Everyday Miracles

Sermon for April 26, 2009

We are called Easter people, we Christians. Easter, the celebration of Christ's resurrection, is the defining event of our faith. Jesus, the carpenter from Nazareth, has died as the Crucified one, the Christ, to show us the way to newness of life. Because of His resurrection, no death is final. As dogwoods and redbuds bloom in tapestry, as the trees leaf out in tender green, it is easy to be reminded of rebirth and new beginnings. Perhaps the bright yellow goldfinches at my bird feeder provide an illustration closer to our human experience. As we often find ourselves in need of transformation after enduring a difficult stretch of time, the goldfinches shake off the drab grayish-green feathers they have worn during the weary winter months and adorn themselves with the very brightness of spring. Life is challenging, and bad things happen. Pain and suffering are an unavoidable part of the fabric of life. But we Easter people know that every loss, every ending, is followed by an open door. The stone rolled away from the tomb is the promise of that.

For the disciples of Jesus, we who gather here as well as the apostles who were with him and witnessed his death, the open door to a new beginning could be obscure. The apostles did not believe Mary Magdalene when she told them she had seen the risen Lord. On the occasions when he appeared among them, as in today's lesson from John, they did not believe their own eyes, and were, as it says, "disbelieving and still wondering." I think it is a shame that Thomas, who was absent for the first appearance of the resurrected Lord, has been disparaged as a doubter down through the ages. He simply said outright what the others must have been thinking: "Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe." Thanks to the skepticism of Thomas, everyone else is allowed to see the physical evidence all doubters seem to require.

In today's reading from the Book of the Acts of the Apostles, Peter is well aware of the doubting astonishment in the crowd before him, people who have just seen a lame man healed in the name of Jesus Christ. He says to them, "...you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses. And by faith in his name, his name itself has made this man strong, whom you see and know; and the faith that is through Jesus has given him this perfect health in the presence of all of you." What is Peter saying to us, here and now? We have our doubts and fears; faith is a steady unwavering stream for very few Christians. Like Thomas, we may feel the need of physical evidence that the Lord is with us.

Peter calls Jesus "the Author of Life." An author is someone who creates with great care. As co-creator with God, Jesus has fashioned with love a world marked by glorious abundance, such a bounty of blessing that much of it often goes unnoticed and unappreciated. When I can bring myself to full awareness of the wonders around me, I see how the Lord is always trying to get my attention, like a child waving his arms and saying, "Look at me."

Sometimes he sends a goldfinch darting across my line of vision, and then I am reminded that the Author of Life continues to make all things new and glorious through his redeeming love.
Peter says that he and the other apostles are "witnesses" to the resurrection. Maybe it is hard for us to make that claim. We were not in the room with Thomas and the other apostles. But I have certainly witnessed many resurrections over the years. We humans have setbacks or endure hardship, illness or job loss or divorce. We lose the ones we love dearly and suffer the great pain of grief. Somehow, we move forward through our sorrow as we might travel through a dark forest, afraid to take the next step but taking it anyway. Without our conscious awareness of His guiding presence, the Lord moves us forward. The veil of sadness begins to lift and we are consoled. Maybe then we will express our gratitude to the One who has seen us through what felt like a kind of death. More likely, we will simply walk through the open door.
Inasmuch as each day can be a new beginning, the opportunity for resurrection is always offered to us.

Here in Graves Mill, we are approaching the 14th anniversary of the great flood. If you were not around to experience the flood or its aftermath, I will try to give you an idea of what it was like. To begin--it rained 23 inches in 24 hours over this valley. Right down the little hill from here, where the Kinsey Run joins the Rapidan, the village of Graves Mill was simply washed away: the post office, a two-bay garage, an old blacksmith's shop, the voting house, and two old store buildings just disappeared. As the flood waters jumped the bend in the river and headed across the field toward the Estes place, my cousins who were there ran out the back door and up the hill to a barn. From that vantage point, they watched a tumultuous sea fill the valley. My cousin Dee told me that a flotilla of uprooted trees the size of an ocean liner swept down the waves. When it was over, the valley looked like a bombed out war zone. Some people said so much topsoil had been washed away that it would be impossible for anything to grow here again. And yet, by the following spring, the fields were green again. Down the sides of the mountains, gaping scars made by mud slides looked like wounds where a giant bear had raked its claws. Even those scars have healed over and disappeared. Now, that was a resurrection. It was also a miracle of healing.
Peter tells the astonished crowd, " the faith that is through Jesus has given [this formerly lame man] perfect health in the presence of all of you." I understand why people have a hard time putting their faith in the biblical healing miracles. We all know of someone who was in need of such a miracle, whose faithful life seemed to be deserving of such a miracle, but who died anyway. On the other hand, we also hear of people who are healed through prayer. Why does the process have to be such a mystery? I think the answer to that question may be that our idea of healing and the Lord's idea of healing are two different things. Healing can be an inner change of heart, an inner peacefulness granted by our closeness to God. It can be a fleeting moment of joy on a dreary day. It can be the mending of a broken relationship. It can be the restoration to life of a wounded and devastated landscape. Remember, in his death and resurrection, Christ made the kind of death we fear impossible. For the Lord, death itself can be a kind of healing for someone who is suffering in illness and pain. Death opens the door for the suffering into a new and grace-filled life.

Maybe the way for us to a better understanding of the Lord's miracles is to recognize the miraculous in every moment of our lives. Gratitude for the gifts of food and shelter and health that we take for granted, for the air we breathe and the loved ones we cherish can lead us to an appreciation of our very lives as miracles.Opening our eyes to natural wonders is a way to witness the Lord's generous hand at work all around us. Even though we humans crave the show-stoppers and question faith in a God who cannot produce such big miracles whenever we believe we need one, the Lord continues with miracle-making at every moment. We just need to be willing to see how God is always present in what we think of as the ordinary.

The gospel lesson today, with the resurrected Christ appearing to the astonished disciples, is the perfect demonstration of how the Lord joins us in our daily lives. When he first appears to them, saying, "Peace be with you, " they are completely dumbfounded and terrified that they are seeing a ghost. What is Christ's method of connecting with them and allaying their fears? He says, "Do you have anything to eat?" Ponder that for a moment. The Lord really does join with us in the breaking of the bread, and since breaking bread is something we do several times a day, he is indeed with us always. As he had prayed for the disciples in John 17, just before his arrest and crucifixion, he said, "As you, Father, are in me and I am in you, may they also be in us...so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them."

As I believe in the Presence and pray for the nearness of God, it is good to be reminded that the Lord of the Universe is trustworthy and permeable, emanating from the warm hearth of my soul rather than from some distant galaxy. Goodness and love and kindness express themselves in the human desire for sharing the most basic of life's essentials: safe shelter and warm bread. As today's beautiful psalm suggests, we can pray in thanksgiving for our blessings: "You have put gladness in my heart, more than when grain and wine and oil increase. I lie down in peace; at once I fall asleep. For only you, Lord, make me dwell in safety." When we join hands at table or embrace heart to heart, the Lord's Spirit in me sings in chorus with the Spirit in you.

The Lord is risen indeed!
Alleluia!


Susan Hull