It's a Miracle

It’s a miracle! How often we have all said that! And yet I wonder. Have any of us seen a real miracle, an event that seems so out of the ordinary that we can only attribute it to divine intervention?

Of course, Scripture is full of miracles. You can hardly turn a page in either the Hebrew Bible or the New Testament without encountering what can only be called a miracle. Just look at today’s readings. Our reading from the Hebrew Bible contains not one but two miracles. After winning the competition with the priests of Baal, Elijah is on the run from the unscrupulous king Ahab. In Zarephath, he comes upon a gentile woman and begs a meal from her. When she explains her dire circumstances, he makes a bold promise: if she feeds him and puts him up, in the midst of severe famine, she, her son on whom she depends for support, and Elijah himself will always have enough to eat. And they do! And, of course, the second miracle: when the boy is struck down by a deadly illness, Elijah does what sounds like CPR and revives him. Then he “gives him back” to his mother.

Our psalm has a hint of the miraculous. God is the source and ground of all that is, “who made heaven and earth, the seas and all that is in them.” Instead of trusting limited and fallible human beings, we rightly praise God for all that God has created. And yet that same God, beyond all human understanding, has made a covenant with human beings, and “keeps his promise forever.” More than that, this same God cares about what happens to human beings, especially those who are oppressed, those who hunger, and those who are blind or in prison. Most surprising of all, this God “cares for the stranger; he sustains the orphan and widow….”

Our gospel reading parallels the story of the widow at Zarephath. Last week, you may remember, Jesus was in Capernaum, where he healed, at a distance, the slave of a Roman military leader. Luke’s gospel is a bit sketchy on geography, but, having come to the village of Nain, Jesus and his friends have walked about twenty-five miles. Picture it: dusty and tired from their journey, Jesus and his friends come face to face with a party of mourners carrying a body for burial outside the village. No coffins in those days, just a body wrapped in sheets lying on a platform and wheeled or carried by family members or friends. From the laments of the mourners, Jesus realizes that the dead person is the only son of a widow. Neither she nor the other mourners seek Jesus’ help. Even so, Jesus is moved by her plight. Knowing well that without either a husband or son, this woman’s future is precarious at best, Jesus reaches out to her. He also does something unthinkable for an observant Jew: he touches the dead man and commands him to rise. The dead man comes back to life, and Jesus “gives him back” to his mother – even the Greek words here are the same in both the Greek Old Testament and Luke’s gospel!

And then there is Paul. You remember that in this letter to Christians living in Galatia, Paul is addressing gentile converts who are being pressured by other evangelists to adopt all the outward signs of Jewish life, to be circumcised and to keep the Jewish dietary laws. Last week, we heard Paul’s first rebuke of this tactic. Now, just to prove he knows what he is talking about, Paul trots out his qualifications as an observant Jew. He then alludes to the miracle that occurred in his own life: how in the midst of persecuting the earliest followers of Jesus, he had a vision on the road to Damascus. Blinded until he was subsequently baptized, Paul received from Jesus a new commission as evangelist to the gentiles, a commission to welcome all into the fellowship of God’s son.

Miracles all! And there are many more in Scripture. Indeed, both the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament are full of stories of miraculous calls, victories over enemies, and healings. But why does Scripture depict all these miracles? Are we to suppose that there was something special about those on the receiving end of these miracles, that others were not worthy of receiving miracles, or that they did not pray hard enough? Jesus gave the lie to that notion in his first recorded sermon, earlier in Luke’s gospel. He had told his hearers that Isaiah’s prophecy had just been fulfilled in their hearing. Some of his hearers had scoffed that he was just Joseph’s son. Then, mentioning the very story from 1 Kings that we just heard, Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet’s hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon.”

No, the miracles depicted in Scripture are signs. They are signs that tell us something important about God and about ourselves. F.D. Maurice, a late nineteenth-century preacher and reformer suggested to his flock that, if people who wondered about miracles “only read of this one widow of Nain – they might begin to consider that that must have been intended as a sign to a multitude of people …. And then they may ask, ‘And what is it a sign of? How are we better for the sign?”

Although Maurice had a good explanation for what miracles signify, I’d like to suggest what those signs might be for us twenty first-century people. I’d like to suggest that miracles in Scripture are signs of three attributes of God and one challenge to us. First, miracles signify that God shows up. God visits us, again and again. God showed up in the time of Ahab, in the prophecy and works of Elijah and his successor Elisha. God showed up decisively in the time of the Roman Empire in the person of Jesus. And God continues to show up, through God’s Holy Spirit. God continues to pour God’s grace on us. Even when we don’t ask for God’s help – neither widow in our stories explicitly asked for help – God does not leave us alone, but comes to us again and again with power to love, support, restore, and challenge us.

Secondly, when God visits, God is most likely to come first to the least, the lost, the left behind, and the outsider. Widows in ancient Israel, along with orphans, in a patriarchal society, were without male protection and thus were the most vulnerable members of society. Just as Jesus healed the son of the widow at Nain, just as Jesus healed the slave of the gentile centurion, just as Jesus healed those who were possessed, lame, blind, or bent over, just as Jesus let a sinful woman wash his feet with her hair, God comes to the most vulnerable, even the most despised among us. And God still does: Franciscan theologian Richard Rohr carried on prison ministry most of his adult life. Fr. Greg Boyle has been working for many years with the Home Boys and Girls of inner city Los Angeles. On the East End of London, St. John’s of Bethnal Green has had a long-standing ministry to “working girls.” The fifty congregations of many different faiths that make up the ecumenical organization BREAD in Columbus lobby politicians for adequate healthcare facilities and services to inner-city public schools.

Third, God is not indifferent to human needs. As Elijah lay atop the dying young man, he cried out to God, “O Lord my God, let this child’s life come into him again.” And “[t]he Lord listened to the voice of Elijah….” Our psalm explicitly lays out all the ways in which God loves us, cares for us, and sustains us. Similarly, Jesus is deeply moved when he sees the widow of Nain and her dead son. He acts with compassion. God does not stand aloof from us, ignoring our griefs and sorrows, but mercifully moves to bring us strength and support.

Which brings me to us. If God is compassionate and moved by human need, if God shows up, especially to those in need, through whom does God show up? Through human beings! God worked God’s miracles in Zarephath through the very human Elijah. God worked God’s miracles in Capernaum, Nain, and elsewhere through Jesus in the flesh. St. Teresa of Avila famously reminded us that,

Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,
Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

We are the ones created in the image of the God, who, though source of all, “keeps his promise forever,” and continues to care for the oppressed, the stranger, the widow, and the orphan. We are the ones who profess to follow the one who ministered to all with tender compassion. We are the ones who are called to do what Jesus did, in his name, and with his power. We are the ones who are called to be his body in the world. We are the ones who are showered with God’s many blessings and are moved, called, and empowered to bring God’s love and mercy into a broken and hurting world. We are the ones who see the miracle of God’s presence, even in small things, and become, through our own actions, instruments of miracles for others. The widows are all around us. Do you see them?