Spiritual Hiccups - What To Do with Miracles

People who grew up in the church have heard miracle stories all their lives, virgin birth, healing miracles, storms stilled, the walls of Jericho toppled, and people raised from the dead to name a few.  As people of faith we are supposed to believe in such miracles, but as modern people this poses real problems.  We are much more "sophisticated" than biblical people.  We understand the mechanics of storms and diseases, and we often try to fit the Bible's miracles into our modern worldview. 

I've seen an earthquake blamed for Jericho's tumbling fortifications, and a variety of naturally occurring events have "explained" the plagues God and Moses visit on Egypt to rescue Israel from slavery.  Likewise, I have heard more than one sermon preached on today's gospel, the feeding of the 5000, where this feeding miracle becomes a miracle of sharing.  It goes something like this.  Many people in the crowd had a little food tucked under their robes, but they dared not reveal it in the midst of a vast sea of hungry people.  They would save it and eat on the way home.  But Jesus takes the meager bits of food he and his little group have and begins to distribute them.  As he begins to share, others add their items to the mix, and before you know it there is more than enough for everyone.  If you know the fable about "Stone Soup," it is a similar idea.

Now this explanation makes perfectly good sense, I suppose.  And it could have happened that way.  But I'm reasonably certain that the gospel writers didn't think it happened that way.  And it seems to me that there is a kind of arrogance that insists that biblical accounts must be revised so that they fit our worldview. 

In 16 years as a pastor, I have discovered that congregations, even if they believe in biblical miracles, doubt the miraculous can impact them.  We struggle with the notion that God can do something with us and through us that is more than the sum of our parts.  In the Feasting on the Word preaching commentary material for two Sundays out, I read a quote from Earnest Campbell, former pastor of Riverside Church in NYC, saying that "the reason that we seem to lack faith in our time is that we are not doing anything that requires it."  And not only do I think him correct, but I think this problem emerges from our certainty that nothing can happen that we can't do on our own.  We imagine that we could be better congregations if everyone did their share, if we had better leaders, or if we had better pastors who could motivate the members.  But we consider our abilities, talents, resources, etc. as the determining limits of what can be done and what can happen.  The most Jesus can do is give us a model of sharing that might jump start our own miracle of sharing.

But what if there was no sharing going on when Jesus broke the five loaves of bread and divided two fish to serve thousands? 

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