“Miracles — Both Big and Small — Can and Do Happen”

January 20, 2013
Sermon for Epiphany Two, Liturgical Year C
St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, Saratoga, CA

By The Rev. Debra L. Low-Skinner

Back in the mid-1980s, when I was a layperson and a member of this parish, I remember distinctly a particular time when I was serving as a chalice bearer and assisting Fr. Roger Barney at an 8 a.m. Eucharist in the Chapel. 

I stood by him as he was setting the altar during the offertory.  After he had laid the wafers on the paten, he took the silver cruet that held the wine.  When he began to pour the contents into the chalice, out came water instead of wine.  Puzzled by this, he then took the other silver cruet that held the water.  He opened the lid and looked inside and saw it held, not wine, but water.  After a second of considering what to do next, he calmly, without a big to-do, reached for the ambry key and stepped over to open the ambry door.  He reached in for the glass carafe of reserved blessed wine.  He then poured some of the carafe’s contents into the chalice.  He wryly commented to me that this was just like Cana, where the water had turned into wine!!

Indeed, as we heard in today’s Gospel lesson from John (2:1-11), it was at a wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, in response to his mother’s request, where Jesus calmly and without a big to-do transformed water into wine.  And not just a chalice-full, but over 120 gallons.  And not just any ol’ wine, but very good-tasting wine.  Immediately those who witnessed this event (including his mother, his disciples, and the servants who had drawn the wine from the stone water jars) recognized this as an extraordinary and amazing feat. 

Why, it was a miracle and the person who accomplished this was a miracle worker, or maybe a magician, or at least not your average or normal-type of guy.  And what could be the source of his special powers?  John explains that Jesus did this sign “to reveal his (divine) glory and (that) his disciples believed in him.”  (John 2:11)

Though this particular miracle is found only in the Gospel of John, all four Gospels describe many more miracles performed by Jesus Christ.  For instance, there are two dozen stories of miraculous healings.  These include healing people who were blind, deaf, paralyzed, had a hemorrhage, had leprosy, were possessed by demons, and had an ear cut off.  There are three stories of Jesus miraculously raising the dead, including Lazarus in Bethany and Jairus’ daughter.  And there are eight stories of Jesus performing so-called “nature miracles”, when the laws of nature were momentarily suspended.  These include when Jesus fed 5000 people, calmed a raging storm while on the Sea of Galilee, walked on water, and multiplied a catch of fish.

Notice how none of these miracles were done by Jesus to show off or to point to himself as a god.  Rather these were done to point beyond Jesus to God himself, who is Jesus’ father in heaven.  Also, these miracles were done as signs that the Kingdom of God has come, with Jesus Christ’s arrival as God’s earthly agent and emissary of divine love, care, healing, reconciliation, and our salvation from evil and death.

Yet for all the magnificence and awesomeness of Jesus Christ’s miracles and messianic message, I am more struck by the way Jesus went about it all.  He did his miracles calmly, without any fanfare or big to-do and without a lot of people around.  (Yes, he did feed 5000 people, but only the disciples witnessed him taking the barley loaves and fish and miraculously multiplying them a thousand-fold.)  Jesus never acted like Charlton Heston playing Moses in Cecil B. DeMille’s epic movie “The Ten Commandments”.  There, with all of Egypt’s army and the multitude of fleeing Israelites watching, and with the help of a lot of Hollywood special effects, Moses lifted his staff and parted the Red Sea with thunderous and spectacular results.  Tah-dah!!! Let’s all give Moses a big round of applause!!  No, Cecil B. DeMille’s ways are not Jesus Christ’s ways.  In comparison, Jesus’ miracles seem more subdued, human-sized, and more up-close-and-personal.  At times Jesus even told the people he healed to tell no one about who had healed them.

In addition, Jesus expanded his ministry and entrusted and empowered his disciples to perform miracles in his name.  Not only did they pick up their crosses and followed him, they went near and far and did likewise to further spread the Kingdom of God.  As described in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus commissioned the eleven apostles to “go into all the world and proclaim the good news to the whole creation.  The one who believes and is baptized will be saved. … And these signs will accompany those who believe:  by my name they will speak in new tongues; they will pick up snakes in their hands, and if they drink any deadly thing, it will not hurt them, and they will lay their hands on the sick, and they will recover.”  (Mark 16:15-18)   

Those of us who are baptized and follow Jesus Christ as “the Way, the Truth, and the Life”, probably feel that we are mere human beings and totally unable to perform such signs or miracles.  (Me touch snakes?  Not happening!!)  But, again, most of the miracles performed by Jesus were not big and spectacular feats of the impossible made possible. 

Rather these signs were what he enabled his sometimes bumbling and imperfect disciples to do:  to love one another, to proclaim the Good News of salvation, to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to encourage the faint-hearted, to give alms, to visit those in prison, and to seek to do good in Christ’s name.

The more cynical or skeptical among us may even think that there are no miracles happening in this day and age.  And yet, for those with eyes to see and ears to hear, there are miracles — both large and small — happening all the time. 

Consider some of the following examples:

• A backpack full of school supplies given by this parish to a Santa Maria Urban Ministry child enables her to do her math homework and finally master long division.

• A storybook donated to a youth in a Next Door Solutions house opens up to him the wonderful world of creative writing and fantasy.

• Years of prayers and courageous right actions by people such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., finally end centuries of racial segregation and foster civil rights in this country.

• Prayers and people’s generosity enabled a young girl, Malala Yousafzai, to be flown to a London hospital for life-saving treatment.  She miraculously recovers from the brain injury suffered when the Taliban in Pakistan fired on her and her school bus.  Her only “crime” in their eyes was being a girl and wanting to have an education.

• A bi-racial young lad from a broken home in Hawaii, with God’s grace and his grandmother’s love and support, manages to study hard, make it into Harvard University and Columbia Law School, and eventually get elected and become President Barack Obama, our 44th President of the United States.

• Finally, with love, faithfulness, and life-long commitment, married couples in this parish hang-in there, in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, and are able to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary (like Nate and Caroline Wilson) and even their 66th wedding anniversary (like Jean and Dan Woodward).  When so many marriages in this country ending in divorce, celebrating these golden+ anniversaries is a big miracle.

You see, miracles (whether we recognize them as such) really do happen all the time, in big ways and in small.  Most of the time, they happen without a big to-do or on the scale of a Biblical movie epic.  They are the result of God’s grace and our willingness to love and serve the Christ in one another. 

As Jesus said (in Matthew 19:26), what for human beings seems to be impossible, “for God all things are possible.”

Another way of looking at this ministry of ours of working miracles is how Mother Teresa of Calcutta described it:

• “Give yourselves fully to God.  He will use you to accomplish great things on the condition that you believe much more in His love than in your own weakness.”

• “The miracle is not that we do this work, but we are happy to do it.”

• “We cannot do great things on this Earth, only small things with great love.”

So, let us be bold in our faith and expect miracles to happen.  Let us give thanks to God for miracles seen and unseen.  And let us praise our Lord Jesus Christ for showing us and empowering us to be miracle workers in his name. 

Amen.

_____________________________
The Rev. Debra L. Low-Skinner St. Andrew's Episcopal Church
13601 Saratoga Avenue
Saratoga CA  95070
Office: (408) 867-3493 ext 244