Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Monday, January 14, 2013
Instructions On How To Perform A Miracle
For your average modern Xn one of the most impressive things Jesus ever did where his miracles. Even Peter and John seemed to take up the mantle and performed a miracle or two. But today, although I've met a whole bunch a Xns, I still haven't seen a single miracle. It got me thinking why doesn't the New Testament give a single instruction on how to perform a miracle? Why doesn't Jesus say blessed are the miracle makers? Why doesn't he teach us how to pay a poor person's taxes by retrieving it from the mouth of a fish? Instead of this useful trick, we're told to sell everything and give the money to the poor. Instead of being told how to heal a beaten and dying man we're told the parable of the Good Samaritan and told to go and do the same.
Most of Jesus miracles got people who would have faced some exclusion from the temple into the temple. Peter and John's healing of a lame man occurred at the gate to the temple and got him in the temple. In to the temple and back in with the community of God. Maybe the biggest miracle was that Xns took the community of God, the kingdom of God, outside of the temple. Where, Jesus like so many of the Old Testament prophets had called it to be.
The lack of instructions on how to perform miracles alongside the large number of miracles should be hard to ignore. Each miracle is evidence of the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, a time when the religious elite or the imperial elite no longer determines who’s in and who’s out or who can do what. It is a time when God is in charge. The challenge for us is not that we go on performing miracles but rather that we live as though God is in charge and not the government, the church, the economy or other social conventions. The challenge is not that we look after our own safety first but that we stop and look after an injured homeless man, Good Samaritan style. Or, the challenge is not that we horde money for ourselves for later but that we give to those in need. This I suspect is the challenge of the miracles, not that we change the world by performing them. But rather that we live as though God is in charge and that social, economic, religious and political rules and conventions do not apply.
Most of Jesus miracles got people who would have faced some exclusion from the temple into the temple. Peter and John's healing of a lame man occurred at the gate to the temple and got him in the temple. In to the temple and back in with the community of God. Maybe the biggest miracle was that Xns took the community of God, the kingdom of God, outside of the temple. Where, Jesus like so many of the Old Testament prophets had called it to be.
The lack of instructions on how to perform miracles alongside the large number of miracles should be hard to ignore. Each miracle is evidence of the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, a time when the religious elite or the imperial elite no longer determines who’s in and who’s out or who can do what. It is a time when God is in charge. The challenge for us is not that we go on performing miracles but rather that we live as though God is in charge and not the government, the church, the economy or other social conventions. The challenge is not that we look after our own safety first but that we stop and look after an injured homeless man, Good Samaritan style. Or, the challenge is not that we horde money for ourselves for later but that we give to those in need. This I suspect is the challenge of the miracles, not that we change the world by performing them. But rather that we live as though God is in charge and that social, economic, religious and political rules and conventions do not apply.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
I Don't Believe In An Interventionist God... Sort Of
A little while ago I found myself in a room of Xns celebrating God's "intervention" in someone's life. An answered prayer for healing to be exact and then we were all praying together for God to intervene again in a similar way. I felt the urge to mumble the opening lines of Nick Caves "Into My Arms" - "I don't believe in an interventionist God. But I know, darling, that you do". Obviously it seemed a bit rude to do so at the time. If I'm honest, technicaly, I probably do believe in an interventionist God, it's just not in the ussual, "God, stop the volcano errupting" or "God, find me a car park" kind of way. Essentially I believe that God can change me or someone else. If we're up for it, God can make us more like Christ, and that's about it.
Despite growing up being encouraged to pray for God to intervene, I was never that confident that my moments of answered prayer were any greater than random chance. My "interventionist God" house of cards completely fell when I heard of an aid worker who spent the night at a village church in a foreign country where the whole village had turned out to sing praises to God and ask for protection from an approaching militia. He left late that night, early the next morning the whole village was slaughtered. I could no longer believe that my car parking spot could possibly be more important than the lives of these people.
I believe God's big intervention in the world was through a middle eastern labourer whose dad had been kicked out of his hometown. He worked hard to explain what God was like but by the time he was killed most of his followers had run away. One even turned him in to be killed. On the world stage it's a pretty small time intervention. Certainly, not one befitting a big powerful deity. It is in this spirit that I suspect God continues to act. Small time, changing people, slowly but none the less intervening. So I guess I do believe in an interventionist God just not in the spectacular interventionist way it's often talked about or prayed for.
Despite growing up being encouraged to pray for God to intervene, I was never that confident that my moments of answered prayer were any greater than random chance. My "interventionist God" house of cards completely fell when I heard of an aid worker who spent the night at a village church in a foreign country where the whole village had turned out to sing praises to God and ask for protection from an approaching militia. He left late that night, early the next morning the whole village was slaughtered. I could no longer believe that my car parking spot could possibly be more important than the lives of these people.
I believe God's big intervention in the world was through a middle eastern labourer whose dad had been kicked out of his hometown. He worked hard to explain what God was like but by the time he was killed most of his followers had run away. One even turned him in to be killed. On the world stage it's a pretty small time intervention. Certainly, not one befitting a big powerful deity. It is in this spirit that I suspect God continues to act. Small time, changing people, slowly but none the less intervening. So I guess I do believe in an interventionist God just not in the spectacular interventionist way it's often talked about or prayed for.
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