Daily Reading, 11/11

Miracles miracles. What are we to do with them? Today's lesson from the Gospel of Matthew brings us face to face with one of the more famous of Jesus's miracles, the feeding of the four thousand (Matthew 15:29-39). Not only does this passage include Jesus's culinary feat, but it starts with setting the scene: people are bringing their loved ones (or themselves) to Jesus for healing and when they see every one being healed, they praise "the God of Israel."

Then this happens: (from the NRSV)

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not want to send them away hungry, for they might faint on the way." The disciples said to him, "Where are we to get enough bread in the desert to feed so great a crowd?" Jesus asked them, "How many loaves have you?" They said, "Seven, and a few small fish." Then ordering the crowd to sit down on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish; and after giving thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all of them ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Those who had eaten were four thousand men, besides women and children. After sending away the crowds, he got into the boat and went to the region of Magadan.



Whoa. Not only did he manage to feed the crowd with seven loaves of bread and a few fish, but they had 7 baskets of food left over! And there were more than 4000 people there.

What are we to do when we read about miracles like this in the Bible? How are we to take them?

It would be easy to dismiss the miracles and say they were stories to get one point or another across, and have been recorded as such. Then we can, from there, go on to say that it "doesn't matter" if they really happened or not. I would caution against this, however. Why? Because it's all building up to the greatest miracle of all-the resurrection! How can the Easter moment be true for us if we're not willing to let these smaller moments be true as well?

This isn't easy, though, especially in such a scientific world as ours. God created a world in which there were laws to govern how nature works (this is why science and religion aren't necessarily opposed to one another!). However, as we'll find out in about a month when we celebrate Christmas, God continually defies expectations. God sent His son Jesus-God became truly human and truly divine and walked this earth. Whoa again. Truly human and truly divine at the same time? How do we explain that? Rest assured we're not the only ones struggling with what this means-theologians have been arguing over the nature of Christ's being both truly human and divine since the earliest days of the Church. The point is that the Incarnation (the "en-flesh-ment of the Word) itself defied the laws of what God is supposed to do. And then the resurrection-that was even more defiant! Jesus rose from the grave and made death work backwards. Death means nothing to us anymore, ultimately, because our faith in Jesus Christ keeps death from having any hold on us. SWEET.

But back to miracles. If we hold these two essential miracles of the Christian faith to be true-the Incarnation and the Resurrection (and, after all, isn't having faith that these happened what makes us Christian in the first place??!!)-then believing that Jesus turned water into wine, or that Jesus raised Lazarus, or that he fed a crowd of 4000 with only a few loaves and fishes shouldn't seem all that far fetched.

But it's still hard!

No one said faith was easy...