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.
1 comment:
It's difficult for me to interpret the meaning of the miracles. One author I read refers that they are more for persuading a listener than to have actually occured. On some occasions my mind drifts around the symbolic references the miracles present. Like your reference of getting a coin out of a fish. I once thought it could have been by speaking to and influencing another person instead of literally prying it out of a fish. I don't remember where I got this idea, but I have all sorts of them whenever I read the Bible. Sometimes, I find it more dangerous when left in a hell from my own imaginations than what comes from following church doctrine, but I've yet to reguarly attend one for awhile. I've found that you're more likely to stray farther from the teachings of Christ doing your own thing than being in a church.
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