God’s Word: A Power in our Lives

Many years ago a book editor said to me, “It was a lot easier to believe in God in Bible timea, when miracles were common.” She had recently been diagnosed with early signs of multiple sclirosis, a disease without any cure and uncertain prognosis, and she probably felt she needed a miracle. It is easy to understand her lament, she was finding her faith to be weak. I have thought of her comment many times since then, not least because it seems amazing that her own condition has barely worsened over twenty-five years. I wonder if she was taught in high school the same definition of miracle I was: a miracle is something you cannot explain in any other terms. Again, a miracle is something you cannot explain in any other terms.  I have come to think that that definition stands on wobbly legs. Particularly in our postmodern times, when everyone has a different perspective, almost anything can be explained in other terms. I wonder if miracles are better defined this way: a miracle is any act of God. A miracle is any act of God. When understood this way, miracles are something that happen every day, if you have eyes to see and ears to hear, and they strengthen faith. We all need miracles from time to time and if we know what to look for we can see them. They happen not least in worship, and in the sermon. But if you are not open to them, you may not see them.

That is how it was back in Nazarath in the local synagogue. The folks there want God on their own terms and are not open to seeing God in Jesus. Jesus is, after all, their hometown boy. They know better than he does. They helped raise  him. They like him saying nice things like reading from Isaiah. He then sits down and preaches. He says, “This scripture is fulfilled in your hearing: The Spirit of the Lord is upon me.  I am the one anointed to bring good news to the poor. I am sent to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim this the year of the Lord’s favour.” They had expected pleasing words, and they still expect him to work a few miracles as well, because news of his miracles in Capernaeum had reached them in their newspapers, under the headline, Hometown Boy Makes Good.

But when when his sermon starts to criticize them, they do not like it. He says something like, “Don’t presume God’s favour. When there was a famine, the Prophet Elijha saved a widow who was a gentile, not someone from Israel, and when the prophet Elisha cleansed a leper he cleansed a general from Syria. Do not presume that you are saved because you come from Israel or because I come from here. God will save whomever God chooses and whoever does God’s will.” Suddenly the people are angry. In actual fact, they didn’t  have a right to be angry. God rarely just says to anyone, you are A-OK, no drillings, no fillings, keep flossing, come back in nine months. There is always some tooth that needs cleaning, some filling that needs replacing. But that message does not play well on this Nazareth crowd. On December 10, 2010, the Maple Leafs played a losing home game with the Flyers and the local fans booed the Leafs and threw waffles. In Nazareth the crowd turns on the home team and it gets out-of-hand, in the way of mob violence. They take Jesus out to a cliff at the edge of town to throw him over, and the text says something very strange, pointing to a miracle, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.”

From time to time, every one of us wants God on our own terms, as did the people of Nazareth in not wanting to see God in Jesus. We might want God to give us a sign, like, “If you are there, please find us a parking space.” Or we bargain with God, “If you will only get me this job, I will go to church every Sunday.” It is having God on our own terms. That is what people are doing when they say they are spiritual but not religious, by which they mean they are open to God in a beautiful sunrise, not open to God portrayed in a stained glass window in a church, or in the Bible. Many people reject God because God does not match up to their requirements, like the young woman who said, “If God is good, God would not allow evil,” and then she turned her back and walked away from the church.

I think God always welcomes us whenever we are ready to believe, and never forces us. David Bowie, that amazing cultural icon who kept reinventing himself and who helped so many people feel accepted, died last week. For much of his life he wanted nothing to do with God, but as he said during his 18 month battle with cancer, “There are no atheists in the battlefield.”  He came to some kind of faith at the end of his life. His last single is titled Lazarus, the name of Jesus’ friend whom Jesus raised from the dead, sung in the video by a bandaged Bowie in bed to the words, “Look up here, I’m in heaven.” The CBC National reported that shortly before Bowie died, he said, “The struggle is real, and so is God.”

Though most of us want God on our own terms, amazingly, God wants us on any terms, even if it means coming in human form and dying on a cross. God comes to the Nazareth congregation in Jesus, offering freedom, though they thought he was judging them. They are the poor to whom he brings good news. They are the captives, to whom he proclaims release. They are the blind, to whom he gives sight. They are the oppressed whom he frees. They are the ones to whom he declares this is “the year of the Lord’s favour,” and, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” “Fulfilled in your hearing” means these words have already become real, they have happened as events. “Fulfilled in your hearing” mirrors God saying in Isaiah 55, “So shall my word be that goes forth from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” The people in Nazareth have just won something far better than the lottery, fullness of life, the ability to see God around them everywhere, to experience the power of God in their lives as they act on behalf of others. They misunderstand Jesus when he warns them about their smugness. They want to push him off a cliff, but even that does not stop his determination to bring good news to them: the text says, “But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.” He was on his way somewhere. Where was he going? He was on his way to the cross to die for them—and to rise again—for us. Nothing can finally stop God’s will from being done.

What do you need this morning? Do you need your faith renewed? Do you need Jesus to say to you, as ne most certainly does right now, ‘I love you, you are mine, I will never let you go’? Jesus spoke not just in that sermon back then, but he speaks in this and every faithful sermon, wherever the good news is preached, and Christ fullfills what is spoken. We could say that in every faithful sermon there are in fact two sermons, the sermon the preacher preaches and the sermon that is even more important, the one that Jesus Christ preaches through the Spirit to you, using some of the same words. Today he pronounces good news for the poor, new ways of seeing to you who are blind, freedom for the imprisoned or oppressed, God’s favour upon you all. Christ speaks to us today as he promised. In Matthew Jesus says, “Wherever two or three are gathered in my name there I will be” (18:20); in Mark Jesus says. “Lo I will always be with you” (28:20); and in Luke, Jesus says to his disciples, “Whoever listens to you listens to me” (10:16). Scripture is fulfilled right now in your hearing.

If a miracle is any action of God, then miracles happen in every sermon, and other parts of the service. Christ come to us in the Spirit, speaks, and our lives are changed, non-believers become believers, unforgiving people find forgiveness in their hearts, unloving people become loving. Christ speaks to you sometimes in a whisper, sometimes in a phrase or paragraph, an picture or impulse. Worship is like pulling into the service centre with our tanks empty and Christ fills up our tanks with the resurrection power of his Spirit, renewing our hope and joy in living.

In 1938 by George MacLeod, had a vision of ordinary people living and worshipping together and he started the Iona Community on the island of Iona off Scotland. They set to work rebuilding the monastic quarters of the mediaeval abbey that had fallen into ruin but because of the war they ran out of timbers necessary to complete the roof of the chapel. Some time later logs from a merchant convoy hit by German U Boats washed up on a neighouboring island and someone called Macleod, “Do you still need those timbers.” That those logs should wash up on the neighboring island was an answer to prayer. When he told this to the press after the war, a journalist asked, “But don’t you think that was just a co-incidence?” “Perhaps,” he said, “but I find that coincidences happen much more frequently when I pray.”

If a miracle is any action of God, then miracles happen all the time, all around us, wherever we see something truly good. God is the author of all goodness. Mary Jo Leddy, who has headed up Romero House for refugees for 25 years, spoke this week at a luncheon entitled, “Faith Groups and Syrian Refugees”. Among other things she told of a newly divorced man who had called her and generously offered, “I may be crazy, but I’ve got an empty house. Send a family over.” She spoke to him further to determine if he was of sound mind. It turned out that he was hurt and lonely after his divorce, but was not crazy. After the required background and safetly checks, the family moved in. He was not prepared for the family by way of culturally appropriate food or other things, but they worked it out. A few weeks after the family moved in with him, he called Mary Jo. “I really like their company and they’re looking after me,” he said.  In faith we would say, God gave him that crazy idea, brought that family to him, and gave him and that family a new home.

As you leave this place today, be attentive to all God’s action around you, and to the miracles God can work through you, for each one of you is already a miracle of God.