...and the Holey Toast
Sermon preached in St Salvator¿s Chapel, St Andrews, on Sunday 3rd May 2009 by Rev Giles Dove
Readings: Acts 4: 5 ¿ 12 and John 10: 11 - 18
Sermon
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.
¿by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.¿
In our reading from the Acts of the Apostles we have reached that point in the story of the infant Church at which, following a night in jail, the apostles are brought before a full session of the Sanhedrin (the Jewish rulers, elders and scribes); the ruling council of Judea. The key point of the questioning of the apostles by the Jewish leaders is the origin of the power responsible for a healing miracle. By identifying the source of this power with Jesus, St Peter once again confronts the ruling authorities with the possibility that their treatment of Jesus was a terrible misjudgement. At the end of Peter¿s speech he goes further than anything that has been said previously: ¿there is no other name (than that of Jesus) by which we may be saved.¿ The explanation for the miraculous healing of the sick man is directly attributable to the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. So, too, is the salvation of the world to be attributed to the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead.
As we are still in the season of Easter, celebrating the miraculous resurrection of Jesus from the dead, I want to say something this morning about the miraculous. In writing the Gospels, the Evangelists make it clear that the signs and wonders performed by Jesus were not simply magic tricks designed to wow and impress His audience. Rather, the miracles of Jesus point to His status as Messiah ¿ God¿s Son. Jesus¿ miracles have, as their primary purpose, the intention of leading people to eternal life through faith in Him as the Son of God.
There is a news-cutting on the notice-board of the Divinity Classroom at Glenalmond College which features two photographs: one is of a large bonfire, the other is of Pope John Paul II. Placed next to each other, some people believe that it is abundantly clear that the bonfire¿s flames are in such a shape as to form an exact likeness of the late Pontiff. Indeed, as the faithful seek to fast-track John Paul along the highway to sainthood, this strange image of him may be interpreted as a miracle. Others may have their doubts.
So, what are miracles? Have they ever occurred? If so, how and why? There has been a good deal of scholarly debate about the person of Jesus, and at the heart of that debate lies a fundamental disagreement about the supernatural. On the one side are those who believe in miracles; in a God who intervenes in human and natural affairs. On the other side are those who reject any supernatural explanation of events, and who believe in a God who is present in what He has made but does not interfere with the normal and natural course of things.
By definition, God is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-loving ¿ or, in St Mary¿s-College-speak, omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent. To rule out any possibility of the miraculous is, logically, to rule out the existence of God Himself.
Five years ago an online casino won the Ebay bidding for a decade-old cheese sandwich bearing what some people consider an image of Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary ¿ and the online casino immediately produced and started to sell Virgin Mary Grilled Cheese T-shirts. The successful bid was for $28,000. The seller was Diana Duyser from Fort Lauderdale in Florida who said that she had made the cheese sandwich ten years previously and, after taking a bite, ¿saw the Virgin Mary staring back at me.¿
In her Ebay advert Duyser said that the sandwich had been kept in a plastic case for a decade and has developed no mould or bacteria. ¿It is like a miracle¿, she said. ¿I would like all people to know that I do believe that this is the Virgin Mary Mother of God,¿ the ad said. ¿That is my solemn belief, but you are free to believe that she is whomsoever you like, I am not scamming anyone.¿
The online casino that purchased the miraculous holy relic placed an image on its website, quickly attracting almost 2 million hits. Chief Executive Richard Rowe said ¿We believe that everyone should be able to see it and learn of its mystical power for themselves.¿
I myself have a modest relic collection, currently scattered around the Chaplain¿s Study at Glenalmond: tiny relics of St Theresa of Lisieux, of St Pio of Pietrelcina; a fragment of the True Cross. Ladies and Gentlemen, there are enough fragments of the ¿True Cross¿ in existence for the Fife property construction industry to build a chain of wooden chalets from St Andrews to Dunfermline. With a party of students in Rome during the Easter holidays we played a slightly mischievous game of ¿spot the relic¿. None of this is quite as remarkable as the claim of some remote French abbey to have in its care a lump of stone which they are convinced is the very stone which the builders rejected ¿ ¿it has become the cornerstone.¿
Taking the history of Christianity as a whole, unquestioning belief and superstition have undoubtedly done much damage to the Church. Consider the seemingly ludicrous `miracles¿ of the Middle Ages, with saints¿ bones and fingernails healing the sick and even raising the dead. What of the legends of St Regulus or St Rule using some sort of divine SatNav to bring him ashore here in the Kingdom of Fife with his healing cargo of relic-bones of Blessed Andrew the Apostle?
In case any of you here this morning, sit like me, somewhere in the catholic tradition of the Church please do not think me dismissive of the power of physical relics to change and to enrich the lives of individuals. Last summer, I had an unexpected, powerful religious experience whilst on a family holiday in southern Italy. Word reached the elderly parish priest in the village that an Anglican priest was staying at the local hotel with his family. He called by to see me one evening. Despite his limited English language and my limited Italian language, we were able to communicate with one another. He invited me to celebrate mass at his church ¿ a paleo-Christian church dating back to the early sixth century. We agreed a time that did not conflict with his own Sunday masses. When I arrived at his church, the old Roman Catholic priest vested me in his own mass vestments, and left me with his sacristan as an assistant to celebrate the Eucharist according to the rite of the Scottish Episcopal Church, at his altar ¿ made, he explained to me later, from the stone of the tomb of St Matthew the Evangelist. Now, that was a powerful religious experience for me ¿ a true spirit of Christian love and generosity at a place with seemingly direct links to Our Lord Himself. That priest¿s act was, for me, miraculous.
In more recent times, some branches of Christianity have persuaded their members to actively seek miracles on a regular basis. And yet, by definition, miracles are extraordinary actions of God. If they occur daily ¿ or even `every moment¿ ¿ they are not extraordinary but common.
To argue that miracles can happen is not to say that they always do happen, or that every description of an extraordinary action of God in the Bible is to be taken literally.
The miracles of Christ undoubtedly fall into a class of their own. Unlike most of the Old Testament miracles, they were written up within the life-time of eye-witnesses, they took place in known and identified places and involved named people. They were not, for the most part, `magical¿, but were expressions of loving concern, actions aimed at making people whole.
The miracles of Jesus, for the most part, are miracles with nature rather than against it. Few people today would dispute the spiritual element in healing, both of the mind and the body, where nature seems to be harnessed in a positive way and God-given spiritual resources in people are released and applied. If there has ever been a miraculous healing, even once, then who is more likely to have done it than God¿s Son? Only a special kind of intellectual arrogance would claim that nothing anywhere has ever happened that cannot be explained by the known laws of human science. Such a claim also seems intrinsically incapable of proof.
Christians believe in a God who, in some way, created the universe. Surely He is perfectly capable of interfering in the mechanics of His creation, and is entitled to interrupt, when He wishes to do so, the natural order of things.
It is argued that many miracles, especially in the Old Testament, have a simple scientific explanation, while others, such as the healing miracles of Christ, can be explained on the grounds of psychotherapy. When we consider the signs and wonders performed by Christ, it may be true that modern doctors and psychiatrists can produce cures similar to those which He worked supernaturally, but that does not make Jesus¿ own miracles of healing any less valid; nor does it affect the many other miracles He performed in which He demonstrated His powers over nature, or those which concerned His own person ¿ His birth, resurrection and ascension.
In my days as a young member of the academic-related staff here at St Andrews, I had responsibility for various aspects of University ceremonial ¿ including graduation ceremonies, along with the hospitality shown to honorary graduates. It was in this role that I was able to spend time in the company of that handsome and winsome Oxford academic Richard Dawkins ¿ at that time, on the point of being capped an honorary Doctor of Letters in this ancient and venerable seat of learning committed for centuries to the nurture and education of priests and ministers. The liberal nature of this University meant that nobody seemed to bat and eyelid as the world¿s most famous fundamentalist atheist listened to Latin prayers offered by the Principal of St Mary¿s in the Younger Hall.
Anyway, my students at Glenalmond are intrigued by Dawkins just now ¿ some of the seniors went to hear him lecture at the University of Glasgow recently and discovered that Richard Dawkins¿ paternal grandfather had been a pupil at Glenalmond. Although I regret giving so much pulpit-time to Dawkins, it does lead me quite nicely to my next miracle story. Here goes¿
Listen to the following news report: ¿Excitement is growing in the Northern English town of Huddersfield following the news that a local man saw an image of the Big Bang in a piece of toast. Atheist Donald Chapman, 36, told local newspaper ¿The Huddersfield Express¿ that he was sitting down to eat breakfast when the unusual pattern caught his eye.
`I was just about to spread the butter when I noticed a fairly typical small hole in the bread surrounded by a burnt black ring. However the direction and splatter patterns of the crumbs as well as the changing shades emanating outwards from this black hole were very clearly similar to the chaotic-dynamic non-linear patterns that one would expect following the Big Bang.¿
`It¿s the beginning of the world,¿ he added excitedly.
Ever since news of the discovery made national headlines, local hoteliers have been overwhelmed by an influx of atheists from all over the country who have flocked to Huddersfield to catch a glimpse of the scientific relic. `I have always been an atheist and to see my life choices validated on a piece of toast is truly astounding,¿ said one guest at the Huddersfield Arms Hotel.
To the surprise of many, the UK National Atheist Association has asked its members not to pay attention to the story despite its potential to inspire less Faith. `Given what the religious believe already, this is not an easy sell,¿ said one disgruntled activist who said he was going to Huddersfield anyway. Noting that: `Seeing is not believing¿.¿
OK, so I admit it ¿ that story was made-up - pure fabrication. But it¿s quite good if you think about it. ¿¿ and the Holey Toast of Huddersfield.¿
One absolutely crucial miracle in the New Testament is the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. The first Christians were people who believed in the resurrection. Without that faith, there was nothing. It was the resurrection that was the basis of the apostles¿ preaching, and upon that foundation the Church itself was built ¿ a community of people who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was alive and that they had `met¿ him.
Jesus was unique in all He did; in all He said; in all He was. Whichever way one looks at Him, He is in a class by Himself. Even apart from the resurrection, there are excellent and convincing reasons for believing that He was ¿God in human form¿. Is it then so incredible that He should rise from the dead?
The ultimate proof of the resurrection for each individual lies in his or her own knowledge of the risen Christ, for it is in this way that the evidence of history is supplemented by the evidence of experience.
The common experience of the early Christians was of this `meeting¿ with the risen Christ. For them, this was the transforming truth, the difference between defeat and victory, between despair and triumph. They did not arrive at their faith in Jesus through historical or scientific analysis, but through the infectious awareness in the Christian community of His risen life.
In our reading from Acts we are reminded that miracles occur: ¿by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead¿There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved.¿
Alleluia! Christ is risen. He is risen indeed. Alleluia!
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.