Signs and Wonders
Scripture Collage
1 – From the very first verses of Mark’s gospel, Jesus’ public ministry is framed by miraculous signs that point to his identity as the Son of God.
2 – In those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming up out of the water he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased” (1:9-11).
1 – Some of these miracles were seen only by his disciples. Two of them happened while they were out in a boat on the sea.
2 – Suddenly a great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?” (4:35-41).
1 – The second time, Jesus was not with his companions in the boat.
2 – When evening came, their boat was out on the sea, and Jesus was alone on the land. When he saw that they were straining at the oars against an adverse wind, he came toward them early in the morning, walking on the sea. He intended to pass them by. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out; for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.” Then he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded (6:47-51).
1 – This much seems to be a theme – Jesus’ companions are routinely astounded, awed, terrified. Every time they turn around, this Jesus who called them is revealed to be yet more than they had figured. Then one day, as they watched, he was actually transfigured in front of them.
2 – Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they so no one with them any more, but only Jesus (9:2-8).
1 – Quite the experience to make sense of. Peter and James and John are understandably shaken. Peter says something a little silly, because he’s at a loss for words. Who is this, then? He is the Messiah, the beloved Son of God, the one who has come into the world. But Jesus’ inner circle weren’t the only ones who saw some pretty incredible things. Many witnessed healings and cleansings, miraculous recoveries of sight and speech and health. And not once but twice, great crowds experienced the good news of Jesus in a way they could actually taste.
2 – In those days when there was again a great crowd without anything to eat, he called his disciples and said to them, “I have compassion for the crowd, because they have been with me now for three days and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way – and some of them have come from a great distance.” His disciples replied, “How can one feed these people with bread here in the desert?” He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “Seven.” Then he ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground; and he took the seven loaves, and after giving thanks he broke them to the crowd. They had also a few small fish; and after blessing them, he ordered that these too should be distributed. They ate and were filled; and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. Now there were about four thousand people” (8:1-9).
1 – The bread multiplied. Enough to satisfy all. The disciples offered all they had, and Jesus blessed it with abundance. Later, Jesus also would give all that he had. And in one final, wondrous sign, his offering of living bread for the world would be multiplied in lavish resurrection. More than enough for all.
2 – They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid. He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was going to happen to him, saying, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again (10:32-34).
Sermon
I don’t know if any of you make a habit of listening to the CBC Radio show “Under the Influence”. It’s a long-running program featuring former advertising executive Terry O’Reilly sharing interesting and often funny anecdotes from behind the scenes of the marketing industry. Well a few weeks ago “Under the Influence” did a show on church signs. Did some of you hear it? Well if you didn’t you can imagine where it went. There is a whole range of the good, the bad and the ugly out there when it comes to church signs, but no shortage of creativity. You’ve probably seen plenty of interesting ones in your own travels, and there are lots of gems that float around on the internet too. Here are a few of Terry O’Reilly’s favorites:
Feeling down in mouth? It’s time for a faith lift!
Lent is not the fuzz in your navel
Adam and Eve were the first people who failed to read the apple terms and conditions
A long time ago, in a Galilee far, far away…
Whoever is praying for snow, please stop!
Forbidden fruit creates many jams
In general, Terry O’Reilly said, the best signs are uplifting and not judgmental. But occasionally a clever one can tread the line. This one was posted outside a church that had recently experienced some theft of equipment:
Whoever stole our AC units, keep one. It’s hot where you’re going.
And then there was a resurgence of Covid creativity during lockdowns when people had plenty of time to think up good lines:
Services cancelled – God now making house calls
Don’t hoard – even Noah only took two
Jesus cleans the heart, we disinfect the pew
Wash Your Hands and Don’t Touch Your Face – Hygenesis 24:7
And, of course, there are the many church sign fails. The ones that didn’t get that second set of eyes on them before being put up:
One church put on their sign the words: God is now here. Kind of a funny message to begin with, as if not too long ago God was not here. But the spacing between the words was a little off, and the “now” and the “here” got a little close together. God is nowhere.
Don’t let worries kill you – let the church help
Now is a good time to visit. Our pastor is on vacation.
We have not succumbed to the cheeky church sign here at St. Jacobs. But Pauline does faithfully update ours every month or two with upcoming events or invitations, braving hot sun and spiders in the summer, and snowdrifts and freezing wind in the winter. So hats off to you, Pauline, for your faithful service!
The story that kicked off this whole church sign episode of “Under the Influence,” however, was about the classic 1971 song “Signs” by the Five Man Electrical Band.
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind. Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?”
The band’s frontman Les Emmerson wrote it on a road trip where he was struck by the endless series of billboards along the highway. And also by the way that signs so often work to keep people out. “Members Only” “No Trespassing” and, for the hippy era of course, “Long-haired freaky people need not apply”. But then the last verse describes the contrast of coming to a church and seeing a sign that said “Everybody Welcome”. Sometimes signs matter.
We’ve called this week’s theme from the gospel of Mark “Signs and Wonders,” picking up some of the miraculous things that Jesus does or that happen to him during his ministry. And there are quite a few of these signs, as we heard in the scripture collage, not to mention the many miraculous healings that we focused on a few weeks ago.
At first glance it may not seem like there is much connection between the many different kinds of physical signs in the world around us and these stories about Jesus. Maybe just a situation of using the same word to describe two different things. But I think these different kinds of signs actually work in a similar way, as we started to see with the kids. We use signs to help us recognize things that we might not otherwise notice or see. When we’re driving along on the highway at 100 kms an hour, we need road signs to point out that there’s a town just on the other side of the field. Or a gas station, or a park or a tourist attraction. When we were up at Silver Lake a couple of weeks ago, I walked a nature trail through the woods and found a whole series of small interpretive signs along the way that described a particular plant or environmental feature that I was passing through. Without the signs, I wouldn’t have known what I was looking at, and probably I wouldn’t have even seen the particular shrub or berry being described. A sign points us toward something. It opens our eyes and helps us to see what is really there in front of us or around us.
I think the signs and wonders in the Gospel of Mark do something similar. They help us recognize something that we might not otherwise see. To be sure, these miraculous signs help us to recognize Jesus. Chip and Shirley read about Jesus’ baptism and later his transfiguration on the mountain and these are such beautiful moments of revealing Jesus’ identity. “This my son, the beloved.” Jesus is more than he might appear to be. Is he a prophet, a teacher, a healer, a rabble-rouser? “You are the Messiah,” Peter finally confesses. The anointed one, the son of God, the Word made flesh to walk among us. And I suspect the voice from heaven in these moments spoke for Jesus’ sake as much as for anyone else’s. He also needed to be reminded of this identity, to be sent in the confidence of God’s presence with him. To be named as a child of God and carry that with him.
But some of these other signs surely caused people to look at Jesus differently, too. Jesus with his friends in the boat, a storm whipping up on the sea around them. Waves smashing the hull and flooding the bottom, wind tearing at the sails. The disciples wide-eyed and terrified, sure they are about to be swamped and go under. And Jesus, still asleep on his cushion in the stern until he is woken by their fear: “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And Jesus stands up and speaks to the wind and to the sea. He says “Peace! Be still!” And the storm subsides. The wind slides away and the sea becomes dead calm. And Jesus’ friends are filled with awe and wonder. “Who is this?” they ask? “Who is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”
The signs point to Jesus. To the Jesus we see, but to a Jesus who is more than we see. A Jesus who speaks to the waters in the same voice as the one who put the sea in its place in the very beginning. A Jesus who shares our humanity – our bumps and bruises and hungers and pleasures – but also embodies the presence of God with us. The signs point to a great mystery. To God making a home among mortals. To the human and the divine existing together. To the hope and promise that there can be new life amidst the raging storms that batter us in this world.
But here’s the thing, I think. These signs that point to Jesus are not pointing us away from the world. We read all these stories in the Bible about amazing miraculous things, about God working wonders and offering signs. And it’s easy to feel like our world is pretty dry and straight-laced by contrast. Where are our miracles and our signs? Has our world lost its sense of possibility? It’s openness to the unbelievable? Or does God just not work that way anymore? Did all this wonder-working power just ascend with Jesus to stay somewhere up in heaven?
Sometimes, I think, we imagine that Jesus comes into the world from outside. Kind of like Superman arriving on earth from the planet Krypton. With amazing powers that come to us from beyond and change the world. But as John’s gospel puts it, Jesus came into what was his own. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. The signs and miracles of Jesus are not examples of an outside power brought to bear upon the earth. They are the wonders of this good world made visible for us.
Remember how signs work – whether along the highway, the nature trail or the footsteps of Jesus: signs point out what is already here, so that we don’t miss it. So the signs in Mark’s gospel point to Jesus, and to the mystery of God-with-us in a human being. But they also point to a world of miracles that is filled to the brim with the wonder of God’s presence. In Jesus, we finally see the world for what it is: a place of beauty and divine possibility, a place where the blind see and the deaf hear, a place where the sea and the sky thrill to the touch of their maker. This world is not short on miracles. But it always cries out for more eyes to see and ears to hear.
You may have heard the beautiful line from Elizabeth Barrett Browning that references Moses’ encounter with the burning bush: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God, But only he who sees takes off his shoes; The rest sit round and pluck blackberries.”
Earth is crammed with heaven. That’s what these signs and wonders in Mark’s gospel are pointing to. The miracles are all around us if we’re able to stop and take notice. In every seed and snowflake and sunset, in every meal shared, in every grace extended, in every moment in which we recognize the presence of God with us.
Sometimes it can feel like the life of faith is an uphill battle. A believing against the evidence. A hard and narrow road that we navigate against a flow of traffic that’s all headed in the opposite direction. It can be hard to keep faith when life deals us blow after blow, or when we hear the drums of war and see the suffering of so many around the world. Or when earthquakes strike the most vulnerable and life is lost at unimaginable scale. Is this world still made good? Are we crazy to remain a people of hope and confidence in the saving power of God? And truly, Jesus does invite us to take up our cross as we follow him. To lose our lives for the sake of the gospel. To choose that narrow road, a way that’s harder than passing a camel through the eye of a needle.
But the good news of Jesus’ baptism and transfiguration, the good news of Jesus’ calming the sea and walking on water, the good news of Jesus feeding thousands with a few loaves of bread – the good news that all these signs point to is that when we follow Jesus we are actually in sync with the deepest and truest realities of our world and of our human lives. However much it might sometimes feel like the world is going in a different direction, the life of faith is movement with the grain of the universe.
This is what CS Lewis described as the “deep magic” in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe. A familiar story to many of us. Under the surface of eternal winter, of an evil queen with her stranglehold of spells, beneath the flexing muscles of power and even the violence of a sacrifice made to free a captive child, there flows through Narnia a deeper magic. Long forgotten by most, but visible in glimpses and revealed finally in a stunning reversal as the stone table shatters and the great lion Aslan lives once more.
A deep magic that is the truest description of all that is. And the signs are there if we have eyes to see them. Earth is fairly crammed with heaven, and every common bush aflame with God. A world made good full of wonder and possibility. A world being loved towards healing and renewal. A world in which our flood of tears will be wiped away as storms are stilled and every mouth is filled with bread. And in Jesus we begin to see it. Signs of that deep flow, of creation as it truly is.
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. A lot are blockin’ out the scenery and breaking our minds. But so many others remind us to stop and see what’s been here all along: a wondrous world filled in every corner with the presence of God.
Amen.