the first of a series of two services looking at miracles inspired by jeffrey john's talks at greenbelt 04
order of service
'Call to worship'
couple of songs
Simpson's clip/Life of Brian clip
Discussion of miracles and feedback
(people to write miracles they remember on a big sheet so we have a record
of them.)
Inspiration for service and summary of Jeffrey John book with clips from GB tape (see below for summaries)
Ignatian reading - pool of Bethesda (taken from de mello book)
Stations:
a)Water into wine
b)Hem to touch
c)Inclusion/exclusion - stories and post-it notes
d)faith
Need for belief and concluding ritual
A summary of Jeffrey John's book "The Meaning in the Miracles".
The Guardian Editor section used to include summaries of books "condensed in the style of the original", and that is what I have tried to do here.
Introduction
The author starts by referring to two Scripture teachers from his school.
One of them believed the Bible in the most literal possible sense, and
considered the meaning of each miracle story was to prove the supernatural
nature of Jesus. The other teacher, in the interests of being relevant,
dismissed anything that sounded supernatural. Her explanation of the
miracles was therefore naturalistic (e.g. the calming of the storm was a
convenient coincidence) or moralistic (e.g. the feeding of the five thousand
was achieved by inspiring everyone to share the food they had). Both
teachers assumed that the only interesting thing about the miracles was the
question of what did or did not happen, and both therefore missed the point.
What we need to do is look for the meaning.
"Let us ask the miracles themselves what they tell us about Christ, for they
have a tongue of their own, if it can only be understood. Because Christ is
the Word of God, all the acts of the Words become words to us. The miracle
which we admire on the outside also has something inside which must be
understood. If we see a piece of beautiful handwriting, we are not
satisfied simply to note the letters are formed evenly, equally and
elegantly: we also want to know the meaning the letters convey. In the same
way a miracle is not like a picture, something merely to look out and
admire, and to be left at that. It is much more like a piece of writing
which we must learn to read and understand." -- St Augustine
a) Each miracle story is a literary creation with a theological purpose.
The gospel writers were steeped in Old Testament Scripture, and constantly
use threads of prophecy-fulfilment, symbolism, or allegory to create a new
story which reapplies the truths, hopes, patterns and meanings of the
scriptural past to the present.
Therefore the key to unlocking the theological meaning of a miracle story
requires knowledge of the Old Testament. The author therefore recommends
following up the cross-references in the Bible, and using a good commentary.
b) The stories must be understood in their own religious, historical, social
and political context. A story such as the healing of a woman with a
haemorrhage shows Jesus overturning a taboo which subjugated and oppressed
women, and was nothing less than revolutionary. Read properly, it
challenges the Church to assess its own treatment of women today as
powerfully as Jesus challenged the gynophobic conventions of his own time.
A similar point can be made about most, if not all, of the healing miracles.
They seem to have been deliberately selected by the evangelist to show
Jesus healing at least one of every category of persons who, according to
the purity laws of Jesus' society, were specifically excluded and labeled
unclean, or who was set at varying degrees of distance from worshipping in a
temple. They are demonstrations of Jesus' healing power and compassion for
the individual, but that is not the main point. Far more relevant to us is
the miracles' universal significance: the overturning of social and
religious barriers, the abolition of taboos, and Jesus' declaration of God's
love and compassion for everyone, expressed in a systematic inclusion of
each class of the previous excluded and marginalised. How often has the
Church failed to follow this inclusiveness and, and preferred instead to
create and cling to its own taboos?
c) Principalities and powers. The gospels continually refer to demonic
powers,, and we must avoid the pitfalls of literalism and reductionism. We
are not required to believe in the existence of demons with forked tails,
nor even, necessarily, in the powers as being entirely distinct, self
existent entities, but nor should we simply dismiss them as if they were
merely outdated dramatic trappings which no longer mean anything in a
"scientific" age. The New Testament uses the same terms to mean both
supernatural forces and the very real powers which represent them on earth.
(They are not inherently bad.)
Just as the healing miracles often imply reinclusion of a whole class of
excluded persons, the power of sin and rebellion against God, and the
healing that they require, must be understood as operating corporately as
well as individually.
d) Faith. One of the many paradoxes in the gospels is that at first sight
the miracles seem to be intended as straightforward demonstrations of Jesus'
divine power, but at the same time the gospels contain strong warnings about
the dangers of being impressed by signs and miracles, and Jesus himself
appears to be extremely wary of being known simply as a wonder-worker, and
is scathing about those who seek signs for their own sake. A personal
belief in Jesus that goes deeper than self-interest and the mere worship of
power is at least part of what the gospels mean by "faith".
e) Eyes to see (and ears to hear). When the disciples fail to understand
the significance of the miracles, they seem to incarnate both the particular
spiritual blindness of Israel and the general spiritual blindness of all
humanity. Mark in particular appears to believe that God had willed a
temporary spiritual blindness to come upon the people which actually
prevented them from understanding. The hope, prophesied by Isaiah, remains
that one day all the blind eyes will be opened. All the gospel miracles of
Jesus healing the blind are to be interpreted in terms of this theology of
revelation: their point is not medical but spiritual and theological.
Summary: the background knowledge of a miracle is indispensable if we are to
get the spiritual meaning. All the miracle stories contain profound
teaching which is of indispensable relevance today, teaching that all too
often gets passed over because we do not get past the "miraculous" packaging
and the endless issue of "did it happen?" We should aim to share the same
perception of the truth that impelled the evangelists to write the miracle
stories in the first place.
That covers the introduction -- the rest of the book consists of analysis,
from the above perspectives, of almost all the miracles. Each chapter also
has some devotional materials.
... the one who was lowered through a hole in the roof. (Mark 2 v 1-12,
Luke 5 v 18-26, and there is a similar story in Matthew 9 v2-8)
The main point of the story is Jesus' claim to forgive sins. It is a
fundamental assumption in Judaism that God alone can forgive sins on God's
behalf or with God's authority. The reality of Jesus' claim to forgive
authoritatively could not be proved on its own, since it is an inward,
spiritual matter. Hence the importance of the miracle. Jesus' question,
"Is it easier to forgive or to say to the paralytic, get up?" is not meant
to imply that forgiving sin is literally "easier" than physical healing. It
is more a question of visibility. The physical healing proves the truth of
the claim to exercise forgiveness.
The fact that Jesus heals and forgives simultaneously might suggest that the
sickness was the result of a specific sin on the paralysed man's part, or
that he was an especially sinful person. But as is referred to elsewhere in
the Gospels, as well as the book of Job, human sickness is to be linked not
so much with the personal sin of the sufferer as with human sinfulness in
general. From the Gospel point of view all disorder, even natural
phenomena, derive from the separation between God and the world. Conversely
the various demonstrations in the Gospel of the power of Jesus over
sickness, sin, disorder and death are all equivalent signs that he bears the
authority of God to drive back the darkness, and reclaim the world and human
beings for their creator.
Many Christians are suspicious of sacramental confession, but it does carry
a special healing power for those who still need to hear the kind of
objective and authoritative declaration of God's forgiveness that Jesus
makes in the story. A desperately needed ministry (which the Church is not
particularly effective at) is the opportunity to open oneself up in faith,
and to be reassured of God's acceptance of our whole person, despite the sin
and mess.
There is a barely concealed implication that Jeffrey John considers this
story to be allegorical rather than factual. Many Jewish writing symbolise
the messianic days as a wedding feast, and many of the stories in the
Gospels are about weddings as well.
There are two particularly important points from the story, and the first is
the production of the wine itself. There are reminders of Jesus saying "can
the wedding guests fast while the groom is still with them?" and "no one
puts new wine into old skins".
The production of a huge abundance of wine, and a production of a similar
abundance of bread at the feeding of the five thousand, suggests an allusion
to the Eucharist, the sacramental means by which the believer is united with
Jesus. [I am reminded of the communion liturgy which says "let us make a
huge loaf of bread, and let us bring abundant wine."] The story of the
wedding, like communion, is also about celebrating a corporate as well as an
individual relationship -- and the story does not hesitate to compare the
joy of the celebration with drunkenness. In the Western Church we are not
good at joy, though the joy does not necessarily have to be expressed in
loud and visible joyfulness.
The second point concerns Jesus' words to his mother -- a verbal slap in the
face which suggests hostility between them. Jesus' view of the family was,
to say the least, ambiguous, and he himself clearly had problems with his
own family. His teaching that all human relationships and all human
institutions need redeeming -- including motherhood and apple pie -- is
important to keep in mind, especially when our relationships prove
difficult. God comes first, and everything else needs ordering in the light
of our relationship with him.