Sermons

A friend related to me a trip he took with five other pastors. There was a conference in Indiana; they drove together from Ohio. The conference was exciting, inspiring, leaving this band of clergy "on fire" and "excited about Jesus."  Speakers were focused on the promise of faith, how we could be "more than conquerors."  We just need to believe, pray, trust the Holy Spirit.

            Filled with fire, they headed home late at night.  In their enthusiasm to return as quickly as possible to put their newly found joy into practice, no one checked the gas gauge.  If you have never run out of gas late at night on a county route in Ohio, you will need to imagine a place just slightly more remote than the middle of nowhere.  They were two hours from home, a good five miles from the nearest station. 

              This was long ago so no way to call a tow truck from your cell phone.  This was the time of phone booths.  One of the six pastors had a thought though.  They had just spent hours listening to speakers talking about the power of God, the reality of the miraculous today, and the simple need to ask God.  It was clear where the spirit was leading: pray for a miracle.

              The six pastors piled out of the car, laid hands on various places encircling the vehicle.  Each one took turns praying with fervor.  They were in it to win it.  They pleaded and extolled, appealed and cried out.  When it came time for the last of the six to make his supplication, he paused.  In the pregnancy of his silence, he spoke.  "Brothers, the Lord has spoken to me."  One of the others couldn't contain his excitement, "what did the Lord say?"  "The Lord said," he started, "the Lord told me, gave a clear vision, the Lord told me, 'You, knucklehead, start walking!'" 

              That's a true story.

              Miracles are not a common topic today.  Don't find many people talking about miracles.  Yet, in the prayer for a healing of cancer or prayer for relief of pain, we may not talk about miracles, but most people pray for them.  We pray for children to be made well, family to overcome the suffering of a chronic condition; we pray for miracles.  Sometimes it feels like buying a lottery ticket, long shot odds that the realm of heaven be called down to mend the broken, lift the fallen.  Not likely, but worth a try.  Right?  It's a long shot, but we do prayerfully pick the horse most unlikely to win.

              I remember my first act as a pastor.  On my first day the secretary took a call from a nurse at the local hospital.  A patient who was presbyterian needed a presbyterian prayer.  Driving to the hospital with no information but a room number, I tried to imagine the need from the catalogue of suffering. From what malady does the person need to be healed?   

              When I arrived at the room and was greeted by the daughter of the patient, she explained: her mother had lived a long, good life and she was ready to die; her family did not want her to suffer; they wanted her to be reunited with her husband and rejoice with all her loved ones who awaited her arrival. Her entire living family was gathered around the bed, and they asked me if I would pray that God would "take her." 

              I paused for a moment and thought, they want me to pray that someone they loved would die.  Hit me as a strange way to start ministry, praying for death, but I looked at the daughter and said, "of course.  Tell me your mother's name."

              Having been in such a place many times since, I have nothing but admiration for the family who wrapped a beloved in compassion.  Yet, I must confess, before I prayed for death on my first day in ministry, I paused, wondered, not a miracle, not healing, not more life?  I wondered, for just a moment, is it right to pray for death?

              There's a saying, goes like this: hope for a miracle, just don't plan on it.  Good advice, not very inspiring but helpful.

              Charles Taylor is a Canadian philosopher, very bright mind.  One of his great works of wisdom is called A Secular Age.  The book is quite long, technical, can be mind-numbingly complex, and yet at the same time his basic inspiration, his key insight, is very brief and very accessible.  Taylor argues that we, those who live in the Secular Age, have lost a sense of awe and wonder.  He says, we are disenchanted with life. 

              He wrote a lot so it must be true.

              He argues we have, since the end of World War I, we the Christians of Protestant persuasion living in the West, we have lost the delight of living, fallen to a half-life of despair, we are a spiritless lot.  At the very least we are those who no longer possess the good spirits, the joyful spirits of unbridled hope and trust.

              I am not sure we are as gloomy as that, but I will say I find great power in the idea of disenchantment.  To understand what this means Taylor reveals the root of the word: to be enchanted is to be emersed, wrapped in, caught up in song.  From this we get words like incantation, canticle, and cantor and we see its close cousin in the Latin carmen, charm, song, spell.  There is a magical quality to enchantment. One way to hear what Taylor means by disenchantment is to recognize our serious attempt to dispel all myth and lore, the fantastic, the stuff of the miraculous. Dispelling fantastic myth, we lost the magic of life in our Secular Age.

              Our reading today is about the miraculous; there is a series of healings in Capernaum at night.  Starts with Simon's mother-in-law and then extends to the whole town.  They brought all who were suffering, and Jesus laid his hands on them.  Healed the whole town. He also rebuked the demons, calling them out, rendering them mute.  They knew he was the messiah, and he didn't want people to know this.  Scholars call this the messianic secret. 

              For most of the Secular Age, scholars have debated the miraculous.  Most have suggested miracles were folklore, exaggeration, fantastic myth.  To find the true Jesus, they argue, you must remove the layers of the miraculous in the gospels so to find his message.  And this is not wrong.  Jesus never seems excited about healing people.  He does it, but it is never with a sense of purpose.  It is as if the healings were a distraction, a diversion from the path leading to the truth. He will heal upon request, but not much more.  It was as if the miraculous was not his desire.

              Thomas Jefferson shared a similar unease for the miraculous.  To relieve his unease, he removed all the miracles from his bible. The Jefferson Bible is a cut and paste affair.  Our third president took a pair of scissors to his bible and cut out the miraculous.  Anything that suggested a miracle or a healing or a suspension of the laws of gravity, Jefferson just cut it out.  In the end he had a collection of teachings; he had the message, but not the miracles of Jesus. Our reading today would not be found in his bible. 

              We should admire the scholars of the Secular Age and the Deists before them, we should admire their willingness to doubt, to question, to seek a clear and rational understanding of our faith.  The bible says so is not a great answer; nor is the lazy accommodation of mystery, "it is not ours to know the mind of God or God's ways."  Scholars of the Secular Age didn't accept this.  They dug deep into the history and structure of the bible.  They amassed a mountain of information and insights. I believe they did a great work.

              Despite my admiration, though, I am suspicious of any attempt to remove the miraculous.  The evangelists were not simplistic folk, Cretans, seeking to make Jesus a fantastic character.  The miracles were not a way for the illiterate to believe. 

              In Capernaum Jesus healed the town and freed people from demons.  He performed many miracles, healed many.  I do not struggle with the fantastic quality of this; I do not seek to cut this from my bible.  I have no problem with the idea that Jesus performed miracles. Where I struggle, what bothers me is not the magical nature, where I struggle is this: why did he heal anybody?

              This was the question of Paul Tillich, one of the great theologians of the Secular Age.  All the people Jesus healed died.  There is no sense that the restoration of the leper or the blind receiving sight or the lame walking, there is no plan or purpose, no use to these beyond the relief of a few.  Simon's mother-in-law is healed, and she cooked dinner.  I am glad for her, but how does such a miracle change the world?  Why heal a few instead of all?

              Jesus has the power of God, and he healed a few people during a few years in rural, backwater villages.  The healings didn't create a new way of living or empower people to become a new nation or adopt a new form of government. Their impact is in equal measure to the enthusiasm of Jesus.  He heals, but it seems as if he doesn't want to do it, has little confidence such acts will change the world.

              Why did Jesus heal anyone?  I believe in the miraculous, but why such miracles, in such a place, without a clear purpose?

              Reading Charles Taylor made me wonder, maybe Jesus healed simply to restore enchantment.  What if there was no purpose beyond that?  Life can change for the better is an enchanting thought.  What if the kingdom of God is a place of joyous melody, of angelic chorus and human choirs? What if poetry and art are born with such healings?  What if the miracles were to create the possibility of change? Your life can be changed for the better; you can live unto song, you who live in disenchantment.

              The scholars of the secular age were right to question the idea that the miraculous was how life changed.  Hope for miracles don't plan on them.  Got it.  Yet, in a world where splendor has been lost, where we are wrapped in bad news not good news, when the demons are all too articulate, in such a place and time, maybe the miraculous is needed to restore the hope of enchantment, that we can live in a world filled with awe and praise. Change can happen for the better.

              Late at night in the trading village of Capernaum, the whole town experienced miracles 2000 years ago.  On the same night Simon's mother-in-law had a fever and Jesus rebuked the fever and she cooked dinner.  In the parade of suffers made right demons lurched and shouted only to be muted.  Jesus doesn't want people to know he was the Messiah.  To say this is a good plan, a rational pursuit of redeeming the world is about as likely as zealous pastors laying hands on a car they forgot to fill with gas.

              Gathered to the bedside of the dying matriarch whose desire was to hear her name, hear the voices of those she lost welcome her home, I prayed not just that she would die, I also prayed she would be gathered unto glory, wrapped in angelic song.  I could say I began as a pastor praying for death; or, I could say I began my ministry in a moment of enchanted splendor, a moment changing us, healing our soul, filling us with awe and wonder, for the better.  Enchanted splendor.  Amen.

Speaker: Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry

April 28, 2024

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