The Problem with Miracles

Sermon by Rev. Steven McClelland on John 6: 24 – 35.  Focus on why miracles are problematic and why we all want one.  Guest Music Director – Hector Hernandez & choir.

Sometimes I wonder if the miracle stories in the Bible do more harm than good. They are spectacular stories and there is a lot of comfort to be had from watching Jesus still the storm, heal the sick, and raise the dead. His miracles remind us that the way things are is not the way they will always be.

He is living proof that God’s will for us is not chaos but wholeness, and every miracle proclaims that truth. Every healing, every revival, every banishment of evil is like a hole poked in the fabric of time and space. The kingdom breaks through and for a moment or two we see how things can be but then its over.

The disciples go back to their rowing, the once blind beggar walks off to look for work, the little girl stretches her arms out and takes the bread her stunned mother holds out for her to eat and Lazarus eventually dies.

The problem with miracles is that it’s hard to witness them without wanting one of your own. Every one of us knows someone who is suffering. Every one of us knows someone who could use a miracle, but miracles are hard to come by. Not everyone who prays for one gets one and there are people who get them without even having to ask for them.

That’s what’s going on in our story. The crowds who followed Jesus over the sea of Galilee, a large lake, are following him because they want more of what he was offering. Free bread, but they wanted more than that they wanted to know how he had pulled off this miracle. After all it wasn’t that he just fed them it was the way he did it. Bread out of thin air.

When it comes to miracles in the Bible my friend likes to say, “Miracles don’t lead people to faith. They just make the crowds say, ‘do it again, only slower this time.’”

As I look over the landscape of our country today. I see that we too are a people searching for food in our own wildnerness. People are either desperate for food each day, like those standing in food lines or else we have all the food in the world and yet our lives are still unfilled or unfulfilled. The rich say to the poor, “How can you still be hungry? There is more than enough food for everyone in the world!” The poor say to the rich, “How can you still be hungry? You already have so much!”

Jesus’ words are still relevant to this day: “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you.” I think everyone in the western world struggles with the questsion of how much is enough? After all haven’t we all be taught to save and to prosper? Aren’t we supposed to building for a house, for college or for retirement? If I don’t do it for myself, who will do it for me?

My father invented a game that he had my confirmation class play back in 1972. He called it The Game of Life. Monopoly meets the game of life. He wanted to have us a play a game that had very few rules. You had choices however all along the way. Choices like – Do you go to college or not, get married, have a career, what occupation pays the best what one the worst. Play it safe. Take a risk.

The finish line was retirement. The take away was different for everyone who played but basically the one who retired with the most was declared the winner. But we also noticed that everything immediately went back into the box. All the money and possessions and life choices all put away never to be played the same way again.

Some years later that I asked my father why he hadn’t made the end of the game – death. But he noted to me that the real end in the Game of Life was always a tie among everyone. Everyone loses everything in death. The proposed purpose in life – to gather a large stack of money turns out to be an illusion. Because none of us will take it with us.

Like those in the first century, who played the same game of life that we play today, we seem to be chasing a Jesus who we want to simply see the next and latest magic trick. Remember the name Jesse Duplantis? He’s the televangelist who wants his followers to buy him is forth jet and for only $54 million. And if you pledge today he’ll throw in a John the Baptist shower curtain at no extra charge. It’s called the prosperity gospel but the only people getting rich are the televangelists. P.T Barnum put it so beautifully – “There’s a sucker born every day.”

And with so many of us having far more than a day or two’s supply of food you’d think we would be the most satisfied group in the world yet we see that we are not. People are more anxious and over weight then at any time in my lifetime. We suffer from adult onset diabetes as never before in our history. All byproducts of our fast paced, fast food culture.

The book of Ecclesiastes calls all of this Vanity! We drink kool-aid the way the followers of Jim Jones drank in everything their false messiah said to them. We’ve made facts relative as if 2 plus 2 doesn’t add up to 4. Nobody really wants to know the truth. We want to be powerful and right even if the facts tell us we are wrong.

But then Jesus makes a bold move and says: “I am the bread of life.” He identifies himself and his way of being with God’s way of being. And he contrasts this with the bread that gets stale in a matter of days. So my question is how is Jesus the bread of life? How does Jesus statisfy hunger and thirst?

And when we dine at this table we learn how he answers those questions. It is in the giving of himself that he is most alive, even as he dies. And those of us who follow after Jesus need to learn this simple lesson. We are only filled up when we empty ourselves for one another. Jesus is the bread of life not because he fills our stomachs but because he shows us how to live a life with purpose and meaning. A way of living that is abundant because it lives through the ups and downs and sees everything as pure gift.

People who live as Jesus lived discover that there is meaning and purpose that they can not find by winning at the game called life. Death comes to us all, but how we live our lives does echo throughout eternity. The hunger that Jesus satisfies in us is the one that takes us outside of ourselves. As Bob Dylan put it: “I’m going to get out of myself and see what others need.”

As we gather around the Lord’s table today. I hope you come hungry for life, and leave hungry to give life. I hope you are blessed at this table so that you might be a blessing to others the way Jesus was, so that you might know his truth, walk in his way and have an abundance of life to show for it. Amen