Sermon — May 11, 2025
Michael Fenn
Miracles are not particularly hard.
Or rather, they don’t seem all that difficult to do. Maybe it is my own hubris speaking, but we witness lots of folks in scripture doing miracles. Not only that, we witness people doing miracles with and without the help of God. And so, I am led to believe they aren’t all that hard.
For example, in the Exodus story, we get Moses and his brother Aaron performing a number of miracles to try and convince Pharaoh to let God’s people go. These miracles include turning Aaron’s staff into a snake, and turning the Nile into blood. However, and the reason I don’t think miracles seem that hard, Pharoah’s people are able to do the exact same things: they too can turn staffs into snakes, and the Nile into blood. It is striking that people outside the purview of God are able, in the story, to perform the exact miracles that God’s people are able to perform.
We get another example in the New Testament, with a man named Simon Magus. His specific works and miracles are not disclosed in the narrative, but we know that he did such impressive miracles that the people were hailing him as some kind of god-like figure. He eventually does convert to Christianity, and some other weird stuff happens in his story. But importantly, his business with miracles was entirely outside the purview of God, and were apparently impressive enough to compete–as it were–with the miracles of the followers of Christ. And so, I am led to believe that miracles are somewhere in the realm of “difficult and rare, but not all that hard”.
We see yet another miracle in our readings for today. Peter raises up Tabitha, a disciple of Christ, from the dead. Part of what makes this miracle different from the ones that Simon Magus and Pharoah’s people do, and similar to the miracles that Moses does, is that Simon Peter is a disciple of God, and acting in that capacity. Another thing about this miracle that makes it different from Pharoah’s people and Simon Magus is the reason that Simon Peter brings back Tabitha from the dead. It is quite easy to miss in today’s reading, but the reason is in there: Tabitha being raised up from the dead became known throughout her hometown, and many people came to believe because they had heard all about it. It is the business of causing people to believe that underpins miracles associated with God.
And we see this reflected today in our Gospel when Jesus says that the works he does in His Father’s name testify to him. The “works” Jesus does are the miracles he does, and are also called “signs”. In the context of today’s reading, this means that all the miracles that Jesus has done so far testify to the fact that he is the Messiah. And Jesus has done quite a few miracles, the Gospel of John, from which today’s gospel lesson comes, is brimming with miracles, including such famous ones as Jesus turning water into wine, and Jesus bringing his friend Lazarus back from the dead. In fact, it contains so many miracles or signs that the entire first half of the Gospel of John is often nicknamed “the Book of Signs”.
It is these miracles (or signs)–turning water into wine, feeding the multitudes, raising Lazarus and Tabitha–that call out to people in Jesus’s time and that engender a feeling of belief in Christ.
They are not miracles for the sake of miracles. After all, miracles are not that hard, and we have examples of miracles that are not God’s will. Rather, these miracles associated with Christ are actual signs that hold a deeper meaning. All of Jesus’s healing miracles, each of the feats Moses and Aaron do, and Simon Peter raising Tabitha, are all signs that point to the reality of Christ: that Jesus is the Son of God who defeats death, that Jesus calls us into fellowship with him, and Jesus is our shepherd.
To me, this way of understanding the miracles we read about in scripture also answers another kind of question. If Peter could do that for Tabitha, why wasn’t he going around and doing that for so many other people? It seems somewhat sad and unfair that for every Tabitha gets a miracle when so many others do not.
And we’ve seen this answered in our reading today. As I’ve said, the miracles are not just simply miracles for their own sake. In scripture we see with Pharoah’s people and Simon Magus that there were other people able to do miracles, and so miracles for their own sake seem kind of lackluster. The miracles we read about in God’s name are are all signs that point people to a much deeper reality of our faith. This reality is reflected very clearly in our readings today from Psalm 23 and Revelation.
Psalm 23 is probably one of the most famous scriptural passages, and so I suspect it needs to further introduction. It is doesn’t hold back in its description of God’s love for us. Psalm 23 depicts God as our shepherd who leads us to still waters and restores our souls, and it’s a profound expression of this deeper reality that miracles point to.
Our reading from Revelation is a bit weirder, and steeped in symbolism that can be hard for a modern reader to understand. However, just like Psalm 23, it also points to this reality. Just as God is our shepherd who leads us beside still waters; God’s kingdom is one where the sun shall not strike us by day, and God will wipe away every tear from our eyes.
The reality that these readings point to is expressed well by the fact that they are some of the recommended, and most common, readings that we read at funerals. In our most deep and profound moments of loss, this Psalm and this reading from Revelation provide a solace and a reminder that the tragedy that exists in our lives is not the end; that there is a deeper reality beyond death and loss. The deeper reality reflected by God who is calling out to us, who is leading us, and who is shepherding us constantly.
We read these now, today, even though it is not a funeral, because it is Easter season. Its a time where we get to fully acknowledge and live into one of the central parts of our faith: that Jesus has defeated the powers of sin and death in the resurrection. In the Easter season, we read these readings to point to this fact: that Christ remains our good shepherd, that God will wipe away every tear from every eye, that goodness and mercy will follow us all the days of our lives. At our core, our faith rejects the powers sin and death, and the miraculous works of God are signs that point to this defeat.
So sure, we don’t really get miracles in the same way today that they were getting in Acts. That’s not to say that God is not working in strange and mysterious ways in our own time, I believe that God is still acting in the world. What I mean is that we are not (to my knowledge) raising people back from the dead and doing other such kinds of miracles. And that is okay. Our faith is not a faith based in how many miracles God is doing for us or through us. Our faith is deeper than any particular miracle.
And even if we don’t get miracles as signs like the community in Acts did–we don’t get to witness Tabitha being raised from the dead. I suspect that the people in this room are getting by “okay” in their faith without miracles. By that, I don’t mean that I think the life of faith of any person here is easy all the time–its still incredibly difficult throughout our lives when we face death, tragedy, and other forms of hardship. And even outside of particularly difficult times like those, we can still experience more everyday moments of doubt that are still difficult.
What I mean when I say that I suspect that the people in this room are getting by okay is that each one of you (and me, and Greg) decided that coming to church to feel close to God, to experience communion with God and one another, was the most valuable way to spend your time this morning. Even if you are not feeling particularly great, particularly faithful, particularly pious, you showed up because you feel something. [And that matters, and that counts]
So even if, generally speaking, we don’t have very visible miracles around us that we get to witness, we still feel this call. We still show up. In the Gospel today Jesus has this in mind when he says “my sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me”. We are all sheep to Jesus, responding to His voice and His call to follow him. We all keep making this choice, rooted in our faith, to keep showing up here. We make this choice to keep following Jesus as best as we can day by day, week by week, and season by season. It’s not always easy, and at times it can feel quite hard, and at times it would feel like a very obvious miracle would be reassuring, but all the same, we continue to try and respond to the loving call of our Shepherd in Christ. Who revives our souls, and leads us besides still waters, and will wipe away every tear from our eyes. In the name of the One who first loved us.