Learning to Perform Miracles, A Sermon
I have a favorite novel called Lamb and subtitled, “The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.” Written by Christopher Moore, it is the story of Jesus from age 6 seen through the eyes of his best friend. In the book, Jesus is resistant to the idea that he is the Messiah, and decides to go in search of the Magi who visited at his birth to see if they can explain his Messianic nature.
You think you know how this story is going to end, but you don’t. Trust me, I was there. I know.
The first time I saw the man who would save the world he was sitting near the central well in Nazareth with a lizard hanging out of his mouth. Just the tail end and the hind legs were visible on the outside; the head and forelegs were halfway down the hatch. He was six, like me, and his beard had not come in fully, so he didn’t look much like the pictures you’ve seen of him. His eyes were like dark honey, and they smiled at me out of a mop of blue-black curls that framed his face. There was a light older than Moses in those eyes.
“Unclean! Unclean!” I screamed, pointing at the boy, so my mother would see that I knew the Law, but she ignored me, as did all the other mothers who were filling their jars at the well.
The boy took the lizard from his mouth and handed it to his younger brother, who sat beside him in the sand. The younger boy played with the lizard for a while, teasing it unitl it reared its little head as if to bite, then he picked up a rock and mashed the creature’s head. Bewildered, he pushed the dead lizard around in the sand, and once assured that it wasn’t going anywhere on its own, he picked it up and handed it back to his older brother.
Into his mouth when the lizard, and before I could accuse, out it came again, squirming and alive and ready to bite once again. He handed it back to his younger brother, who smote it mightily with the rock, starting or ending the whole process again.
I watched the lizard die three more times before I said, “I want to do that too.”
The Savior removed the lizard from his mouth and said, “Which part?”
Jesus eventually finds each of the Magi, and each one teaches him a valuable lesson. Melchior, the third Magus that Jesus encounters actually teaches him how to turn a grain of rice into a bowl of rice.
Of another Magus, Jesus says, “You drill us every day in the same movements, we practice the same brush strokes over and over, we chant the same mantras, why? So that these actions will become natural, spontaneous, without being diluted by thought, right?”
“Yes,” said Gaspar, the second Magus.
“Compassion is the same way,” said Joshua. “That’s what the old man taught me. He loved constantly, instantly, spontaneously, without thought or words. That’s what he taught me. Love is not something you think about, it is a state in which you dwell.”
According to Lamb, miracles can be learned. Let’s supposed that Jesus took some time out of his life and learned to do all the things that he excelled at in his ministry? Perhaps Jesus learned (as he does in the book) how to harness the power to raise people from the dead. Perhaps Jesus learned, also as he does in the book, to turn a few loaves and fishes into enough food to feed thousands of people. Perhaps Jesus learned, as he does in the book, compassion?
When I was in college, my New Testament professor said one day in my New Testament class, “You know, you don’t have to believe in the miracles in order to believe in Jesus.”
Now, mind you, I took that as permission to disbelieve the entire Bible, the life and work of Christ, and any idea that God was a personal God.
I don’t highly recommend that.
However, there has to be somewhere between disbelieving the miracles and believing that Jesus was so totally other than us that it’s just something we admire him for. Right? Shouldn’t the miracles show us something? Something about how we are to be in the world? Something about what we are capable in the world?
I looked through this text for some answers about how to perform miracles in my own life. Here’s what I came up with:
The lesson from the little boy who brought his lunch up to share? To perform miracles, we should work on our sharing skills. And not just sharing our things, but sharing our hearts… When we’re with someone we love, we should share that verbally and non-verbally. “I love you, friend.” And you know how hard it is to say that? What if we also said WHY all the time? “I love you, friend, because you are smart, beautiful, funny, loyal…”
The lesson from the disciples? When you don’t think something can be done, go to someone who can do it. Jesus asked Philip where they could get the bread. Philip starts ticking through his head how much it’s going to cost. Can you imagine the look on his face? Maybe Philip looked and said, “Are you talking to me? You’re the Messiah!”
The third lesson? Trust that it can be done. Andrew piped up, “Here’s a little bit!”
The fourth lesson? There’s way more power than you can imagine. Miracles happen because there’s more power in the world than we can imagine. You know, whether Jesus turned those loaves and fishes into enough to feed 5,000 or if everyone finally decided to share what they brought, it exceeded anyone’s expectations. God is great. Always remember it. God is great, and loves us beyond measure. There’s enough to feed each one of us and have basket after basket after basket left over of God’s love.
Two nights ago, I sat in my house with a new friend who is a pastor. In early January of this year she was serving communion at church and felt strange. She passed out just after serving communion. She went to the hospital, and by the end of the day had been diagnosed with stage 4 lymphoma.
Before they could begin chemo, the doctors had to get Joy strong enough to survive it. Test after test proved that she had cancer everywhere. Organs weren’t working right. And every day she put on a strong front for her mother, who, at 81 years of age, couldn’t begin to deal with the idea that her daughter might die.
But one night, at about midnight, a nurse walked into Joy’s room. Joy was sobbing. The nurse came over and asked, “What is wrong, honey? Are you scared?” Mind you, Joy was near death at this time. The doctors had told her she might have months at most to live.
“I’m not scared for me,” she said. “I know I’m going to be okay, even if I die. But I’m scared and sad for my husband. I’m not sure he’ll make it.”
The nurse grabbed and patted her hand. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You believe in God.”
“Of course,” my new friend answered. “I’m a pastor.”
“And you believe that God loves you and is going to take care of you, right?” Absolutely, she knew it. Whether God was taking care of her in life or in death.
“But what you’re saying,” the nurse continued, “is that you don’t trust that that same God, the One who is going to take care of you, is going to take care of your husband? Does God love you more than God loves your husband?”
My friend got it. The same God who was going to take care of her was also going to make it all right with everyone who was left behind, too. My friend learned that God’s love was beyond her wildest dreams and that she could learn it and that helped her share God’s love even more.
The miracle here was peace. And trust. And love.
And isn’t that always the miracle?