You'd think that, with all my talk about science and brain chemistry, I'd be the sort of person who would reject the reality of miracles. Because practical people who believe in science are sort of obligated to reject the reality of miracles. Aren't they?
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| Sunset, October 2014: I captured this dazzling ray effect close to my home when my angels unexpectedly told me to pick up my camera, get in the car, and go! Photo credit JAT 2014. |
Most United Church of Canada members seem to think so. They're squeamish about the idea that the soul exists as a scientific reality. Same thing with miracles. Officially, they won't talk about miracles. Off the record, some United Church members will confide they believe in unexplainable, God-given events. But when they talk about miracles, they speak awkwardly and self-consciously -- the same way people react when they're invited to sit at a formal dinner table where there are three different forks on the left and three different knives on the right, plus a whole bunch of spoons, and they don't know which utensils they're supposed to use first. So they spend most of their time trying to watch the other guests to see which fork they should use when. They're so busy paying attention to their feelings of embarrassment and discomfort that they can't enjoy themselves. The whole situation is stressful rather than enjoyable.
I'd like to be able to say that United Church members have gone on the defensive about miracles because of repeated attacks from atheistic scientists such as Richard Dawkins. But it's not that simple. United Church members are on the defensive because they've been repeatedly bullied by "progressive" Christian theologians (e.g. Rudolf Bultmann) who have loudly proclaimed that the miracles performed by Jesus in the Gospels couldn't possibly have happened.
In the view of Bultmann and others, no sensible Christian should believe in these miracles because to believe in miracles is to reject science. These theologians recommend that Christians read the miracle stories . . . symbolically. Symbolically -- my favourite word (grrrr).
These same theologians call into question the reality of the Crucifixion and Resurrection. They insist we should understand the Resurrection metaphorically rather than literally. In their view, the Resurrection couldn't possibly have happened for real. Naturally, this makes it easier to believe that Jesus himself wasn't real, either, but instead was an invented religious symbol.
I think they've got it all backwards. They've started with the assumption that miracles aren't scientifically possible (an assumption that's not scientifically valid), and on the basis of this assumption they've concluded that the miracle stories (especially those in the Gospel of Mark) must have been invented by gullible, superstitious, scientifically uneducated 1st century authors who didn't know any better. Or maybe by authors who were just following a popular ancient trend of inserting invented miracle stories into their biographical narratives. (The fact that today's Christian televangelists are still inventing new miracle stories to dupe the public should remind us not to make blanket statements about the motives of all ancient writers.)
Queen's University history professor Dr. Jaclyn Duffin, who is both a practising hematologist and a professor in the history of medicine (a modern day physician scholar, as it were), has recently published a book about the history of canonization and attested healing miracles in the Roman Catholic Church. She sums up medical miracles in this way: "The doctor is surprised."
The doctor is surprised. The doctor is surprised that, on the basis of current scientific understandings of the disease process, the patient somehow manages to fully recover despite all scientific predictions of imminent death.
I would suggest that when the doctor is surprised, it can mean one of two things: (1) the doctor was wrong from the beginning about the diagnosis or (2) the doctor isn't as smart as she thinks she is about the disease process, quantum biology, healing, and God.
Usually it's the latter.
The Resurrection as described in the Gospel of Mark is very sparse on details. (I agree with biblical scholars who suggest that the book originally ended at Mark 16:8, not at Mark 16:20). All we really know for sure is that Jesus was crucified, was declared dead, was taken down from the cross, hastily placed in a tomb, and somehow managed to disappear from said tomb. Mark's account leaves a lot of scientific wiggle room for a doctor to be surprised.
It's a powerful symbol, the cross that Jesus hung upon. (It's okay for symbols such as crosses or a stars to be symbols; it's just not okay for historical facts to be treated as symbols instead of as facts.) The story of the cross has something important to say to us, even today, because it's still a story where the doctors are surprised and we, the regular people of faith, are filled with awe.
For me, the miracle in this story is not that a man died and was raised from the dead. (I don't think that's scientifically possible.) For me, the miracle is that the man didn't die in the first place.
How did Jesus son of Joseph escape death on the cross? That is the miracle in question.
It's a much bigger question than Paul's Christ myth asks. Paul's Christ myth asks you to believe with blind faith that a human man fully died but was fully returned to life after three days because he was divine -- the chosen son of God. He furthers asks you to believe with blind faith that if you fully accept Paul's teachings about Judgment Day, then you, too, will be resurrected on that day. Sin is the enemy and death is its consequence. The great question for Paul is, "How can I escape death?"
The Jesus reality (as told by Mark) asks a different question. The Jesus reality asks you to ask new questions about God. The Jesus reality tells a powerful story about the relationship between God and God's children, and asks you to not rely on blind faith, but to use your own common sense, your own senses, and your heart.
The Jesus reality is a powerful story about the kinds of things that are possible in God's Creation when human beings walk side by side and hand in hand with Mother Father God.
It's a story about courage. And trust. And humbleness. It's a story about God's free will and our own. It's a story about miraculous (though still scientific) healing. And it's a story about grief.
One of the things we can be certain of when we read Mark is that Jesus is not trying to escape death. Jesus has no fear of dying. He tells his disciples he's going to die, but then he gets on with his life of service as a teacher and healer. He ignores all the Jewish purity laws around disease and death. He puts himself in harm's way by going to Jerusalem. His Last Supper is not a last supper but a first supper, where he rejects the Passover ritual of eating unleavened bread by choosing instead to drink water and to eat risen bread. He breaks all the laws designed to protect the pious from death. His message is not about escaping death. His message is about embracing courage and trust and gratitude and devotion in our relationships with each other and with God.
The Jesus reality is Mark's way of saying that death is part of human life, and no one -- not even a gifted physician scholar filled with learning and love -- can fight this reality. Jesus had to die because he was a creature of Earth, and all creatures of Earth will one day die. It's meant to be this way. It's part of the fabric of Creation. It's painful and emotionally overwhelming for us to lose someone we love, but it's the way it has to be. Our lives here are only temporary. When it's time for one of us to go Home to our eternal reality, God the Mother and God the Father (both of whom are brilliant scientists and brilliant healers), come and gently lift us out of our mortal body and tenderly carry us Home. There we're reunited with our loved ones, and our hearts break open to pour out all the tears and sorrows of our lonely human lives so we can be healed and restored in God's loving arms.
Yet, despite all this, we're left with a mystery. Despite the reality of Jesus' total trust in God, despite the reality of Jesus' courage in the face of death, we're left with the puzzling fact that God the Mother and God the Father in their wisdom decided that a man named Jesus of Nazareth would not die on the cross that day, but would, in fact, escape that terrible death, and live to tell the tale -- for a short while, anyway, before he, too, surrendered his human life, as all of us one day must.
What is it that God was saying?
Thanks be to God the Mother and God the Father this Advent Sunday.
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