The Conversation in Class

I really don't know how the subject turned. We were talking about what the class discussed the week previously, then it somehow or other moved to talking about the gospel lesson and the subject turned yet again to miracles. I have trouble with miracles sometimes. When I was young, I thought of Jesus as a magician. Poof! There went some guy's blindness. Flash! Some lady was healed. And KAZAM! Lazarus came out of the tomb looking for lunch. It was like Jesus was a real live superhero, without the cape. As I grew older, I questioned lots of things. But the miracles of Jesus, not so much. It seemed wrong to question them, to think about them was okay, because they meant something. But the meaning was sometimes kind of garbled or not clear to me. But I didn't question them. I thought that was what faith was, unquestioning.

I'm older now. I still question lots of things. In the course of listening about miracles, I have heard explanations of them. How this could have happened. How that could have been. I still don't know if the people explaining them were trying to prove that Jesus really didn't do them, or if they were seeking to make Jesus less of a magician and more of a person with extra ordinary talents. But the conversation in class was interesting because someone posed the thought that if we can explain away miracles, then didn't we believe that Jesus was resurrected from the dead? That was a conversation killer for sure! Everyone stopped and looked at each other. Is that what it meant to question the miracles? That there could not have been an event that was truly miraculous? For a tiny second I wondered what would happen if I said I didn't believe in the resurrection. I felt my core faith quiver at the thought. It was scary. But it was just for a moment. Because I came back with the idea that miracles are no less miraculous just because someone could explain them. So what if the wine actually was in a mis-marked jar at the wedding? So what if the feeding of the 5000 happened because people shared their food? The surprise of the story is that it was a miracle, not that Jesus did it, but that God intervened in some way to show us something of his self. A particle of God was visible for that small second of divine something or other that happened. And he did it for us. All of us. Not just the wedding guests delighted that the "good stuff" was still available or the growling bellies of the gathered masses. God intervened showing that with God all things are possible from the sublime to the, well, miraculous!