More than a Miracle Making Magician...

It was a really bad musical called Miracle Maker. The type of musical just good enough for a small community theatre to buy the rights for so that their youth have something to present and not look absolutely ridiculous. I was one of those youth. The premise is that during a field-trip to a science lab the most fetching male of the class, not my role, gets in an accident and gains the power to perform miracles... quickly he is caught up in his new powers becomes a televangelist, healing people and turning water into wine. Then fame gets too much of him and in the chaos all he wants is for the world to stop... and so it does and everyone but him dies instantly. It is at this point that he performs his last miracle, going back in time to undo the accident that gave him the power in the first place.

The musical itself was rather trash, but it does make a crucial point about the nature of miracles and the horrible potential the capacity to make them can bring about. At the end of the day we are talking about much more than turning water into wine, a carrot into a rabbit, or sawing an associate in half and putting them back together for the applause of the crowd. We are talking about more than the ability to cure the ailments of those who seek wholeness.

At this rate, the walls between dimensions will break down.

We are talking about the capacity to unhinge the very fabric of the universe but not do so.  

We are talking about having this capacity and consistently using it to make the world whole.

We are talking about going about making the world whole and staying centered and grounded amidst the human response to these moments of miracles.

The deal with Jesus is not that he could do spiffy stuff... but that the spiffy stuff he did consistently brought world into a more robust harmony with God.

The deal with Jesus is not that he could do spiffy stuff... but that he could do spiffy stuff and never loose his grounding, center, and purpose in the midst of it.

The deal is that we believe a person walked around the earth with the technical capacity to unhinge the very fabric of the universe at any moment... and that never happened... that in fact the very opposite occurred and the very fabric of the universe was brought toward wholeness.

Mary came and requested a small unhinging of the universe... that wine would come about where no wine was... and Jesus, reluctantly, let his time come. The time when he would start to unhinge the universe bit by bit... the struggle to unhinge it in a way that would not cause further pain and suffering but bring about wholeness... the struggle to unhinge the universe in little ways and not get caught up in the act of unhinging it... the struggle that once taken up could only end with one eventuality... the confrontation of the world as it stood and the world as it should be with his very self, his very flesh, as the focal point for the transformation.

And so it began, with no one but the servants knowing what was going on, and for no greater reason than two families needed a bit more time to celebrate and be joyous with each other. This simplistic silly reason was enough for Jesus to take the plunge into the potential unhinging, but in  the end the the eventual rehinging of the universe and all the responsibilities and eventualities such entailed. So did Mary request the healing of the world, so did Mary request her son begin his path to the cross.