Miracles

Come and See

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — “Come and See” John 1:35-42

Let me tell you a story.

The news swam up the river, all the way from Bethany beyond the Jordan. A prophet came, striding out of the wilderness, his beard grown long, his hair a tangle of knots. His eyes burned and his voice boomed above the muddy waters. He stood knee deep in the Jordan with mixed hope and judgment. The Messiah was coming he promised, with fire and the Holy Spirit. And the urgency of his voice and the conviction of his message had us dreaming of change, of a world free of the Romans and Herod and tax collectors.

So, we, like almost everyone who cared about such things in those days, went to hear him. We paid the hired men to run our boats. We kissed our wives and walked out of the green Galilee and down into the red and brown hills of the wilderness, where the Jordan narrows to a silvery sliver bordered by reeds, north of the Salt Sea. We were baptized by John, and we lingered, listening day after day to his words, so sharp and bold.

When he arrived, we thought he didn’t look like a Messiah, at least no Messiah that we had ever imagined. John embraced him like a kinsman, and the two talked with heads close together, like brothers or children sharing a secret or revolutionaries. As he turned to leave, John said to us, “Behold the lamb of God!” We looked with the greatest of doubts from John to this stranger, who even now was vanishing into the crowd. Then, John nodded at us and shooed us away with a wave of his hand, as if to say, “What are you waiting for?” We looked at one another and shrugged. It couldn’t hurt to look.

We followed at a distance. We noticed that he looked a lot like one of us. He had the strong shoulders of a worker. He wore homespun linen. His face was tanned by the sun. His forearms rippled with muscles that spoke of long years of work, perhaps in a quarry or as a builder. When we edged closer, we could hear that he was humming a folksong.

Beyond the crowd that pressed in around John on the banks of the Jordan, a woman stopped him. She held a listless infant in her arms. Its head lolled. Its eyes were rolling and half-opened. Its face had an unnatural paleness. “Rabbi, Rabbi!” She haled him with a quavering voice. She held her infant out to him like a rag doll. He stopped and took the child, cradling it against his chest. He bounced and swayed from side to side, as a mother soothing a colicky infant would, and he bent his head to whisper into the little one’s ear. Then, he handed the child back and continued his walk.

As we followed him, we heard a disturbance behind us. It was the mother. “Healed” she called out. “My baby is healed.” We turned to see her holding out her child and wondered if it was, in fact, the same baby. Now, its eyes were bright and neck was strong. Within its swaddling clothes, little legs were kicking, as if the infant, too, wanted to join us in following the rabbi.

When we turned back to follow, the rabbi was right behind us. We jumped in alarm, feeling like we had been caught. He looked us over with an appraising gaze, taking our measure, and asked, “What are you looking for?”

What were we looking for? Certainly, we were looking for the Messiah, but these are not words to be lightly spoken; these are words that can make you enemies; these are words that can land you in jail or on a cross. “Rabbi,” we deflected with reddened faces, “Where are you staying?” After all, getting a good look at his shul and his people might be a good idea. He smiled and waved us to walk with him, “Come and see.”

It was a walk. On the way, sitting in the shade of the well where the herdsmen come at daybreak and sunset to water their sheep and goats, we saw an old man. He was a shepherd, long past his prime. His face was as leathery and wrinkled as a Medjul date. His eyes had gone milky-blind from a lifetime spent squinting in the wilderness sun. Lying at his side was a sheepdog, almost as weathered and decrepit-looking as his master. The man’s head swung around in our direction at the sound of our footsteps, and he called out a greeting, “Shalom.”

The rabbi squatted down in the dust next to the man. He listened with kindness to a sad story of aging eyes, lost ability, and long days spent in the shadow of the well until the flocks returned, now guided by much younger men. As the shepherd spoke, this rabbi scrabbled his fingers in the dirt, scooping up the dust. Next, he spat into his hand, more than once, and stirred with his index finger to make a fine paste. “Here, brother,” he said to the man, pressing the paste over his blind eyes and tipping his wrinkled face to the sun. “When it dries,” the rabbi said, “Wash.”

My friend and I looked at one another as if this were the craziest thing we had ever heard, but this rabbi was already striding away from the well. We followed, questioning our every step, but when we were a hundred yards off, we heard the dog barking. We turned and shielded our eyes against the sun. There at the well, the dog was capering like a puppy and the old blind man was shaking the water and mud from his eyes. He looked up and around and began to shout, “Alleluia! Alleluia! I, I can see!” We shook our heads and hustled after the rabbi.

What can we say about where the rabbi was staying? It did not have a scriptorium and ritual baths like the Essenes. It didn’t even have the stone columns and cool interior of a synagogue. Honestly, it really wasn’t even a shul. It was a house, a Beth Ab, the sprawling compound of an extended family of peasants, built around a central courtyard. A shout of welcome summoned the entire household. They surrounded the rabbi, greeting him with kisses and hugs that spoke of great love. As he took a seat in the shade beneath a canopy of palm fronds, we were offered dippers of cool water and fresh bread slathered with yogurt cheese and honey.

A young boy in tears stood before the rabbi and extended his cupped hands. There lay a sparrow, its soft and still cloud of feathers spoke of death. The rabbi took the bird into his hands, held it to his mouth, and puffed the smallest of breaths. When he opened his hands, the bird flew off. This was greeted with gasps of surprise and peals of laughter.

What can I say about his teaching? He didn’t unroll scrolls of the Torah and drone on, like the scribes. He didn’t cite the traditions of the elders, like the Pharisees. He didn’t hold forth, like our old rabbi back in Capernaum. He didn’t address only the men. Women and children, too, gathered at his feet and waited for his words. He told stories, plucking from the world around us holy truths. The birds of the air became a sign of our great worth in God’s sight. A wedding feast became the heavenly kingdom. Seed sown by a farmer reminded us that our ability to hear God’s word is always up to us. My mind came alive and a fire burned in my heart. I wanted him to never stop speaking because every word was somehow drawing me deeper into the mystery of God.

The sun was arcing toward the west when he stood and stretched. The women went off to check their cookpots. The men watered and milked their flocks. The children began to play hide and seek. Our new rabbi looked at us from across the courtyard. He scanned the sky and sniffed the wind, apprising the weather. “Tomorrow, we go north,” he called, “I hear there is a wedding in Cana.” He waved us off, as if knowing that we would soon be back.

As we left the compound, my friend and I looked at one another. His eyes were bright and his cheeks were flushed with the same fire that flamed within me. We did not say it, but we shared one thought. At last, he had come. This was God’s Messiah. If we hurried, we could return to the Jordan, tell our friends, pack our gear, and be back by sunrise. We hiked up our robes and ran with the sun at our backs and our shadows racing before us.

John 1:35-42

35 The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, 36 and as he watched Jesus walk by he exclaimed, “Look, here is the Lamb of God!” 37 The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. 38 When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, “What are you looking for?” They said to him, “Rabbi” (which translated means Teacher), “where are you staying?” 39 He said to them, “Come and see.” They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o’clock in the afternoon. 40 One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. 41 He first found his brother Simon and said to him, “We have found the Messiah” (which is translated Anointed). 42 He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, “You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas” (which is translated Peter).

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Crazy Math

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Sabbath Day Thoughts — John 6:1-14

We are well acquainted with miracle stories.

A thirty-five-year-old nun, serving as the principal of a girl’s school in Calcutta, heard Jesus’ “call within her calling:” to abandon her teaching and go forth into the city’s slums to tend the poorest and sickest of people. She completed a six-month course in basic medical care, traded her nun’s habit for a sari, and left her convent behind so that she could be the hands and feet of Jesus for those whom she saw were unwanted, unloved, and uncared for. She tended lepers dying in the street, fed maimed children who begged for a living, and cared for women forced into lives of prostitution. All that need of the streets of Calcutta plus one poorly trained nun should have been a formula for failure. Yet by some crazy cosmic math, two years later Sister Mary Teresa was joined by twelve like-minded nuns and together they launched the Missionaries of Charity. Today, there are 5, 167 sisters of the Missionaries of Charity, serving the poorest of the poor in 758 communities in 139 countries.

In 1990, Tom Logan was visiting Dr. John Knowle’s, a missionary doctor at the Ekwendeni Hospital in Malawi. The two men came across the pump and raw materials to build a shallow well, delivered by the Malawi government years before but never installed. Knowing that waterborne disease from foul, open, community water sources was the leading cause of death for Malawi’s young children, the two men were shocked and angered. “Why don’t you install it?” Logan wanted to know. Dr. Knowles responded, “Why don’t you install it, Tom?” And so was launched the shallow well program of the Marion Medical Mission. That first year, Logan installed thirteen wells. Marion Medical Mission now installs more than 3,000 wells each year in partnership with local villages and leaders. Thirty years after Tom’s bold question, “Why don’t you install it?”, four million people in Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia now have safe, clean drinking water, thanks to the shallow well program.

Millard and Linda Fuller were self-made millionaires before they were thirty. Instead of retiring and living large, the Fullers sold most of their possessions and moved to Koinonia Farm, the Christian community founded by pastor and Bible scholar Clarence Jordan. Aware of the need for adequate housing for the poor of rural Georgia, the Fullers teamed with Jordan to develop the concept of “partnership housing.” Those in need would work side-by-side with volunteers to build decent, affordable homes. The first partnership home built was for Beau and Emma, who lived with their five children in an unpainted, uninsulated shack without any plumbing. Two years later in 1976, the Fullers founded Habitat for Humanity, International, which now works in all fifty states and more than seventy countries. Habitat has helped more than thirty-five million people achieve their dream of “safe, decent, and affordable shelter.”

We are well-acquainted with miracle stories. Today’s reading may be the best-known miracle story of all. The feeding of the 5,000 is told by all four gospel writers. Today we get to hear it from John’s perspective. Jesus had been teaching his disciples on the hillside above the Sea of Galilee when he looked up to see a huge crowd on the move. They were in need of his wise words and healing touch. It was also late in the day, and there were no resources at hand to meet their physical hunger.

To test his friends, Jesus asked how they could feed the multitude. Philip surveyed the throng and knew that their need for bread far exceeded the financial resources they had on hand. Andrew did some reconnaissance and came up with five small loaves of barley bread and two little dried fish—resources that weren’t even his to share. The other ten disciples were silent, clearly thinking that they were powerless in the face of such need—there was nothing that they could do about it. The twelve disciples likely expected that would be the end of the discussion.

Jesus confounded those expectations. He took their meager provisions, blessed them, and shared them as if it were Thanksgiving dinner at Grandma’s house with all the fixings. Then, by some crazy and holy math, five loaves plus two fish equaled enough to feed 5,000 men and their families, with leftovers to spare. That vast, hungry crowd was miraculously fed in body, mind, and spirit. Praise the Lord!

Well-acquainted as we are with miracle stories. We are also familiar with times when we have felt like we needed a personal miracle, like when we lost our job, like when our marriage was on the rocks, like when the doctor gave us that scary diagnosis, or like when we were lost in grief. Given the history and crazy math behind faithful people who accomplished extraordinary things with the Lord’s help, we might think that when life gets overwhelming, or crisis strikes, or the rug is pulled out from beneath our feet, we would have faith and trust that the Lord will make a way and see us through. But we can tend to be a little like the disciples. Like Philip, we can only see all the ways that we are woefully inadequate to meet the moment. Like Andrew, we hope someone else can provide what is needed to fix our problem. Like the other ten disciples, we shake our heads, we throw up our hands, and think it is hopeless. The need overwhelms us. We want to give up. We want to run away. We want to crawl into bed, pull up the covers, and retreat into denial. There may be miracles out there, but we cannot imagine that any amount of multiplication or distribution could meet our need. We say, “Jesus, where is my miracle? Jesus, where are my loaves and fish? Jesus, where are my leftovers to spare?”

Miracles often begin with the smallest of faithful acts. A thirty-five-year-old nun with inadequate training decides to go out and help just one leper, one child, one woman, one person at a time. Tom Logan and his friends install a long-forgotten shallow well. The Fullers help their impoverished neighbors build a concrete block house with indoor plumbing. Jesus says grace—he blesses five barley loaves—the bread of the poor. He prays over two salty, dried fish. It starts small. It starts with just one simple faithful act. We can do that. We can launch our hopeful intent into that impossible void. We can place our little bit into the hands of Jesus. We can trust that some crazy math can begin to unfold. Somehow, with the Lord’s help, we find that we have what is needed to face the impossible. Really and truly, it is a miracle.

We know that’s true because there are miracles who walk among us, people who have defied and confounded every expectation. The widow, who wakes each morning to an empty house and the pall of grief, yet finds the courage to set that aside, smile, care for her family, and help her neighbor, she is a miracle. She and Jesus are doing some crazy math. The youth who rises above the dysfunction and alcoholism of his parents to get an education and forge a professional identity, he is a miracle. He and Jesus are doing some crazy math. The impoverished neighbor who finds ways to share with others and be generous with family and still put a little something in the offering plate each Sunday, they are a miracle. They are doing some crazy math with Jesus. Thank God, everywhere we look, miracles of multiplication and blessing and abundance are unfolding if we will only have eyes to see.

So maybe this week, in that best-known of Jesus’ miracles, and in the stories of Teresa and Tom and Millard and Linda, and in those indomitable spirits who live next door or bump into us in Top’s or sit next to us in church, we can find a little hope. We really are well-acquainted with miracles. We can find the courage to stand on our ground. We can throw back the covers and get out of bed. We can take the first simple step. We can place our little bit in the hands of Jesus and trust in the crazy math to come.

Resources:
Bryant, Robert A. “Exegetical Perspective on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 3. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2009.
Yust, Karen Marie. “Pastoral Perspective on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 3. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2009.
Johns, Cheryl Bridges. “Homiletical Perspective on Mark 6:30-34, 53-56” in Feasting on the Word, Year B, vol. 3. Louisville: John Knox Press, 2009.
–. “Mother Teresa” in Biography, Feb. 24, 2020. Accessed online at biography.com.
–. “Habitat’s Story” in Habitat for Humanity, International. Accessed online at habitat.org.
–. “Who We Are: The Beginning” in Marion Medical Mission. Accessed online at mmmater.org.

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