Miracles: See that jacket?
God sent a deliverer to Israel in Egypt; a reluctant
deliverer who was sulking and bitter over a past rejection.“What if
they do not believe me or listen to me and say, ‘The Lord did not appear
to you’?” Moses wants to know (Exodus 4:1). Though the problem, at this
point, is more in Moses than in the people, it isn’t an irrational
request. The “God of their fathers” had been around a long time and yet
they were murdered and enslaved. If one comes with promises of a new
future, it would hardly surprise us that they would have their doubts
(Exodus 6:9).
So God offers him credentials (Exodus 4:2-9).
Turning the staff into a snake and back again was “so that they may
believe that the Lord...has appeared to you” (Exodus 4:5). If that
wasn’t enough, there were two more signs (Exodus 6-9). Someone met and was with Moses. Whoever he was, he had power over the Nile, serpents and disease—power to create and cure.
I
know philosophers and philosophical theologians debate the credential
power of miracles but you only do that in your study or lecture hall.
You only do that when you calmly abstract the events from reality and
reason on logical relations. We’ve heard enough about Lessing’s ugly ditch
and how that miraculous power doesn’t “prove” this or that. Yes, yes,
but when you meet the real thing in a real setting where the event is
contextualised and invested with meaning, all those arguments seem like
vapour.
G.K. Chesterton’s poem on Lazarus sums it up well. Lazarus
dies and is called back to life by Jesus the Christ. He wanders down
the road, stops by a group of wise men that are matching words, laying
out syllogisms, rattling out reason through a sieve that holds the chaff
and lets the wheat go free. And what are they proving? That men cannot be raised from the dead! Lazarus
listens to their arguments for a while then walks off saying, “But all
of this is less than dust to me—for I am Lazarus, and I live!”
But we’re not very impressed with a school of thinkers that is so good with words
that it can’t condemn and call “evil” what the Nazis or Stalin or ten
thousand other tyrants have done! The man or woman that stands to say
there is no way to “prove” the right or wrong of what such people did to
hundreds of millions should be wondered at. Should we be surprised that
they see no proof in the biblical miracles of what they are said to
support? The word ‘proof’ is not the problem any more.
For those who wish to believe, said God, these signs are proof enough. Ah, but a real miracle would compel faith. No sir! The rich biblical notion of faith is more than mere belief, more than simply “the acceptance as true any given proposition”; it includes trust and commitment.
And trust can’t be compelled! Self-serving critics had seen miracles
all over the place but wouldn’t believe and so the Messiah would work no
signs for them; but he did believe in their credential power (John
15:24). To the strugglers who were not hard of heart but needed help at a
critical time, Jesus offered his works as proof (John 14:11; 20:24-31).
In
a house in Troy, Ohio many years ago I was in the company of a boy
called Tad Powers. I had spoken at the nearby building and he and I came
on home ahead of the rest. He followed me around, as boys are apt to do
with a visiting speaker. I don’t know what got into me but I turned to
him and taking off my glasses I said to him, “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” he said, not especially impressed, “You’re a preacher!” I looked
at him solemnly and said, “I’m Superman!” Quick as a flash he said,
“Prove it!” Here’s this, what? eight or nine-year old boy, and he knew
the difference between an ordinary claim and an extraordinary one. Had I
said, “I’m Jim McGuiggan” he might have said, “You’re secret safe with
me.” Since I made an extraordinary claim, one that the circumstances
made more than hard to believe, he made an understandable response.
I
had made a “power” claim and he asked for “power” evidence. So I gave
him one. I must have been out of my head but I looked around and there
on the stair-post of the banister a jacket was hanging. I think it was
mine but I can’t remember. “See that jacket?” I asked. He grunted
assent. I said, “Watch it!” He watched it for a few seconds and saw it
fall. It nearly floored him (nearly floored me too). He turned with eyes
like organ-stops and whispered, “Do some more!” At that point others
were coming in and I whispered to him that I didn’t want everyone to
know who I was. He watched me even more closely for the rest of the
evening. (I even made a quick visit to the bedroom to check under my
shirt for the big S.)
The biblical credentials are not just
raw acts of power, of course. They have a moral and contextual fitness
to them though there are a few which must be taken up in the larger
context of the entire biblical corpus if we are to see them at their
best.