Reflection Jesus, the Miracle Worker
Reflection Jesus, the miracle worker Last week, Arto spoke to us about Jesus’ teaching, particularly in the form of his many parables, using and often confusing his listeners, and challenging us with their stark imagery. Jesus spent much of his public lifetime teaching. However, as we’ve heard today, he also performed miracles, of which approximately forty are documented in the Gospels. The focus of today’s Gospel is on Jesus’ feeding the 5000 – actually, probably more like at least 10,000, if one accepts the count of the men present and then adds the women and children. This particular event is also told to us by Mark, Luke and John. It’s the only miracle recorded by all four evangelists. Today’s reading from Matthew actually records two miraculous actions by Jesus. We tend to treat the first, the curing of the sick among those gathered, almost as commonplace, because it happens so often in the Gospels, and tend to overlook it, as we focus on the loaves and fishes. As well, other miracles follow immediately afterward in Matthew’s narrative. Jesus walks on water and does more healing on the other side of the lake. Hmm, so what does all this talk of “miracles” mean to us? Certainly, to those present when they happened, they would have been most extraordinary and awe-inspiring, but what about for us? How do we view them. Did something truly miraculous really happen or are these just stories? If something happened, what was it? Did Jesus do something that for us would, even now, be impossible? Can we accept that Jesus could do such a thing? Many who have thought about Jesus’ miracles have tried to explain them in various ways, some taking the position that they are the same for us as would be the actions of a scientifically trained and equipped person to a stone-age primitive.
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