1 Kings 17:8-24
Luke 7:11-17
Today we are shown two miracles of God saving children for
the sake of their grieving mothers. They
are wonderful stories about God’s caring for the poor, for the widowed, for
those grieving and suffering great loss.
But these miracles also raise questions. What questions do you have when you hear
about miracles, then or now? What
concerns do they raise for you?
I have a friend whose oldest son of seven kids contracted
Spinal Meningitis. The child had an
especially bad and quick attack of the disease and the doctors told my friend
that he should not expect his son to live.
But at the last moment the child recovered. A couple years later, however, another friend
of mine lost her only daughter to the same disease in a matter of hours. My friend whose son survived the disease
swears that God intervened to save his child.
But then I have to ask, why did God save his boy and not my other
friend’s daughter? That is the question
and that is the problem with miracles.
While we rejoice in the miracle, the question always remains why some
people are given miracles and others aren’t.
About twenty years ago now, one of the big storms that so
often hits the East coast blew through the Eastern Seaboard. A prominent televangelist took a group of
about 12 people down to the coast and they formed a tight prayer circle as the
storm approached. They prayed that the
storm would not hit the coast where they were.
Sure enough, the storm went around them.
Instead, it hit the coast a few miles north of where they stood and
killed over a thousand people. This
particular televangelist went on TV spouting his proof that prayer worked, and
it surely seemed to for those 12 people.
But what about for those who were surely also praying further north? And underneath this question is an even more
profound question – why do bad things happen to good people? Why do some suffer while others seem not
to? Why do the good seem to be hit hard
at times when people who do evil things seem to thrive? How do you answer these questions for
yourselves?
A fellow pastor friend of mine shared with me that while he
was a college student he and a couple friends went to visit a small Pentecostal
church one Sunday. Both my friend and his buddies were very committed Christians but they had not experienced this kind of
church before. They found themselves
standing amidst people praying in tongues with their hands in the air, some
having seizures of the Holy Spirit and all behaving in very un-Presbyterian
fashion. Finally at one point, the pastor,
Brother Rutherford, brought forth a bucket of water. He said that this bucket had been put on the
back porch empty the night before and this morning he had found water in it, so
he knew this water was holy water. He
then invited a child forward who had a clubbed foot. The preacher declared that while there were
medical cures for such a malady, the faithful parents of the child would not
use these cures because they knew that God could heal the malady directly. Brother Rutherford then put bandages into the
“holy water” that had appeared in the bucket over night, wrapped those bandages
around the child’s foot and prayed for healing.
He did this a couple times, each time praying with more conviction that
his prayers would be answered, but each time with the same result that when
they removed the bandages, the clubbed foot was found to be the same. Finally, brother Rutherford climbed into the
pulpit, pointed at the young college students at the back of the church and
said – “you know why the Lord won’t give us a healing this morning. It’s because we’ve permitted three devils
into our midst!” As the crowd in the
church turned on these young adults angrily, you can imagine that the three
college students hied it out of there very quickly, never to return to that
church. This church blamed the strangers,
the visitors, for the failure of the miracle.
At revivals, if a person is not healed by the faith touch
that they experience, they are blamed for their lack of faith.
Other people have other ways of making things “fair”. One way to do this is to blame karma – if
you didn’t do something wrong in this life, it must have been in a past
life. The reason why some people suffer
and others don’t, why some experience miracles and others don’t has to do with the
amount of good each person has done or has failed to do throughout the history
of the universe.
Sometimes we blame ourselves even when we have done nothing
really wrong. Or we try to figure out
ways we could have done things differently so that such and such wouldn’t have
happened. But these also don’t really
help us to ultimately know why miracles happen for some and seem to fail to
happen for others.
Our theologians also have many different ideas. Frederick Buechner says this – “God is
all-powerful. God is all-good. Terrible things happen. You can reconcile any two of these
propositions with each other, but you can’t reconcile all three. The problem of evil is perhaps the greatest
single problem for religious faith.
There have been numerous theological and philosophical attempts to solve
it, but when it comes down to the reality of evil itself they are none of them
worth much. When a child is raped and
murdered, the parents are not apt to take much comfort from the explanation
(better than most) that since God wants people to love God, people must be free
to love or not to love and thus free to rape and murder a child if he takes a
notion to. Christian science solves the
problem of evil by saying that it does not exist except as an illusion of
mortal mind. Buddhism solves it in terms
of reincarnation and an inexorable law of cause and effect whereby the raped
child is merely reaping the consequences of evil deeds it committed in another
life. Christianity, on the other hand,
ultimately offers no theoretical solution at all. It merely points to the cross and says that,
practically speaking, there is no evil so dark and so obscene – not even this –
but that God can turn it to good.”
An
anonymous person of faith wrote this:
“Sometimes
I would like to ask God why He allows poverty, suffering, and injustice when He
could do something about it.”
“Well,
why don’t you ask Him?”
“Because
I’m afraid He would ask me the same question.”
C.S. Lewis says that the miracles we seek are rare and come only
when God intervenes in the natural order of life--Earthquakes are the natural
order and sweep away millions. Death is
the natural order and eventually carry us all away. Mudslides in Ecuador are a natural response
to heavy rains and sweep cars off the road and down into deep Andean
gullies. C.S. Lewis then wrote that
miracles are for God's youngest "children", and as we mature our
trust in the Lord grows so that we need to increase our faith in God's presence
without an outward, visible sign of His constant and true presence for Jesus
will never leave us nor forsake us.
Hmm. I have to admit that as time
goes by I think less and less of this particular idea. It seems that it is like the people who look
at the success of people who do really bad things and say “yes, but those
people aren’t really happy”. It seems a
justification – “well, I didn’t get my miracle because I’m more mature in my
faith.” I see people of all faith levels
and all faith beliefs who receive miracles.
And I’ve seen people who were every bit as faithful who seemingly did
not.
The reality is that some people get the miracles they pray
for and some don’t. Or what is more
accurate – sometimes we are granted miracles in the way we would expect and
want to see them, and other times we don’t see them because they come in
unexpected ways or ways that are harder to notice. In my own personal life, I see times when I
have been blessed by multiple miracles, often things I didn’t ask for, usually
involving people reaching out, offering care, offering their wisdom and faith
at exactly the moment I needed it. I
have shared some of those with you – times when I’ve received a beautiful and
much needed email at the exact right time.
Times when people have come into my life exactly as I needed them
to. Times when a person (often a child)
has said exactly the thing I needed to hear at exactly the right time. And there have been other times when I have
prayed most fervently for miracles that appear to fail to come – or again, fail
to come in the way that I wanted or could easily recognize.
And in the end, for me, it comes down to the quote I’ve shared
with you before - Einstein said - “There are two ways to live life. You can live it as if nothing is a
miracle. Or you can live it like
everything is.”
We may not get the miracles that we pray for. But we are surrounded by miracles in every
moment of every day. It is a miracle that
each of us is sitting here together in this wonderful community of faith. It is a miracle that we breathe in God’s
spirit with each breath we take and that we are given the rain to bring us
water and food in abundance. It is a
miracle that we - all of us here today - walked into this room on our own two
feet. It is a miracle when a stranger
gives us a smile for no reason whatsoever.
The birth of each child is an absolute miracle. The love of our pets is a miracle. The love we share with anyone or anything is
a miracle. Relationships that last 50
years – those are miracles. Finding the
wonderful friends we have – miracles.
Music – an absolute miracle. And
the list goes on.
Today we read two miracles about children being saved. And these are amazing and wondrous. But it is just as wondrous to me every day
that all three of my children wake up, healthy, happy, and growing. It is just as wondrous to me to see you
nodding your heads and looking inward in thought as we all strive to listen to
God in this place. It is just as
wondrous that God’s presence can be felt, and experienced, and shared in so
very many ways. It is just as wondrous
that we have such a Lord and such a God who loves us beyond our
imaginings. We can live our lives as if everything is a miracle, because
everything is. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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