July 02, 10:30am (Kevin Westling)
So, when you tell me, for example, that you have seen your long dead uncle in a dream or vision, I won’t think that is weird. I hear stuff like that all the time. I have even had vague experiences of such things myself. But don’t ask me to believe or disbelieve your vision. I will hear it and receive it and accept it as part of you, and help you explore it and discover the meaning of it with you; but don’t ask me to see it as proof of anything… or to use your experience to bolster my own beliefs… or proclaim your experience as an example of how God wants us to vote Republican or believe in the doctrine of the Trinity or support x, y and z. It is your experience not mine. When it is my experience, and I see old weird Uncle Ed, then, then I need to account for it and its meaning. You see what I mean by agnostic?
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SERMONS AT TRINITY
Sunday, June 28, 2009
“ Miracle or gritty little reminder?”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
Good morning.
This story from Mark
is really two stories woven into one,
which is a clue for any of us who care to inquire.
Obviously there are a few other things
we might pay attention to:
a 12 year hemorrhage,
a dead girl brought back to life,
power surging from Jesus through of his robe,
miracles, miracles, miracles…
But as you may know,
I am an agnostic when it comes to stories about
Jesus’ supernatural actions…and all supernatural acts.
“Agnostic”
meaning I do not believe or disbelieve them…
not until I experience them for myself.
And why should we deeply invest ourselves
in things outside our own experience?
Isn’t that a recipe for disaster?
Charismatic leaders,
authoritarian Churches and Governments
are forever telling us
we should believe in things
we cannot experience ourselves,
and to then follow them
and their recipes and doctrines.
If we have learned anything along the way,
it is to trust our experience,
and to confirm what we hear
with what we can touch, see, think and imagine.
So, when you tell me, for example,
that you have seen your long dead uncle
in a dream or vision,
I won’t think that is weird.
I hear stuff like that all the time.
I have even had vague experiences
of such things myself.
But don’t ask me to believe or disbelieve your vision.
I will hear it
and receive it
and accept it as part of you,
and help you explore it
and discover the meaning of it with you;
but don’t ask me to see it as proof of anything…
or to use your experience to bolster my own beliefs…
or proclaim your experience as an example
of how God wants us to vote Republican
or believe in the doctrine of the Trinity
or support x, y and z.
It is your experience not mine.
When it is my experience,
and I see old weird Uncle Ed,
then, then I need to account for it and its meaning.
You see what I mean by agnostic?
You know,
I don’t really understand Atheists.
They are so irrational.
They take the absence of an experience
as proof that something is not present,
simply because
they have not experienced it themselves.
They could just as easily be agnostic
and invest less of themselves in it.
But I digress.
Anyway, when Mark reports these amazing things
I can just leave them on the page:
I can observe them,
notice them in detail,
ponder them,
wonder about them
and poke around in them like coals in the fire,
but I need make no judgment about them.
And by the way,
unlike an atheist,
I am not evangelical about my agnosticism:
If you want to believe or embrace claims
outside your own experience knock yourself out.
But whatever you are –
true believer
flaming atheist
lukewarm skeptic
or inquisitive agnostic –
I do have a suggestion about how to read such stories.
It will take us to a much more evocative place
if, when we read stories like the one from Mark,
we do not ask the story questions it cannot answer, like:
“Did it really happen?” or,
“How could that happen?”
or even,
“What would it mean if it really happened that way?”
Instead, poke around like you’re stirring up the coals and trying to rekindle a flame.
Try to figure out why…
why the editor of these stories, in this case Mark,
is telling us the story
the way he or she is telling it.
Think about.
If you were going to tell me
a significant story about yourself,
something out of the ordinary and provocative,
wouldn’t you give at least a little thought
to the best way to tell it?
How you unfold the story
would end up shaping how I heard it.
Mark surely did the same thing.
What we notice right up front about this story
is that it was two stories Mark wove together.
Why?
When we take even just a moment to
wonder why he would do that,
we start seeing things we may not have seen before.
So when we wander around in that question
about Mark’s story,
something interesting will suddenly dawn on us:
Jesus,
who was on a fast tract to save a little girl from dying,
and not just any little girl
but the daughter
of an important member of the congregation –
you know, a really big contributor –
stops and gives personal attention
to some nameless woman in the street.
Think about that action –
Jesus stopping to connect with a nameless woman
on the street when the big boys are waiting for him,
may be even more supernatural than the healing!
You see,
if the nose of our interest
is stuck in the miracle,
or questions about whether or how a miracle could happen in real life,
Jesus stopping
for a nameless woman in the street…gets lost.
And then we miss
the real punch line of the story.
You see,
stopping on behalf of a street person
who has no power or influence
and no ability to improve Jesus’ power or influence –
is a stunning moment?
That is a much bigger deal for you and me
than whether or not Jesus can perform magic.
Why?
Because you and I can’t do magic,
but we can stop and respond to people who are unimportant in the relative scheme of things.
You see, I’m thinking that you and I
are fully capable of that kind of
socially and economically indiscriminate action.
We are capable of stopping on our busy way
to address, even briefly,
the smaller, quieter and less drastic needs
of those who walk in our wake.
So that is what I notice
when I get past all the supernatural stuff:
I notice something that is a very earthy,
something painfully challenging,
something that could be,
probably should be,
a standard for us in our community at Trinity.
A standard that we are capable of living into
and that, if we did live into it, would be miraculous.
I mean really, just think about that.
What difference does it make
to what kind of people we are,
if we think Jesus could perform such magic or not?
But it makes a whole lot of difference
if we take a cue from Jesus,
and consider that taking the time to stop,
even for people who are in the wake of our lives,
is the appropriate standard to live into.
Seriously, sit with that for a moment.
How many times have I not stopped,
even for people I really love and care about!
My own kids.
My spouse.
The people I work with.
Even some of you.
And I know you do the same thing –
get so busy and focused that we neglect to stop.
But what if we gave that a second thought?
What if we decided to pay attention to that this week?
What if we said to ourselves,
not to be too hackneyed or cliché about it,
that the interruptions are our business.
If we did that,
we might find ourselves paying attention
to people and things that we normally pass by;
and we might also
discover how many times in a day
we pass by those people and things
we thought
we paid attention to.
Now I realize that,
in comparison to a splashy big healing miracle,
this is a very homely and pedestrian point.
Which, to my mind,
makes it all the more credible.
I know, from my own experience,
that this issue of not stopping is real and true.
Small as it is, next to a miracle,
I can feel how powerful it is,
and how powerful it would be
if I stopped more often.
But Mark didn’t give his story to me,
he gave it to all of us, so do with it as you please: Miracle or gritty little reminder?
