Friday, November 10, 2017

Generosity - the real miracle

Morning: Psalm 69:1-23, 31-38; Ezra 7:27-28; 8:21-36; Revelation 15:1-8

The story of the feeding of “5,000 men, besides women and children” –better make it 10,000 – is famous … and intriguing.  Like, would 10,000 people take their children to a deserted place without bringing lunch?  Likely some forgot; the disciples were worried about them.  But, without a doubt, some would have come prepared.  I think what really happened, when Jesus blessed and broke the 5 loaves and 2 fishes, is that the ones who had brought lunch realized they needed to share.  So all were fed.  They learned generosity that day; perhaps that was the real miracle.

2 comments:

  1. I really love this interpretation.

    Jesus was the embodiment (incarnation) of God [*]. As such, Jesus had no need to violate the laws of his creation [there's another loaded concept]. I'm not saying he didn't; maybe he did. Seems to me like kind of cheating, like sleight of hand.

    But Jesus' purpose in submitting himself to inhabiting our human condition was to reveal to us, albeit 'through a glass darkly', aspects of God's character. I much prefer to have God's unfathomable love demonstrated by this miracle rather than some kind of wizardry. After all, as Paul says in Romans 1:20, God's power is evident everywhere one looks. And science has given us so much more insight into that reality ... think about the cosmos. Science has nailed that one sufficiently well for the time being. But learning to love from the author of love, love itself/himself/herself, is something science cannot offer much help with [**]. For that, better to look to science's long abandoned partner, philosophy. Or better still, the mystics.

    [*] I dislike using the name 'God' because the reader, and I, will of necessity have incomplete or worse, incorrect thoughts about the nature of that entity.

    [**] Science's perspective is especially impoverished by the atheism of the vast majority of scientists today. They seem not to even credit Einstein's recognition of 'the ancient one'. I might humbly add that religion's perspective is at risk of being impoverished if we insist on a literal interpretation of scripture at the expense of more powerful [*] interpretations like the one expressed here by Graham. [* I will avoid claiming 'truer' ... "what is truth?" asked Pilate. Philosophy again.]

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    1. Perhaps I was overly harsh about the vast majority of scientists. See https://www.scribd.com/document/52193171/Einstein-s-view-of-God. In chapter 1 of The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss, orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart says he doesn't believe in the God the atheists don't believe in either. :-)

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