Well, if God is surrendering control of the universe and expecting us to make it right, we are well and truly screwed. This is the best argument for the need for grace that I’ve heard.
So good Jason, many thanks for this one. The danger in miracle stories, as you rightly trace through Bethsaida and Ground Zero, lies not in their telling but in our hunger to use them. We approach them like commodities… proofs for faith, balm for fear, leverage for certainty. And yet Christ, in the incarnational strangeness of Mark 8, refuses utility. He spits, he stumbles our sight, he leaves us half-healed long enough to learn that the world is not a vending machine of divine interventions but the theatre of God’s slow, sovereign work.
The mystery here is incarnational: God does not float above history as a puppeteer of events, but enters into its grit as flesh. The blind man’s first vision, men like trees walking, is our vision of God in this world: blurred, partial, distorted by tears and longing. Incarnational mysticism teaches us that even in this dimness the divine is pressing through, hidden in what is unfinished, still gestating in the womb of creation. To see Christ rightly is to see that sovereignty is not control but Presence—Presence that walks us outside the crowd, into silence, and touches our eyes again and again until the fragments of vision cohere.
Bonhoeffer’s cell, Williams’ ash-filled street, the infusion room where one hears both reprieve and ruin in the same afternoon, these are Bethsaida. Places where miracle would be convenient, useful, decisive. But God is not useful. He is Emmanuel. His sovereignty is not in sparing us the furnace but in becoming the fourth figure who walks within it.
And so faith becomes less about claiming the miracle than about abiding in the unfinished. Less about demanding sight than about remaining with the hand that still holds ours in the dark. Incarnational mysticism insists that even the blurred outlines… the trees walking… are a sacrament. For they testify that the Word has entered dust, and will not leave it until all is made clear.
I agree this is a most important sermon and halfway through I thought about God and The Garden that that is where we have to get which is why we had Jesus be human, for all to give something of themselves to work our way, I am going to say Back to the Garden with God. It is here and not yet that we can get there. God is sovereign.
"According to Paul, in everything that happens in this world, to everybody everywhere, God is active but God is not yet doing everything God can do. God has acted and is acting, but there is still more for God to do that has not yet been done, and we are living between what God has done, is doing, and what God is yet to do." Be Patient.
This is the most important sermon that I have ever heard. The most significant struggle Christains wage is within themselves when life comes at them.
Well, if God is surrendering control of the universe and expecting us to make it right, we are well and truly screwed. This is the best argument for the need for grace that I’ve heard.
So good Jason, many thanks for this one. The danger in miracle stories, as you rightly trace through Bethsaida and Ground Zero, lies not in their telling but in our hunger to use them. We approach them like commodities… proofs for faith, balm for fear, leverage for certainty. And yet Christ, in the incarnational strangeness of Mark 8, refuses utility. He spits, he stumbles our sight, he leaves us half-healed long enough to learn that the world is not a vending machine of divine interventions but the theatre of God’s slow, sovereign work.
The mystery here is incarnational: God does not float above history as a puppeteer of events, but enters into its grit as flesh. The blind man’s first vision, men like trees walking, is our vision of God in this world: blurred, partial, distorted by tears and longing. Incarnational mysticism teaches us that even in this dimness the divine is pressing through, hidden in what is unfinished, still gestating in the womb of creation. To see Christ rightly is to see that sovereignty is not control but Presence—Presence that walks us outside the crowd, into silence, and touches our eyes again and again until the fragments of vision cohere.
Bonhoeffer’s cell, Williams’ ash-filled street, the infusion room where one hears both reprieve and ruin in the same afternoon, these are Bethsaida. Places where miracle would be convenient, useful, decisive. But God is not useful. He is Emmanuel. His sovereignty is not in sparing us the furnace but in becoming the fourth figure who walks within it.
And so faith becomes less about claiming the miracle than about abiding in the unfinished. Less about demanding sight than about remaining with the hand that still holds ours in the dark. Incarnational mysticism insists that even the blurred outlines… the trees walking… are a sacrament. For they testify that the Word has entered dust, and will not leave it until all is made clear.
I think you just it better than me!
Fantastic. Well-stated challenge to my own attempts to understand. Very helpful.
Thank you. I can hardly say how helpful this sermon is.
I agree this is a most important sermon and halfway through I thought about God and The Garden that that is where we have to get which is why we had Jesus be human, for all to give something of themselves to work our way, I am going to say Back to the Garden with God. It is here and not yet that we can get there. God is sovereign.
"According to Paul, in everything that happens in this world, to everybody everywhere, God is active but God is not yet doing everything God can do. God has acted and is acting, but there is still more for God to do that has not yet been done, and we are living between what God has done, is doing, and what God is yet to do." Be Patient.