This Trinity Sunday, I began a summer sermon series on the miracles of Jesus by preaching on 2 Kings 4.8-37.
Ponder a question.
Is it possible, in principle, that all events could be predicted by means of the laws of nature? That is, if you knew all physical laws perfectly— from Newton’s Three Laws of Motion to the First Law of Thermodynamics to Maxwell’s Equations— and also could see the total state of the universe at any given moment— a God’s eye view, then would you be able to predict all future events? In other words, is the creation nature?
Is the world a machine?
It’s not just a question for quantum physicists and philosophers.
It’s a crucible for Christians.
After all, does not every prayer ask for a miracle?
On the tenth day of Christmas this year the esteemed New Testament scholar Richard Hays died after a decade-long bout with pancreatic cancer. Seven years ago— three years after doctors confidently predicted his death— Hays, addressed those who had gathered to celebrate his retirement from Duke Divinity School.
At the top of his lecture, Hays said,
“I’m grateful to all of you who’ve come here this evening to hear a few reflections from me on the occasion of my retirement. I’m grateful for all your prayers over these past three years.”
They worked.
God answered them.
With a miracle.
“I’m grateful for all your prayers. Most of all, I’m grateful to God for granting me a miracle— a little more world and a little more time— to think back on what has been and to ponder what is to come. The key note of all I have to say is gratitude. This is the day that the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
This is the day the Lord has made. That’s not a sentiment. It’s a claim.
Hays continued:
“Most of you know…three years ago I received a devastating diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, and I went on medical leave to undergo chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. When I left the dean’s office that July, I left in tears with my hair falling out. I took up the tasks of reviewing my will and writing directions for my funeral service. As I stand here tonight, I’m unexpectedly able to look back on that night, that year, of now done darkness. Chastened, hopeful, healed. I’m grateful for your prayers.”
On Friday in Greenwich, Connecticut I presented an essay in honor of my mentor Fleming Rutledge. The occasion marked the fiftieth anniversary of her ordination in the Episcopal Church. During seminary, I delivered mail to her while she was in residence at Princeton’s Center for Theological Inquiry. For twenty-five years her preaching and friendship have sustained me in both my ministry and in my illness. During a break in between speakers on Friday, Fleming embraced me like a drowning woman clutching a rescue buoy. When she let go of me, she laid her palms on my shoulders and she inquired about my health, marveling that the return of my cancer had not prevented me from traveling to the surprise celebration Wycliffe College had convened for her.
After updating her on my treatment and its side effects, Fleming recalled an evening in Durham a decade ago when Richard Hays— that same renown New Testament scholar— took her out for dinner and informed her about his recent, grim diagnosis. Fleming’s immediate response was to hold her hands outstretched over the candle on the restaurant table. Grasping his hands, she implored him, “We must pray, Richard!”
“I’m not a very good prayer,” the New Testament scholar confessed.
“I’m not a very good prayer either,” Fleming replied, “Nevertheless, we must pray for a miracle.”
And so they did, urgently and unselfconsciously in front of the restaurant’s staff and patrons. They prayed for more than moments. They prayed long enough and loud enough to make the other customers uncomfortable. Why should their prayers have discomfited the other patrons? Because most people answer yes to the question with which I began. Most people live in the world as though the world is a machine.
Remembering their petitions, Fleming peered into my eyes and said, “I don’t know if it was because of our prayer or the prayer of another who loved Richard, but I do know his survival was the LORD’s doing. God gave him ten years more time. It was the grace of God. It was the breath of Jesus Christ. It was the Holy Spirit. It was miraculous.”
Then she threw her arms around me again, tight and unyielding.
And she preached into my ear, “I pray every day that the LORD may do so for you as well. I pray that God would grant you a miracle.”
The problem with preaching on the miracles of Jesus is that we imagine his miracles are isolated to the years of his public ministry, in places like Jericho and Capernaum and Nain. But when the Risen Jesus pours out his Spirit at Pentecost, he pours his Spirit not simply on the believing community but onto all of creation. The Risen Christ not only breathes his Spirit onto his disciples in the Upper Room, he breathes his Spirit into the whole world.
His breath just is the might rushing wind.
Christ’s crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension make room in God for us. The Holy Spirit’s descent at Pentecost makes room in us for God. When Jesus promises the Holy Spirit, he promises that, through the Spirit, God will fill all things with himself. And remember! One of the creatures upon which Jesus sends his Holy Spirit is time. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit enshrouds more than the diaspora pilgrims in the temple courts. It descends upon and it fills even Israel’s past.
The Risen Jesus sends his Spirit not just down but backwards.
Into time.
In other words, only because of Pentecost does the Holy Spirit alight upon the lips of Israel’s prophets. Only because the Word was made flesh and raised from the dead can they speak the Word of the LORD. And Elisha can breath upon a mother’s boy in Shunem, bringing him back from the dead, only because Jesus breathes his Spirit onto his disciples. Therefore, as much as the crippled man at the pool of Bethsaida or the over-served guests at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, the Shunammite woman’s son is every bit a miracle performed by Jesus.
The Shunammite woman— we never learn her name— knows this is a miracle performed by the LORD Jesus even if she knows not the name of Mary’s boy.
Notice—
When the prophet Elisha first passes through Shunem with his servant Gehazi, she calls him the “Man of God,” which is more than a generic religious title because she immediately commands her husband to build onto their home an upper room. And she instructs her husband to place in the upper room a bed, table, chair, and a menorah— exactly the same furnishings as in the Temple in Jerusalem: the lamp stand of the sanctuary, the table of the presence, and the space of rest where God’s presence dwells.
She’s building a little Zion for the Man of God!
This is why Elisha speaks to the Shunammite woman through an intermediary, the “priest” Gehazi just as only the high priest enters into the Holy of Holies on behalf of the people. And this is why the Shunammite woman pays homage to Elisha on Sabbaths and news moons and why she brings Elisha their first fruits.
When the mother of the boy sees the prophet Elisha, she correctly sees an accompanying power and an abiding presence that rightly belongs enthroned in the LORD’s Temple.
As the theologian Peter Leithart writes:
“What Israel normally expects at the Temple is available from Elisha. What Israel normally expects to do at the Temple, they do in the presence of Elisha. He is a “protoincarnation,” so much so that his title “Man of God” could as easily be rendered as the “God-Man.”
Of course Elisha can raise the dead.
He has the Holy Spirit of Jesus.
In 2019, at the United Methodist Church’s General Conference in St. Louis, I finished one night sharing a drink with my friend Bishop Will Willimon. After bemoaning the costly, slow-motion divorce renting the denomination asunder, Will shared with me how the day before the proceedings began all the members of the Council of Bishops were divided into small groups to share “God sightings” and to pray for one another.
“I got seated with a couple of bishops from the left coast,” Will said, “a few others from blue areas of the country and a bishop from Nigeria.”
Will took a sip of his bourbon and smiled.
“When it came time to reflect on where they had seen the LORD at work in their ministries, the progressive bishops all talked about work that needs not a Risen Lord to do—efforts at inclusion in their part of the church or justice work their congregations had engaged.”
He finished his drink and laughed.
“And then this bishop from Africa spoke up and he said, “A member of one of my churches died, and the entire congregation— the whole community— prayed over him all night long. I arrived the next morning. By then, his body was cold. But they prayed again. I prayed with them. And the man sat up and lived.”
“And then the bishop looked at his American colleagues,” Will said, “and he asked them with total innocence and complete sincerity, “Do you not have any miracle stories?”
Will motioned for another round and smiled, “It was just wonderful the way he made those liberal, educated preachers stare at the floor, squirming in their functional atheism.”
When the prophet Elisha promises the Shunammite woman a child, she does not laugh like Sarah laughs in the Book of Genesis, dismissing it as an absurdity. She does not respond with disbelief like Zechariah does in the Temple when he’s told he will father John the Baptist. She does not even inquire about the impossibility of such a promise like Mary so inquires with the angel Gabriel.
The Shunammite woman instead says to Elisha, “No, my lord, O Man of God, do not deceive me.”
Don’t lie to me.
It is not that she does not believe the LORD can work miracles. She knows enough to have remodeled her house and added a Little Zion next to the Man Cave. It’s not that she does not believe in miracles. It’s that she’s already prayed for that miracle. And the LORD did not make it so. Don’t lie to me. She did not receive the miracle for which she had prayed; subsequently, she made peace with her life. Now the prophet’s promise threatens the contentment she had found with the life she had accepted.
Don’t lie to me.
I can’t bear the thought of my prayer not getting answered again.
But she does not laugh like Sarah! She knows that nothing is impossible with God! She knows what too many of us have forgotten. She knows she inhabits a world that is not a machine. She knows that the Maker of Heaven and Earth is not only the author of history but an actor within it. Indeed his Holy Spirit sometimes sleeps upstairs in her Upper Room. Just so, she knows that not only can the LORD address us, he may be petitioned by us. That is, she knows that she lives in a world where prayer makes a difference. And because God listens, miracles can happen.
Notice what the Shunammite woman does and does not do when her son dies in her lap. She does not scream. She does not weep or wail. She does not despair. She does not even tell her husband. She’s a wealthy woman, but she doesn’t call a village doctor. She does not say a word to anyone.
She lays her dead boy down.
Where?
On the bed. In the “temple.” The Holy of Holies.
She doesn’t prepare for a funeral.
She doesn’t sit shiva.
She doesn’t cry or scream.
She saddles a donkey.
And then goes straight to the Man of God.
Or more accurately, she hastens to the Holy Spirit who abides with Elisha but resides in the Temple.
After her boy dies, as she’s saddling her ride her unknowing husband asks her why she’s setting out to see Elisha, “Why will you go to him today? It is neither new moon nor Sabbath.” And the only words she says to her husband, “All is well.”
All is well.
It’s going to be alright.
It is not that she grieves not. It is that she knows the kind of world in which lives. She knows this is the day that the LORD is making. And she has an opinion about what God ought to do with it.
She saddles her donkey and she neither weeps nor laughs.
She knows—like Jacob knew at the river, like Moses knew on the mountain, like Hannah knew at the temple—that God can be petitioned. That the LORD of Hosts can be wrestled, can be implored, can be held to his promises.
She doesn’t go to Elisha for counseling.
She goes to Elisha— she goes to the Spirit of Jesus— for resurrection.
As the story of the Shunammite woman shows, questions about miracles are really questions about prayer— petition. Which is to say, the philosopher David Hume’s problem of miracles is a problem of prayer. And both— questions about miracles, questions about prayer— are best answered by still another question, “What does it mean to be a creature?”
To be a creature is to live within the freedom of God.
To be a creature is to live within the freedom of God.
If we believe in the power of prayer, if we believe in the possibility of miracles, there are two ways of accounting for them.
On the one hand, we can “follow the science.”
We can affirm that God is (was) the Maker of Heaven and Earth and the world is a machine. Thus, all natural processes have a deterministic character to them. Natural laws are laws absolutely. Gravity always wins. Miracles, as well as the prayers that petition for them, may be described as limitations of natural law. Miracles and prayers then squeeze God’s freedom into the “gaps” of the physical laws and the natural order. In other words, an answered prayer or a miraculous event are discrete instances of God glitching his own designed system.
On the other hand, we can take Jesus at his word, “If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.”
We can regard the reality of prayer and miracles as itself what the theologian Robert Jenson calls "a metaphysical axiom.” That is, all natural events— the universe and the galaxy, a quark and a hearer of this sermon, a manhunt in Minnesota and a No Kings protest near the Swiss Bakery— they all occur in “the creative actuality of the Spirit.”
In other words, prayer and miracles are always possible because after Pentecost everything— every event— is inhabited by the Spirit who lodged in the Shunammite woman’s Upper Room.
If there is not the God of the Bible, then events in the world and in our lives are either fixed or random.
But!
As Robert Jenson writes:
"Since there is the Spirit as one of the Trinity [the events of the world and the events of our lives] constitute the spontaneity of created events. The difference between regarding the dynamics of the world-process as random and regarding them as spontaneous may not be significant for empirical research, but it is decisive for our life as creatures in creation. If the dynamics of creation are a spontaneity, then events happen not mechanically but voluntarily, not on the basis of a system but according to a will …If this spontaneity is opened by the Spirit, then when we confront any actual or possible event we confront someone's freedom.
And believers claim to know that Someone.
Therefore prayer (for miracles), to come to the religious point, is simply the reasonable thing to do. For the process of the world is enveloped in and determined by a freedom, a freedom that can be addressed. What is around us is not iron impersonal fate.
As for miracles, the true problem is therefore not whether they are possible, but how we are to distinguish them from events in general. There is nothing more in the miracle than in the least of ordinary facts. But also there is nothing less in the most ordinary fact than in the miracle. That we are shocked into seeing this is the very intent of miracles.”
Back to the question.
If you knew all physical laws perfectly and could see the total state of the universe at any given moment— if you knew all the algorithms— then would you be able to predict all future events?
No.
Of course not.
Because creation is not a realm in which determinism rules; creation is a realm in which the Spirit of Jesus Christ rules. What is all around us is the Spirit of the Risen Jesus.
The Shunammite woman—
She does not laugh like Sarah laughs.
She does not doubt like Zechariah doubts.
She does not ponder the particulars of an impossible promise.
“It’s going to alright,” she tells her husband.
We do not know the Shunammite woman’s name, but we do know that she knows that the world she in which she lives is not a machine. She knows that the borders of our lives are not fixed by death. She knows she lives in a world governed not by fate but by providence, by the freedom of a persuadable God.
“I pray every day that the LORD may do so for you as well,” Fleming said to me, “I pray that God would grant you a miracle.”
And she does so pray.
On the train ride home, I reread her emails to me over the past months.
On March 3, she emailed me this prayer, “May our Lord, who suffered so terribly in public with no one to help him, comfort and strengthen you, especially if and when you feel you can't go on.”
On Christmas Eve, she sent me another prayer.
“Email is a poor substitute for presence,” she wrote, “You are having a Christmas season radically different from what you had expected just a few weeks ago. You and your family are continually in our God-directed thoughts. Dick is not very articulate these days given his dementia, but he shows a lot of emotion about things he cares about and he was shocked and distressed to hear the news. When we pray for you he is still able to utter a heartfelt "Yes" for you to be upheld. I pray the may make himself known to you many times each day.”
In January, she offered a short prayer, “LORD, we do not know what the future holds, but we trust that this is the day you are making and if it be your will make this cup pass from our friend. Dick and I trust that you are able to make a way out of no way.”
The Risen Jesus sends his Spirit not just down but backwards.
And forwards.
Into our time.
On Monday I visited my oncologist for my monthly labs and examination. And my blood work and my body exam came back sufficiently good that my doctor cancelled the PET scan that was scheduled for next month.
“These drugs are a miracle,” he said.
We throw that word around, miracle.
He looked surprised when I said, “Amen.”
“The true problem of miracles is therefore not whether they are possible, but how we are to distinguish them from events in general.”
I am grateful for all your prayers. Most of all, I’m grateful to God for granting me a little more world and a little more time. This is the day that the Lord is making.
The Shunammite woman knows the structures of reality are not impervious to divine interruption. She knows nature is actually creation and therefore the world is not a machine.
She knows this because she has practiced hospitality to the presence of God. She knows this because she has made a room for the prophet, the one who speaks on God’s behalf and acts in the Holy Spirit of Jesus. She knows this because her little Zion has a table.
And so does ours.
“Do you not have any miracle stories?” the African bishop asked his colleagues.
Of course you do.
Every Sunday, week in and week out, in our ordinary little temple, God gives nothing less than Christ himself to you in his Gospel word. Week after week, the LORD is here at table, hiding not behind a bald prophet named Elisha but in creatures of bread and wine.
The gospel word, wine and water and bread— they are proof that what is around us is not iron impersonal fate or algorithms that can account for your every move. The gospel word, wine and bread— they are proof that God is not nowhere in the world.
The sacraments are tangible, visible signs of the Shunammite woman’s words, “It’s going to be alright.”
So come to the table. You don’t even need a donkey— he’s right here. To come to the table is to seek the Holy Spirit. Come, taste and see the LORD is good! Even when it feels otherwise.
Come.
Receive this miracle as a downpayment on the miracle for which you pray.
And remember—
Because Jesus is not dead, he is free to surprise us.
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