Tag Archives: miracles

When extraordinary is ordinary.

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What looks like a miracle is looking from our perspective.

I mean, on my own, I cannot heal people. I can encourage them, which can feel good, but I can’t touch people and make them well. I cannot feed huge groups of people without cooking. I cannot waterski without a boat, without moving fast. I cannot look into the eyes of a man pounding a nail into my wrist and then say, “Forgive this man because he is clueless.”

No amount of mustering positive thoughts can let me do these things. So I don’t even think about doing these things.

I am a creative guy. I think outside the box. When faced with a challenge, where other people might say, “There’s no way we have the resources to do that,” I start looking around for what we have. I say, “Look, here’s what we’ve got. It won’t even begin to cover the need, but it’s what we’ve got.” But I don’t tend to think of miracles because they are, well, miracles.

Jesus, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to see the line between miracles and normal as a significant line. Sure, he knows that we do, that it’s something to get our attention. But it’s not like he has to muster up huge amounts of energy and practice really hard.

It’s kind of like Julia Child and Jacques Pepin inviting you over for supper. It’s as easy for them to make something exquisitely French as to make toast. So making one or the other isn’t about how hard it is for them, it’s about how healthy it is for you.

When it came to feeding a huge crowd with no town nearby, Philip thought cost. Andrew thought limited resources. Jesus thought “fish sandwiches for everyone.”

He still thinks that way.

forget the chapters

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Miracles have a way of capturing attention.

If you have seen someone who was paralyzed and then isn’t, and you know that the clearest action between was talking with God, you stop and think. If you shouldn’t have enough food and you do, and you know the clearest action in between was talking with God, you pay attention.

When Jesus was visiting Jerusalem for the passover, people saw him doing miracles and believed. Even religious leaders noticed those miracles. One showed up after dark to talk with Jesus about them.

His opening statement?

“Rabbi, we know you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the miraculous signs you are doing if God were not with him.”

Nicodemus is in Jerusalem. From his leadership position, at the back of the crowds watching Jesus, he notices what is happening. He is aware that anyone who can do miracles like this is troubling to the status quo. He is also aware that anyone who can do miracles like this might have reason to trouble the status quo.

He uses the miracles as a starting point for conversation. Which is what Jesus wanted to come from the miracles.

This is the point of miracles I think. Not to consume them, but that they stir us to conversation with the one who performs them. Though they look like magic tricks, they don’t happen to merely impress the onlookers with how invisible the strings are. Instead, they happen to invite the onlookers to become partakers, conversants, introspectators. They invite us to say, “What kind of person could do those kinds of things?”

And the title for this post?

Because this story runs across the chapter line between 2 and 3, it’s way too easy to miss.

Like the One behind the miracles.

Starting backward

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Some of us start writing to see what we think. As the words come, we begin to realize what was in our head. The words come in fits and starts and then in a rush. We grin and weep as we begin to understand our hearts.

John didn’t write that way, at least not for the works we know. He knew exactly why he was choosing the stories he chose. He sorted carefully through all the possibilities, all the memories, all the images.

And then he wrote twenty-one chapters for one reason:

…that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name. (John 20:31)

For John, this is not a collection of interesting stories about Jesus. John wants the reader to come to understand that Jesus was about life, about hope, about God. And he will pick stories of miracles with that in mind.

In all the times I’ve read through the book called John, I haven’t considered the flow of stories as, well, as a flow. That’s because when it comes to the Bible, we pick out bits.

I’m good at telling the stories, pieces at a time. All of us (and I hardly ever say “all” about church stuff) who have watched football or baseball or basketball or Olympics or other large events have seen “John 3:16” on cardboard, which is just one bit. When we prove perspectives, when we embrace or condemn, we pick out bits.

John already picked out bits. He took the whole of his time with Jesus – which was, it seems, three years – and chooses a few pages worth of miracles and messages. With them he tells the story that gave him a life’s work and struggle.

Let’s see what he picked.

word of mouth

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[Matthew 4:23-25]

I’ve started reading about word of mouth marketing. I think that it’s helpful to understand how to get people talking about what you are offering. If you put up a billboard or run an advertising campaign or mail something to a thousand houses, that is you talking about you. And while talking about yourself can be helpful in providing information, it isn’t nearly as compelling as other people talking about you.

Jesus was teaching and preaching and healing. News about him spread. It went north. It went east. It went south. People were coming from all around to get healed. And to get free.

The news was all by word of mouth. People were talking about what Jesus was doing and saying. And everyone wanted to come to him.

What was the secret? Why did everyone talk about him with such effectiveness that people came from everywhere?

He said and did what people needed.

The people that were coming had no hope for any other solution for their sicknesses. They had no money to afford what care existed. They had no options.

When there aren’t any other options, when there isn’t any reason for hope, the words of Jesus, or more importantly, the actions of Jesus, are incredibly inviting. We go to where we think there will be some healing, some hope.

We often think that our job as Christ followers is to talk other people into thinking that they have holes in their hearts. What was clear from this part of Jesus’s ministry was that people who have holes in their hearts and lives actually go looking for Jesus.

Maybe our job isn’t to convince people of how much they hurt. Maybe it’s to talk about our own story of healing. And that’s word of mouth.