When I was in grad school I remember hearing about a group of scholars looking to "discover the historical Jesus" convening something called the 'Jesus Seminar' in the seventies. These scholars of a liberal bent did not feel the miracles of Jesus were all that important or even reliably sourced, and often explained the away or minimized their account. I frankly didn't know what exactly their purpose was, or why this would be attractive to anyone. Was it to deconstruct the person of Jesus? Rewrite the Gospels? Discover something new? It seemed like a sanitation project, a sterilization of the live and active cultures teeming in a lived life of radical faith. Bleh.
I have no problem believing in miracles. I do not feel a need to explain them away in a cheap kind of bland rationalism. Miracles give us hope in this valley of tears. What I do struggle with is having the radical faith necessary to have miracles worked in my own life.
I was reading the fourth chapter of 2 Kings tonight. The entire chapter is devoted to the miracles performed by the powerful man of God, Elisha, one after another. It begins with the prophet encountering a widow in debt, with no ability to repay, and the creditor coming to collect her sons as slaves since she can't repay the debt.
I remember reading a staggering statistic a few years back about Indian farmers who had taken loans with extortion rates they could never repay, after their crops had failed and they had no recourse. Debt like this is a kind of slavery, and over 300,000 Indian farmers who saw no way out had committed suicide since the 1990's, usually by ingesting insecticides .
Have you ever been in a debt so deep that you literally cannot see out of it, back against the wall facing down despair? Collection agents relentlessly hounding you to pay what you owe, and having no ability to? I haven't. And this shapes my faith (or lack of it) in a way--when you don't really know what it means or the full implications of such an impossible situation, you tend to think "I got this," or you draw from savings or whatever to make ends meet.
But when you have no recourse and no resources, the story of a widow about to lose her sons, her own flesh and blood, to indentured servitude, becomes our own. Do you know it? The situation is, quite literally, an impossible one. Elisha, drawing on the power of God to do the impossible, miraculously multiplies her oil (all she has in her house), filling all the borrowed vessels, so much that she can sell the oil to pay off the debt, with enough left over for the sons to live on.
We want a 'little bit' of God, don't we? We want 'just enough' God to make us good citizens, well behaved children, morally acceptable people, but we don't want to get carried away and we certainly don't want to risk looking like fools if were in fact to lose big. Let's admit it--we don't really NEED God...it's just kind of this nice accessory, one among many in our drawer. We believe He hears prayers and politely answers them sometimes, but if we are honest we are providing for ourselves as best we know how and relying on our own savyness to put a comfortable buffer between our family and the streets. At least I do. We keep one foot propping the door open, just in case those prayers aren't answered we have our own creativeness to fall back on to fill the gap.
I suppose it is the responsible thing to do, financially speaking, providing for the uncertain, for change, for retirement. But what happens when you lose your job, and the numbers aren't balancing anymore, and the jobs aren't showing up? When the savings is dwindling and the kids are getting some hunger pangs? What happens when your child is on life support or in a coma, and it seems they will never wake up? Do we believe then? Did we believe prior? It's times like those when our backs are against the wall that I am less concerned about a historical Jesus or great moral teachers and more concerned with a God who does the impossible, who works miracles, who ransoms and saves and rescues us from the clutches of those who seek to enslave us, shackled in dungeons for time untold.
It's no coincidence that those times when our lives feel literally out of control, when the winds of change and uncertainty blow open the shutters, when the chinks in our armor are exposed, have the potential to be rich times of spiritual maturation and trust, when God's great power and glory can be on full display. It opens the door to the kind of radical trust that God can work with, can bless, to change a potentially dire situation. It makes a way when there is literally no way to be made.
God is faithful, and His power is mighty. He credits faith as righteousness (Gen 15:6; cf Rom 4:22). He raises dead boys from the grave and gives them life again. He multiplies loaves of bread to feed hungry masses by the thousands, changes hundreds of gallons of water to wine, expels demons that have made their home in a person for years, putting them in their right mind. He dries up flows of blood, gives sight to the blind, makes rotting skin white as snow, He calms storms when they threaten to capsize boats. He walks on water and frees chained prisoners from their shackles, opening gates for them to walk out. He does all these things supernaturally, yet in the most natural way when viewed with eyes of faith. Where we fail as disciples is to think and say that he is not capable, not able, not willing, and not interested in helping us.
When I said I had never been in the kind of dire debt that I could never get out of, that isn't entirely accurate. While it is true financially speaking, it is not true of my soul. I was a slave to sin, bound by it, unfree for all eternity. I was shackled, and it wasn't even entirely my fault, yet there I was, mired by sin and unable to escape death, the fate promised to us thanks to the disobedience of our first parents. Christ paid the debt, the amount of which could never be repaid in a hundred million years. He ransomed me, and he ransomed you. He gave his life to save us, stood in for us.
So the next time you are in a seemingly impossible situation, do no squander the opportunity to let the name of the Lord be glorified, to let his mighty deeds be seen. Trust and do not doubt (James 1:6). When your back is against the wall, with no way out...that is when you will see the full glory of God revealed for those who trust in Him!
"If the son sets you free, you will be free indeed."
(Jn 8:36)
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