July 1, 2019 -- John 5:19 -- The Miracles of Jesus
/So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.”
John 5:19 English Standard Version
There’s a book which had been sitting on my shelf for a long, long time. It is one I tried to read so many times and each time I’d get a little ways into it and then put it down and eventually, even though it remained unread, I’d just re-shelf it. For some reason it grabbed my attention as I set up my study here in Moncton. And this section on miracles stirred my imagination. So, what follows is an excerpt taken directly from the C.S. Lewis sermon “Miracles” preached in St. Jude’s on the Hill Church, London, Nov. 26th, 1942.
Lewis preached—based in part on John 5:19:
“Our Lord took a body like ours and lived as a man in order that those who had refused to recognize Him in His superintendence and captaincy of the whole universe might come to recognize from the works He did here below in the body that what dwelled in this body was the Word of God.”
St. Athanasius On the Incarnation
There is an activity of God displayed throughout creation, a wholesale activity let us say which men refuse to recognize. The miracles done by God incarnate, living as a man in Palestine, perform the very same things as this wholesale activity, but at a different speed and on a smaller scale. One of their chief purposes is that men, having seen a thing done by personal power on the small scale, may recognize, when they see the same thing done on a large scale, that the power behind it is also personal—is indeed the very same person who lived among us two thousand years ago. The miracles in fact are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see. Of that larger script part is already visible, part is still unsolved. In other words some of the miracles do locally what God has already done universally: others do locally what He has not yet done, but will do. In that sense, and from our human point of view, some are reminders and other prophecies.
God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus every year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine. That, men fail to see. Either like the Pagans they refer the process to some finite spirit, Bacchus or Dionysus: or else, like the moderns, they attribute real and ultimate causality to the chemical and other material phenomena which are all that our senses can discover in it. But when Christ at Cana makes water into wine, the mask is off. [cf John 2:1-11] The miracle has only half its effect if it only convinces us that Christ is God: it will have its full effect if whenever we see a vineyard or drink a glass of wine we remember that here works He who sat at the wedding party in Cana.
C.S. Lewis continued and pointed out that in the miracle of feeding the thousands, Jesus multiplied fish and bread. Each year in our rivers and streams, lakes and oceans there is a tremendous fecundity among sea creatures which displays God’s gracious power in providing for hungry people.
Bread—here too the corn or the wheat necessary comes from a small seed, which planted—in a sense to us it seems to die and is buried—it germinates and produces abundant life. Scientists can explain the chemical reactions. Men can till the soil and plant and wait. Specialists can determine which crops require particular nutrients in the soil. But the gift of life is God’s to give and He gives mankind grains with such generosity and abundance.
God of extravagant generosity and blessed abundance, I confess too often I am somnambulating through life. I reach for the bread in my cupboard and do not marvel at Your gift of wheat and the processes of life needed so that water and sunlight, soil and seed blessed by Your goodness make possible this provision of daily bread. It is easy for me to read of the miracles of Jesus, like turning water to wine at Cana and thinking—what a glory God shows there—all the while neglecting the fact that You, Father, have done this same miracle year after year. Awaken my soul to what You are doing in the world around me so that I will see Your many works and bless Your Name. Amen.
And, to Canadians across this beautiful land, Happy Canada Day. Have you ever sung, or read the fourth stanza of our National Anthem? Robert Stanley Weir, a Quebec judge and poet, penned what has become our beloved anthem. How I wish we would sing the fourth stanza far more often! Here it is:
Ruler supreme, who hearest humble prayer,
Hold our dominion, in thy loving care:
Help us to find, O God, in thee,
A lasting, rich reward,
As waiting for the Better Day,
We ever stand on guard.
Refrain
God keep our land, glorious and free!
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
O Canada, we stand on guard for thee.
