Saint Mark 5:21–43
“The Church & Miracles”
I have never considered myself a prophet. Neither am I a soothsayer who can tell the future. I couldn’t even conjure up a good magic trick for any amount of money. But if six decades of watching the news and reading newspapers and now websites has taught me one thing it has taught me to wait until all the facts are in.
So it was on the emotionally strange Thursday we had in Chicago. In a city where the Chicago Blackhawks seem to be the only team with any kind of recent record for success when they won Lord Stanley’s Cup for the third time in six seasons it was a reason to party.
A million or so people took leave of their senses and went downtown to watch the parade and go to the rally at Soldier Field. They were excited and happy as they should have been. (Though I point out again as I did the last two times the Hawks won – I am sure that some of those in the crowd who were yelling: “We’re Number 1!” and “We did it!” wouldn’t know icing the puck from icing the cake.)
But some of us, as we watched the celebration, couldn’t erase from our minds the events of the night before when a young man came to a bible study, was welcomed warmly, sat and listened to scripture, and talk of scripture for an hour, and then proceeded to shoot up the place.
It was an act of pure evil.
That Thursday night I had an event where I knew some pastors would be present. One in particular is a woman with a newly minted Masters of Divinity degree and ordination papers where the ink is barely dry.
She was upset over the shooting. Only a heartless stone would not have been. And she worried about what she was going to preach about on Sunday. “I’ve been immersed in the news all day and I don’t know what I am going to say about this.”
I could guess what she was going to say because she had preached after a national tragedy before and shed more heat than light on the issue blaming all the usual societal culprits.
My prophetic words of wisdom were “It is usually a few days before I even attempt to write anything,” I said, “I like to wait and see how the whole story unfolds.”
The facts usually get uglier but clearer as they did this time.
The murder was a “white supremacist” with writing and plans clearly posted a website for all the world to see. His parents had long since separated so his home life was unstable. However a friend, who has been interviewed countless times, seemed to know everything he was planning. Yet nobody did anything to stop him.
And I am not talking about governmental authorities! I am talking about a responsible mom or dad. I’m talking about his friends who might have told somebody, “Did you know that my friend is ‘looking to kill a lot of people.’”
We can’t ask government to monitor every website, nor should they. We can’t ask government to infiltrate every deranged plot. We can’t ask government to be the parent of every kid who comes from a broken home.
It takes individual responsibility. It takes parents, neighbours, girl friends, and boyfriends to act responsibly. It takes people to take initiative to, when they notice that their white-supremacist friend friend named Dylann now has a gun to go along with his hate filled website and his desire to start a civil war, tell the police.
We can’t just stand around waiting for God to work a miracle. Somebody has to take the incitive. Miracles just don’t happen they are made.
Episcopal priest and professor, Barbara Brown Taylor, said “The problem with miracles is that it is hard to witness them without wanting one of your own. Every one of us knows someone who could use a miracle, but miracles are hard to come by.”[1]
That is what today’s gospel tells us.
The two recipients have to work to even get to Jesus. Like the people who last Thursday jostled and endured shoving and pushing and pulling in order to see their favourite Blackhawk the crowd pressed in on Jesus.
One figure emerges from that crowd: Jaris, the leader of the synagogue makes his way through and literally throws himself at Jesus feet begging him to come and lay hands on his dear daughter who is at death’s door.
And without any fanfare Jesus just goes with him. And they crowds follow to see what Jesus is up to next.
In that crowd is another desperate person. Her bleeding disorder is apparently incurable. We are told that she has spent all she has – money couldn’t help her. She has been to countless physicians and so science and countless physicians couldn’t help her. The two powers that figure so predominantly then and now, money and science, are of no help at all.
Both turn to Jesus. And Jesus, he reaches across social and religious barriers to marginalised, rejected outcasts and restores them and the ones they love to wholeness welcoming them into the kingdom of God where there are no outcasts.
Professor Taylor suggests that miracles occur when “The Kingdom breaks through and for a moment or two we see how things will be – or how they really are right now in the mind of God.”
Those who were looking for miracles or answers in the Charlestown tragedy found them in the strangest of places last Thursday. It happened in the courtroom of Chief Magistrate Judge James Gosnell who with wisdom beyond measure asked a representative of every person who was killed to speak to Roof. Who could have predicted what happened next.
What was heard was not the irrational anger that have heard before which incites people to riot but honest expressions of hurt, pain and grief.
Two quotes will be more than enough.
The first from Nadine Collier, daughter of Ethel Lance: “I forgive you. You took something really precious away from me. I will never talk to her ever again. I will never be able to hold her again. But I forgive you and have mercy on your soul. It hurts me, it hurts a lot of people but God forgive you and I forgive you.”
And this from Alana Simmons, granddaughter of Daniel Simmons: “Although my grandfather and the other victims died at the hands of hate, this is proof – everyone’s plea for your soul is proof they lived in love and their legacies will live in love, so hate won’t win.”[2]
“I forgive you.” Did they really say that?
Did they really say that to a young thug, who came into a church, a house of God, and for an hour was welcomed by these people of God, and then, after that hour was over opened fire on those same people and killed them?
Did the loved ones of the dead really say to the killer, “I forgive you.”
Did they really say that? I heard them. And when I heard them expressing forgiveness in the midst of all they had been through.
“Whew!” I thought. Now that’s a miracle. Thanks for listening
Endnotes:
1. Barbara Brown Taylor, Bread of Angels. (Lanham, Maryland: Rowan and Little field Publishing Group, 1997), p. 139–140.
2. The Associated Press, “Representatives of Charleston Shooting Victims Forgive Dylan Roof.” The Guardian. June, 19, 2015.
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