All Miracle

Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.

It is all miracle.

That is our way of understanding ourselves and all of creation;

it is all miraculous, not mechanical or accidental.

It is a claim that is much at odds with the attitudes of those around us.

It is a claim that shapes how we think and how we interact with one another.

It is all miracle!

Every bit of the entire creation is sustained by the Word of God.

Without that Word, it would cease to be.

Without that Word,

the sun would not shine,

the runner would fall,

and this breath would be my last.

We depend upon the continuing gifts of God for survival now as well as for eternal life.

Thank you, Lord God our Father!

This is an attitude that should come easily to us, but so often is obscured by our rushing around.

We'll explore this idea in nine vignettes.

(1) Pastor Craig Barnes wrote about one of his bad days that was full of too many different activities.

He was rushing from one thing to the next, and a nursing home visit was last on his list and he didn't want to go.

Lucille was almost blind and deaf, had outlived her friends and relatives, and was confined to a small room, cut off from most everything but life itself.

The visit didn't go very well.

The conversation was stilted.

He spilled the communion service.

He prayed and then was ready to escape and go home.

And then Lucille began to pray:
“Thank you, God, for being so good to me. Thank you that I am not forgotten. Thank you for always loving me and sending loving persons.”

Pastor Barnes was stunned and dropped back into the chair.

A long time of silence passed.

He wrote later:

“I did not want to leave her because this was my first truly sacred moment all week, and I knew this woman had so much to teach me.

This blind woman could see what I could not.”

She knew that it was all miracle, every bit of God's gifts to her, and she was overflowing in thanks-giving.

(2) How do you hear the Psalm today.?

What attitude does the Psalmist hold?

For the Psalmist,

today is not a mechanical continuation of whatever went on yesterday;

it is a time for seeing wonders,

that the dreary course from of old is interrupted,

and a song of joy is become possible.

The time of fretfulness,

the time of planting and not knowing how it will all turn out

is changed into the joy of the harvest, when one may be getting back far more than was planted.

(3) Listen at the hospital door some morning and hear very different reactions:

one of the persons may be grumbling audibly, “Here I have to use this stupid cane for more than a month and take these horse-size pills.

Another person, perhaps even with the very same malady, might be saying instead:

“What a great day!

Isn't it wonderful that we have hospitals, and doctors, nurses, and staff.

Thank God for all of these blessings and so much more”.

Two persons, each with the same problem, but very different outlook.

It is all wonder.

(4) Perhaps we sense a bit more of the wonder at the time of a birth.

God has granted the gift of life in that little bundle we cradle in our arms.

The perception may fade a bit sometime later when parents are walking the floor with a colicky child,

or when they are pacing the floor waiting for a teen to get home.

(5) This past week in Morning Prayer we were reading the conclusion of the Genesis narratives,

where Joseph's brothers are frightened that he will exercise the power he has over them

and get even for the evil they did to him.

“No,” says Joseph. “Do not be afraid!

Am I in the place of God?

Even though you intended to do harm to me,

God intended it for good, in order to preserve a numerous people,

as he is doing today.” [50:19-20]

It is all wonder:

life where they could only anticipate death;

love and generosity where they could only imagine retribution and hatred.

(6) Gerald Sittser lost his wife, mother, and daughter in a tragic auto accident 15 yrs ago.

He wrote of the wonder he came to experience in the time since then:

“Yet the grief I feel is sweet as well as bitter.

I still have a sorrowful soul; yet I wake every morning joyful, eager for what the new day will bring.

Never have I felt as much pain as I have in the 3 years since that auto accident; yet never have experienced as much pleasure in simply being alive and living an ordinary life.

Never have I felt so broken, yet never have I been so whole.

What I once considered mutually

exclusive – sorrow and joy, pain and pleasure, death and life – have become parts of a greater whole.”

What a wonder it is that the man living through that great a tragedy was not consumed by it, but saw wonder even there.

(7) Then there is the wonder of the reception of Mary and the others by the Lord Jesus in today's Gospel lesson.

Properly, Jesus should have rebuked her. What a waste her action was!

Even though Judas had base motives,

still his observation is accurate:

the perfume could have been sold for a large sum,

yet anointing Jesus with that perfume before his enthronement and death and burial is positive and helpful, even to us!

Oh, the wonder of Jesus' blessing to her.

...and also the wonder that she was able to respond in faith to the presence of Jesus in such a singular way.

(8) An outsider observing what happens at the time of the distribution of Holy Communion might say: “They come and stand or kneel at a railing near the front of the nave, and are given little bits of bread in their hands and then share a tiny toast of wine.

Ho hum. A little strange, perhaps.

But with the eyes of faith we see something quite larger than that.

We see the Lord Jesus himself being shared in with and under the bread and wine.

Oh, the wonder!

What a miracle it is, that Christ condescends to dwell among us and gift us in this way!

(9) The weight of scientific inquiry and study gets heavier all the time.

Scientists are learning more and more about how so many different things work.

How really huge some of the stars are.

What vast distances are involved in space.

How many chemicals and enzymes and more are involved in a single cell.

How complicated are the combinations of cells into organs and bodies.

And all of that is great and useful information.

But there is yet one more piece of information that helps us manage and understand and appreciate all of those things: