. But even more impressive to me is the way God’s grace gives some people the courage to live creatively, and even joyously, within their suffering. The profound faith of those who live with crippling affliction or disease-ridden bodies does not look spectacular to many. But their confidence in God and love for others are as beautiful a miracle as any physical one you’re apt to ever see.
Author bio: Marty is a speaker, author and ELCA pastor who writes monthly for The Lutheran.
April 2015 3
By Peter W. Marty Four th in a series
Unanticipated signs God lives, Christ is Lord, suffering not last word
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