It was a sad day when Pastor Parker got pulled over while driving home one night. The police officer came to the driver’s window and leaned in and said, “Pastor Parker you were weaving back and forth a little bit on the road there. You haven’t been drinking have you?”
“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Certainly not.”
“Well, what’s in that bottle there in the passenger seat? It looks like a wine bottle.”
“Oh, no,” said Pastor Parker. “Just water. It’s only water, Officer.”
“Then may I have a look?”
“Absolutely,” the pastor said and he handed over the bottle.
The officer sniffed it and said, “Pastor Parker, I know you’ve got connections with Jesus, but that’s wine in this bottle.”
Pastor Parker looked up to the heavens and said, “Glory be, he’s done it again!”
Turning water into wine, of course, was Jesus’ first miracle, or sign, as the gospel of John calls it. It happened at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, which also happens to be the place where he did his second Galilean miracle, or sign, as we heard in the gospel reading today. So Cana is a good place for us to go today because the thing I want to talk about is miracles. What are they and how do we understand them?
We are now in the third week of this series on faith and science. In the first week we talked about the big bang and evolution. Last week we talked about psychology and faith. And what I have learned is that this series is opening up a huge area for exploration. A sermon series that was three months long couldn’t begin to touch all the issues raised by the intersection of faith and science. But it has been fascinating and I hope that by just beginning this conversation it will lead you to do some more exploration. If we are thoughtful about our faith, this conversation is unavoidable and I hope this will give you some confidence to see that your Christian faith is not something you have to hide when you are confronted with scientific discoveries.
No area has been more troubling to the scientific mindset, however, than miracles. We read the biblical stories and miracles are all over the place. Moses and the people of Israel cross the Red Sea by walking between walls of water that God has piled up. Joshua commands the sun and the moon to stop and they do. Elijah calls down fire on a sacrifice soaked with water in a contest with the prophets of Baal and the fire comes. Jesus turns water into wine, walks on water and feeds five thousand. Peter and John heal a lame man so that he goes off leaping and praising God. Miracles are the stuff of Bible stories.
Here’s the thing about miracles, though – for many years modern science has operated under the presumption, the firm presumption, that the universe is predictable. There is an order to things. There are natural laws that govern how things operate. For something to be true it must be true always. To prove that something can be done I not only have to do it but someone else has to be able to replicate it. Most of us would accept that that’s how science works and that that is how science needs to work in order to arrive at scientific truth.
Science has a hard time with miracles. They don’t compute. The doctor comes in with a report and says, “Mr. Conrad, I don’t know how to explain this but your latest CT scan shows that your tumor has completely disappeared.” Mr. Conrad may think it’s a miracle. Mr. Conrad may believe that God has intervened in answer to prayer. The doctor may believe the same thing. But science would look for an alternative explanation.
It is a wonderful thing that Mr. Conrad no longer has cancer, but modern medicine would want to know what happened in this case and how it might be replicated for other patients. Science might do a study on prayer and its effectiveness in healing patients. A few studies have been done with mixed results. More likely the doctor’s scientific side would say, “With a little more study one day we will know why Mr. Conrad’s tumor reacted the way it did.” God doesn’t have to be part of the equation. And the more science discovers, the fewer gaps in knowledge there are for God to fill. So goes the story.
Albert Einstein, the great 20th century physicist who took science to some very weird and wonderful places as he unfolded his great scientific theories, had a great confidence that this way of talking about science that I’ve just described would go on. Even in his universe of black holes and a space-time continuum there was predictability. Einstein said famously, “I do not believe that God plays dice with the universe.”[i] Einstein didn’t have a traditional belief in God, but he did talk about God as the underlying order of the universe. That’s what he’s getting at with that statement – the universe is predictable ultimately. He felt there must be an objective reality that could be understood if we just had the right equations or the right instruments of observation.
Science, however, is changing. The weird physics of Einstein have gotten even weirder. On one level, Isaac Newton’s laws of physics are still true. An apple that breaks loose from a tree will still fall down and hit you on the head if you’re sitting under it. The theory of gravity is still pretty useful for understanding situations like that even after three centuries. But when you get down to the atomic level it’s a whole other ball game. At that level, we’re discovering that “anything can happen,” as the quantum physicist Werner Heisenberg said.[ii] At that level the apple, instead of falling, might appear over there or in San Francisco or split into two, or disappear. All bets are off. And even stranger, it seems that, at the atomic level, because something is being observed it behaves in unpredictable ways.
So what am I saying? Has quantum physics made it possible to talk about God again? In a sense. Two hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson, who was a great scientist himself in addition to being the founder of the University of Virginia and, oh, yes, president, was cutting up his New Testament, taking out the stories of Jesus’ miracles and republishing what was left as an acceptable Enlightenment book to give to members of Congress. He thought Jesus was a great teacher but could never reconcile himself to the idea that God would be actively involved in the world in a way that would defy the laws of nature, in other words God’s laws. God was very remote for Jefferson and Einstein.
Now, however, we have a whole new way of seeing. The physicist Paul Davies says that “when one gets to an indeterministic universe, if you allow quantum physics, then there is some sort of lassitude in the operation of these laws…God could load the quantum dice…this is one way of influencing what happens in the world, working through these quantum uncertainties.”[iii] It’s still a pretty remote God, but it opens the door for a much more complex understanding of how the universe works that could have more scientists talking about how God could be at work.
From a Christian understanding, though, we want something more. We need something more. What are miracles? Are they just magical things that prove how awesome biblical characters were -- like superhero powers? Moses with the Staff of Power!
The preacher and writer Frederick Buechner defines miracles this way:
“A cancer inexplicably cured. A voice in a dream. A statue that weeps. A miracle is an event that strengthens faith. It is possible to look at most miracles and find a rational explanation in terms of natural cause and effect. It is possible to look at Rembrandt’s Supper at Emmaus and find a rational explanation in paint and canvas.
Faith in God is less apt to proceed from miracles than miracles from faith in God.”[iv]
What I like about Buechner’s definition is that it doesn’t make miracles into superhero powers. They are events that show us that faith is already there. They are visible when we have the eyes to see them.
Which brings us back around to Cana. A royal official comes to Jesus in Cana. He lives in Capernaum, at least a half-day’s journey away. The man works for the king. Jesus is a nobody, only just beginning his ministry. His only public act in the area has been to be the best wedding party guest ever, turning six huge vats of water into truly excellent wine. There were stories. Stories of how he had overturned tables in the temple in Jerusalem. Of how he stirred up the crowds with signs. But in Galilee it was just the wedding feast trick.
The royal official comes because he has a sick son. Every desperate parent knows what it’s like to have a sick child. You do what you need to do to get help – even if it means trying out the new miracle worker. So he goes to Jesus and begs him to come with him to Capernaum. To heal his son because the boy was at the point of death.
The official is interested in one thing – a healing – but Jesus seems interested in something else. He turns to the man and says, “Unless you see signs and wonders you won’t believe.” It’s pretty much what he says to Thomas, his doubting disciple, after the resurrection. “You need to see so you can believe.”
If it’s a rebuke the man doesn’t catch it. He says, “Sir, come down and my son will live.” The important thing is to get Jesus to the boy. Get Jesus to the boy and everything will be alright.
But Jesus is not going. “Go,” he says. “Your son will live.” First, go, then your son will live. The man gets it. Believe first and then you’ll find life. Jesus had just told Nicodemus, a religious leader, pretty much the same thing a chapter earlier – “God sent the only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will have life everlasting.” Whoever believes lives.
So it’s really no surprise when the servants show up with the news that the boy was alive. In fact, he started to revive at exactly the hour that Jesus said he would live. The man had gone because he wanted the healing. Only then would he be able to think about who Jesus was. But when Jesus asked him to believe first and to act on that belief, the miracle followed.
Science is discovering that the way you see things really does make a difference. The lens you take with you into the world affects what you see. A scientific theory…and ‘theory’ is a word that goes back to the Greek word that also gives us ‘theater’ – it’s about watching and observation…a scientific theory is a way of looking at things that helps us understand them. Science moves forward by coming up with new ways of looking at things.
Guy Consolmagno is the curator of the Vatican’s meteorite collection. He’s a scientist and a priest and he sees how this happens in earth science – his field of specialty:
“While there's a lot of places where we can put measures and write equations, an awful lot of it is still being able to look at a road cut and saying these layers came before those layers and I can see it. And either you see it or you don't. There's a geologist friend of mine who came back from one of these trips saying, ‘You know, if I hadn't believed it, I'd have never seen it.’”[v]
“If I hadn’t believed it, I’d have never seen it.” Wasn’t that the experience of the man seeking healing for his son? Isn’t that the experience of so many miracles? They illuminate the miracles that pervade the universe.
Wendell Berry is a kind of modern-day prophet who continues to push those around him to see the dangers of our contemporary lifestyles. He lives on a farm and insists that only by cultivating the land and community can we find our way forward. He is also a critic of the way science has systematically reduced our understanding of life from something rich and mysterious to something mechanical. When he looks at new technologies like the human genome project that maps the building blocks of the human animal or the cloning of sheep, Berry worries that we will begin to think of animals less as creatures and more as machines:
“Though we have life, it is beyond us. We do not know how we have it, or why. We do not know what is going to happen to it, or to us. It is not predictable; though we can destroy it, we cannot make it. It cannot, except by reduction and the grave risk of damage, be controlled. It is, as [William] Blake said, holy. To think otherwise is to enslave life.”[vi]
For Wendell Berry, miracles are not just rare things that interrupt the world as we know it, they are necessary things, essential elements of everyday life. The most important things we have in this life are not reducible to formulas and chemical compounds. Life, love, soul, spirit – such things are mysteries that demand a different way of seeing. All good science begins with the recognition that every scientific exploration is ultimately a journey into the miraculous. And miracles are ultimately not about believing impossible things – they are about seeing the world through the eyes of faith.
A great contemporary novel for exploring miracles is Leif Enger’s Peace Like a River. Told through the eyes of Reuben, a young boy growing up in Minnesota in the middle of the last century, the book introduces us to a character who can do miracles--his father. A skeptic might say that the boy is really just seeing his dad through rose-colored glasses, but reading this story you believe right along with Reuben.
The first miracle is Rueben’s birth. He is born with his lungs filled with fluid, unable to breathe. At the moment of his birth his father, who is outside pacing and praying, senses that he is born and comes racing to the delivery room of the hospital. Here’s the scene as described by Rueben based on the stories his dad has told him about his birth:
“Dad lifted me gently…A little clay boy is what I was.
‘Breathe,’ Dad said.
I lay in his arms.
Dr. Nokes said, ‘Jeremiah, it has been twelve minutes.’
‘Breathe!’ The picture I see is of Dad, brown hair short and wild, giving this order as if he expected nothing but obedience.
Dr. Nokes approached him. ‘Jeremiah. There would be brain damage now. His lungs can’t fill.’
Dad leaned down, laid me back on the table, took off his jacket and wrapped me in it—a black canvas jacket with a quilted lining, I have it still. He left my face uncovered.
‘Sometimes,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘there is something unworkable in one of the organs. A ventricle that won’t pump correctly. A liver that poisons the blood.’ Dr. Nokes was a kindly and reasonable man. ‘Lungs that can’t expand to take in air. In these cases,’ said Dr. Nokes, ‘we must trust the Almighty to do what is best.’ At which Dad stepped across and smote Dr. Nokes with a right hand, so that the doctor went down and lay on his side with his pupils unfocused. As Mother cried out, Dad turned to me, a clay child wrapped in a canvas coat, and said in a normal voice, ‘Rueben Land, in the name of the living God I am telling you to breathe.’”
Which he did.
Rueben’s learning from this is that “real miracles bother people…they rebut every rule all we good citizens take comfort in.” He credits his little sister with the insight that “people fear miracles because they fear being changed—though ignoring them will change you also…No miracle happens,” she said, “without a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will.”[vii]
A scientist’s job is to approach this miraculous world with the best tools available to try and see where the inquiry will lead. If they go into it with the naïve belief that scientific truth is the only kind of truth there is, more’s the pity for them that they have such an impoverished view of the world. And more’s the pity for us because we know how monstrous science can turn when it loses its wonder at life.
As people of faith, our job is to go into the world expecting that miracles will happen and to be unafraid to call them forth from this enchanted world, full of the presence of God. With the eyes of faith we can see incredible things happening. As Jesus told the man that day in Cana – Go. Believe. Life will come. And when it does – tell somebody, because miracles need a witness. Someone to declare, Here’s what I saw. Here’s how it went. Make of it what you will. Are you ready for a miracle? Go. Thanks be to God.
John 4:46-54 [NRSV]
Then he came again to Cana in Galilee where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, "Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe."
The official said to him, "Sir, come down before my little boy dies."
Jesus said to him, "Go; your son will live."
The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, "Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him." The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, "Your son will live." So he himself believed, along with his whole household.
Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
[i] Quoted in Krista Tippett, Einstein’s God: Conversations about Science and the Human Spirit, [Penguin Books: New York, 2010], ebook location 419-425.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Ibid, ebook location 605.
[iv] Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC, [Harper Collins: San Francisco, 1973], p. 74.
[v] Guy Consolmagno, interview with Krista Tippett on “Asteroids, Stars and the Love of God,” Speak of Faith, American Public Radio, broadcast April 1, 2010, transcript at http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2010/asteroids/transcript.shtml.
[vi] Wendell Berry, Life is a Miracle: An Essay Against Modern Superstition, [Counterpoint: Washington, DC, 2000], p. 9.
[vii] Leif Enger, Peace Like a River, [Grove Press: New York, 2001], pp. 2-3.
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