THE REAL PROBLEM WITH MIRACLES

Easter is the season of miracle and resurrection.

Acts tells us the miracle story how Peter raised Tabitha from the dead.

Do we believe such a thing could happen?

Some people refuse to believe in miracles

            because they are unscientific.

They think science says miracles are impossible.

But since the early 20^th Century, science has not been so arrogant.

Science today tells us that hardly anything is impossible.

Some things are just extraordinarily unlikely.

Miracles are unlikely but can we still believe in them?

It is extraordinarily unlikely that an explosion like the Big Bang

            would sort itself into an orderly cosmos.

It is super unlikely that such a cosmos would generate life.

That such life should evolve to become sentient, aware, self-aware,

            intelligent, creative, and spiritual is beyond belief.

The fact that we are here this morning is so amazing

            we should not raise an eyebrow at the miracles on scripture.

A miracle is – an extraordinarily unlikely moment of grace.

Unlikely, yes, but I have experienced such moments – not often, but sometimes.

You may have experienced them too.

When all hope seems lost, things miraculously come round right.

We may call it luck.

We may just shake our heads and think the situation was not

            as grim as we had thought.

Or we may say, “thanks be to God.”

Whether we call those extraordinary moments of grace

            gifts from a loving God

                        or just the luck of the Irish is up to us.

The real problem with miracles isn’t science.

It’s theological.

If miracles happen sometimes,

            then why don’t they happen all the time?

I did my pastoral internship one summer at a hospital in Boise.

Every summer there,

            a child will drown while playing in an irrigation ditch.

My greatest fear was being on call

            for the emergency room when that happened.

In August, it did.

I sat with the young father while the doctors tried

            to resuscitate his 12 year old daughter.

It seemed like forever.

I went with him to see her body.

I held him as he cried.

And all I could think of was the words of Jesus,

            “Talitha cum. Little girl, rise up.”

But she did not rise up.

There was no miracle.

Robert Schuler, the television preacher of positive thinking

            used to say, “Expect a miracle.”

But the very nature of a miracle is that it is unexpected.

It’s what usually doesn’t happen.

He thought we could make our own miracles

            by having an optimistic attitude,

            that we could conjure up the power of God

            to do our bidding if we just think happy thoughts.

But that is a shallow way to think about God,

            it isn’t psychologically healthy to live in that kind of denial,

                        and it usually doesn’t work

                                    because miracles usually don’t happen

                         – except when they do – and that’s the problem.

If we could say God doesn’t get involved in our lives

            or there is nothing God can do about sickness, death, and disaster,

                        then we could just write God off and get on with it.

We might believe God exists.

We might even go to church.

But we wouldn’t expect God to actually do anything.

God might be God but he wouldn’t be good for much.

Problem solved.

Then in desperation we pray anyway -- or someone prays for us --

            and grace breaks into our lives in some unforeseen way

                                    at some unforeseen time.

What are we to do with that?//

The Bible does not try to make the world simpler than it really is.

It does not say that whatever happens is God’s will.

If we assume everything that happens is God’s will,

            we are not talking about the God of the Bible.

Throughout Scripture, we hear over and over

            that God is not at all pleased

                        with the way things are going on earth.

If God’s will is already happening,

            how come Jesus teaches us to pray “thy will be done”?

If this is already God’s kingdom where things are God’s way,

            then why do we pray “thy kingdom come”?

Isn’t God’s kingdom, God’s will what we are waiting for in the final act?

So as C. S. Lewis says, for now our world is “in enemy hands.”

How it came to be this way is another story,

            but what matters is that’s the way it is now.

God is not yet making the decisions in this world.

A lot that happens is painful, tragic, and wrong.

But the Bible also says God is involved in our lives.

God is always present, always caring, always tugging things

            in the direction of the good.

It’s a lot like being the parent of a teenager or a young adult.

Do you as a parent have influence? Yes, some.

Are you in control? No you are not.

We are involved – hopefully in a good way

             – but that is not the same as being in charge.

God is involved now.

And we can open the door to let God be even more involved.

We can open the door to allow God into our lives

            to do more of the good things God already longs to do.

That’ s what prayer is for.

That’s what hope is for.

That’s what faith and trust and working for God’s cause

            are all for.

We can align our lives with God’s will

            and that helps.

We can be God’s agents behind enemy lines.

We can give God more of an opportunity to work.

But we cannot turn over the whole world to God.

We don’t have that much authority.

So God’s grace breaking into the world remains a miracle.

It remains what we don’t expect.

It surprises us.

But it happens sometimes

            and because it happens sometimes,

                        there is always hope.

 There is no situation in which we cannot hope for a miracle.

But any expectation that God will do a specific good thing

            at a specific time isn’t something we can count on.

We have a bigger hope than the kind of miracle

            that happened when Peter prayed for Tabitha.

We have the hope of resurrection in our lesson from Revelation.

That is more than hope. It is you can take it the bank assurance

            because of one simple fact.

God alone is eternal.

Only God and the things that are of God last forever.

We are of God. All that is good and beautiful and true is of God.

But pain, suffering, injustice, and evil are not of God

            so they do not last forever.

Death does not last forever.

Death itself will die.

Then comes the resurrection.

All that is of God comes back from the grave like Jesus

                        and with Jesus.

All that is beautiful, good, and decent comes back.

God who made it to begin with can raise it up.

That little girl in the Boise hospital will live

            and her father’s grief will end.

And so will yours and so will mine.

We will not be raised back to this life like Tabitha in Acts

            – not to this life with its endless frustrations and disappointments.

We will be raised into the presence of God

            where we “will hunger no more and thirst no more

                        and the sun will not strike (us) or any scorching heat

                        .  . . He will guide us to the waters of life

            and . . . wipe away every tear . . . .”  

A LESSER LOVE FOR RELIGIOUS CLODS

A lot of folks these days are too spiritual to be religious.

Some of them do exercises and meditations

         to get themselves into the zone.

Others just think about how everything is as it should be

         and exude positivity.

They are often contemptuous

         of the merely religious people in churches.

We are too ordinary, small minded, and boring.

If the spiritual people wanted to read a Gospel,

         John would be the one for them.

In John, we don’t see much of the human side of Jesus.

Someone said, in John’s Gospel, Jesus’ feet never quite

         touch the ground.

John is about believing your way into a mystical union

--believing in something too mysterious to express.

Only near the end, does love come up.

 And even then, the love Jesus commands is “agape” – a spiritual love

         that is absolutely unconditional 

-- which I would be entirely for

– if only I were capable of it.

My capacity for love is more humanly flawed.

People have to be pretty lovable for me to even put up with them.

It’s a lofty thing we got going here.

Jesus had been lofty all along in John,

Then his first three resurrection appearances

were over the top.

He walked through walls.

He invoked the Holy Spirit on the disciples.

He was loftier than ever.

Then things take a very odd turn in today’s lesson.

This is a very different Jesus.

John has the appearance to Mary Magdalene,

         then to all the disciples,

         then to doubting Thomas.

And there the book stops with Thomas’ conversion from doubt to belief.

That’s the thrilling conclusion.

John explains the purpose of the book and says “the end.”

The curtain comes down. It’s over.

Then John runs back on stage and says

         “Wait! Wait! There’s something else!”

And we have today’s lesson added on like an afterthought.

Here’s what happened:

John’s community, reading their story that ended

with last week’s lesson,

practiced their mystical spirituality for several decades.

But reality kept tripping up their spirituality.

They were hemmoraging from internal strife.

They fought like cats and dogs while preaching agape,

         unconditional love, all the way.

 As John’s community struggled with their failures

in the art of spiritual love,

         they remembered one of the old stories.

They remembered another appearance of the Risen Lord

         that hadn’t seemed important before – because it didn’t fit.

But now, it became so important,

         they added a chapter to their gospel.

They added this story.

Remember in the previous Resurrection Appearances,

         Jesus was even more elevated and spiritual

         than he had been before.

But in this last appearance, Jesus is different.

He shows up unassumingly on the beach.

He seems like a grizzled old fisherman.

They don’t even recognize him.

He offers, not spiritual wisdom, but fishing advice

-- as old fisherman do.

The disciples finally recognize him and rush to worship their Lord.

But instead of doing something spiritual,

         Jesus has built a campfire.

Instead of saying something profound like

 “I live in the Father so if you live in me and I in you,

then you will live in the Father and the Father will live in you

and you will all be one as the Father

                  and I are one” or some such thing – instead, he says,

         “Let’s cook up some of those fish and have breakfast.”

This is a very human Jesus – a Christ of the ordinary.

This disconcertingly normal appearance of Jesus cooking breakfast

         over a charcoal fire as poor people do all over this earth

         is where we get our Anglican sense of “the sacred ordinary.”

In his classic essay, The Anglican Way, Dean James Fenhagen

         described our pedestrian spirituality as “holy worldliness”

         and “worldly holiness.”

 The father of Humanistic Psychology, Abraham Maslow, said:

         “The sacred is in the ordinary . . . . It is to be found

         in one’s daily life, in one’s neighbors, one’s friends and family,

         in one’s own backyard.”

Much of what goes by the name “spirituality” is not like that at all.

It is pretentious.

The “spiritual” people are better than the ordinary clods,

         way better than the religious clods in churches.

Much of what goes by the name of “spirituality” is escapist.

Do a special technique taught by an exotic person with an accent

         and imagine you are in some pristine place of peace and solace.

It will take your mind off the messiness of reality.

You can forget about unpleasant things

         like hunger in Haiti, gang violence in America,

                  or the loneliness of elderly people in Nevada.

But Anglican spirituality is the spirituality of today’s lesson.

It is pedestrian. It cooks breakfast.

It even washes the dishes.

Brother Lawrence was a Carmelite monk

whose monastery job was cook, waiter, and bus boy.

He wrote his classic book, The Practice of the Presence of God,

about finding God while keeping house.

The most brilliant theologian I’ve ever met, Sarah Coakley,

         said in a sermon at Harvard,

         “I am not good enough to be spiritual. I’m religious.”

This pedestrian spirituality does not make us better

         than anyone else.

It is too ordinary.

It calls for an ordinary way of life – nothing to brag about.

But back to our Gospel lesson.

After breakfast, Jesus took Peter aside.

They needed a little reconciling after Peter had denied Jesus

         three times in Caiaphas’s courtyard.

Jesus asked him,

         “Simon . . . do you love me more than these?”

But the word he used for love was agape.

It meant, “Simon do you have the most unconditional,

highly spiritual love for me of any of the disciples?”

But when Peter replied, “Lord you know that I love you”

Peter used the word phileo – an ordinary word, not so spiritual.

“I love you as a friend.”

Jesus said, “Ok, feed my lambs.”

Then Jesus gave Peter another chance.

He asked again, “Simon do you agape me?”

But again Peter failed to rise to the spiritual challenge.

He said, “Lord you know that I phileo you.”

So Jesus said, “Alright, tend my sheep.”

The third time, Jesus changed the question.

He met Peter on his own human level.

         “Simon, do you phileo me?”

All he asked now was a human love,

         a human friendship, the kind of thing

         an ordinary bloke like Peter might be capable of.

And Peter said, “Yes, Lord, you know I phileo you.

I love you as a common man loves his friend.

I am not an enlightened saint but I can do that.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

The good news is that an ordinary, fallible human love

         is all we have to do.

The bad news is the sheep and lambs part.

Ordinary human love doesn’t elevate us to a higher plane

than ordinary people.

Quite the opposite:

it will get us mixed up with those ordinary people

         who need us as sheep need shepherds.

Someone said,

“The problem with inviting Jesus into your life

         is that he brings his friends.”

And so it is.

Loving Jesus in our little human way

         doesn’t make us the least bit special

but it will entangle our lives with an odd lot of other folks.

Jesus will get us mixed up with all the wrong kinds

         of people.

Worse yet, we may even wind up caring about them.