Why Are There No More “Major” Miracles? Love
Readings
Exodus 14:19-31
Then the angel of God, who had been traveling in front of Israel’s army, withdrew and went behind them. The pillar of cloud also moved from in front and stood behind them, coming between the armies of Egypt and Israel. Throughout the night the cloud brought darkness to the one side and light to the other side; so neither went near the other all night long.
Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and all that night the Lord drove the sea back with a strong east wind and turned it into dry land. The waters were divided, and the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left.
The Egyptians pursued them, and all Pharaoh’s horses and chariots and horsemen followed them into the sea. During the last watch of the night the Lord looked down from the pillar of fire and cloud at the Egyptian army and threw it into confusion. He jammed the wheels of their chariots so that they had difficulty driving. And the Egyptians said, “Let’s get away from the Israelites! The Lord is fighting for them against Egypt.”
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Stretch out your hand over the sea so that the waters may flow back over the Egyptians and their chariots and horsemen.” Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and at daybreak the sea went back to its place. The Egyptians were fleeing toward it, and the Lord swept them into the sea. The water flowed back and covered the chariots and horsemen—the entire army of Pharaoh that had followed the Israelites into the sea. Not one of them survived.
But the Israelites went through the sea on dry ground, with a wall of water on their right and on their left. That day the Lord saved Israel from the hands of the Egyptians, and Israel saw the Egyptians lying dead on the shore. And when the Israelites saw the mighty hand of the Lord displayed against the Egyptians, the people feared the Lord and put their trust in him and in Moses his servant.
Click for today’s children’s lesson
Why Are There No More “Major” Miracles? Love
by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
Read the message below
A corresponding video premieres today at 7 pm ET, click here to watch on YouTube
I find it interesting that despite the miracles found throughout holy texts, most of us don’t seem to see many miracles today (besides those “normal” ones of life itself!). If we look seriously at the spiritual insights that our scriptures try to present metaphorically (the reason why they’re often carried as communal parables), and particularly, at what kind of miracles these texts are trying to encourage, I think we might discover why there’s such a disparity! In short, I think it is the rootedness of miracles in love that helps explain what we might see as a lack of modern “major” miracles, similar to what the 18th-century interfaith-Christian mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg, proposed.
We see it in many traditions – including in Hebrew and Christian accounts – miracles that are clearly centered on God’s compassion and love for us, as well as centered on her invitation to empower love further through us. We see it in Moses and Aaron displaying God’s miracles to free the Israelites from Egypt, as well as Jesus’ (Jehovah-with-us) literal miracles healing and empowering people in order to encourage them to trust and follow his ways, which would free them from their internal spiritual oppression as he healed their minds. In these examples, God is specifically employing miracles because of her deep loving care for these people, and presumably, all the rest of us who are positively impacted by these tales of God’s compassion and desire for social justice.
But, that still begs the question, why aren’t there miracles like these today? Well, I think there’s something to be said about how many of us no longer look at a baby being born or life itself as a miracle, which might help explain why we never see miracles – some of us never will and never would despite them being all around and within us, instead chalking Moses’ parting of the sea to a trick of some kind. Indeed, it’s when I start to open myself to seeing God’s providence and miraculous work that I become more likely to run into hard-to-explain phenomena. But moreover, I think the key reason we don’t see miracles is rooted in their source: love for us and our spiritual freedom, which implies that the most important miracle is for us to freely choose a centeredness on compassion, life, and wisdom.
Critics tend to argue that literal miracles would be the supporting evidence needed to verify that there is a God. And yet, mystic’s like Swedenborg assert that when you force belief through miracles, that belief doesn’t penetrate to the heart, the spirit, and so quickly turns sour due to the perceived attempt to force our spirit into something it’s not ready for – just as we saw with Pharaoh, who, forgetting his lessons, lashes out after each miracle (similar to the Pharisees do with Christ!) until Egypt’s final vengeful pursuit and demise. Instead, the Lord is most interested in transforming our affections through a state of freedom, eventually leading us into a place of deep compassion, love, and awareness of our interconnectedness, grounded in an internal conviction that we’ve seemed to have developed ourselves through accepting a rational mind and a loving heart, and not an external conviction literally forced on us. God is the opposite of what this Pharaoh represents.
This is the miracle work of the Spirit in many traditions: to advent into our minds, in our motivations, reflections, and actions. Not as a specific tradition, but in the diverse way that only infinite love, compassion, expression, and vibrancy can. This is the type of miracle that I believe Christ speaks of when he says that we will do miracles “greater than [those of his earthly life].” We are empowered by the Holy Spirit to transform our own hearts and others’ in the light of freedom, diversity, and love. But when we are forced to believe this it undermines the chances that we will genuinely believe, which is perhaps part of the cultural backlash toward religion that we see in the wake of an often historically dominating, forceful approach to spreading and maintaining the faith. Irreligion in society can sometimes be a sign of Israel leaving Egypt!
It’s funny though, frequently the people that say that there is no evidence for historical miracles are the same people that close their ears when you point to the metaphor of scripture being the point of scripture, somehow believing that spiritual parable is a copout (despite the evidence for it) compared to more literal interpretations. This, despite the fact that any purely literal interpretation of even one book of Biblical scripture is impossible due to its constant use of literary symbols. How else do we explain countless metaphorical phrases like, “with the rod of his lips,” “hardened his heart,” “I will give you a new heart,” “a broken spirit,” “I will save you with my right hand,” “Truth will be a belt around his hips,” and on and on?
Whether or not the literal “major” miracles of our spiritual texts are true history, it’s the metaphorical miracles – the miracles of our spirit – that our truly real and lasting, since they impact the things that both we and Divinity hold most dearly: our hearts, our souls, how we feel and think, our spiritual states to eternity, and our freedom from our hurtful attachments and enslaving addictions. When we allow our hearts to unclench and release our selfish domination (Pharaoh) over our Divinely interconnected lives (the Israelites), we start to feel a true miracle and find a truer freedom and a greater, more internal promised land. An idea supported by major veins in most major traditions, from Buddhism to Sikhism and new age spiritualities.
These miracles allow the miracles of greater social justice, acceptance, affirmation, and peace to manifest through us and into society. And these are the miracles on earth that we ultimately yearn for, a true manifestation of the miracle of love in community, and they point to the greatest miracle of all: the selflessness of a truly loving state of compassion and wisdom, which is God’s greater advent within.
What greater miracle than loving our neighbors as ourselves, than loving our enemies? When we finally feed the underfed, house the unhoused, free the captives, and shore up the cracks in our village-mindset that foster fear, enslavement, competition, oppression, and bitterness, we finally see miracles that are “greater than” Christ’s, and yet are also Christ’s, since God’s grace and love manifests in all goodness, all healthy spiritualities, embodiments, and life.
Peace and care to you,
Rev. Cory