GENEralities

I believe in miracles.

I believe, wonder of wonders, that two thousand or so years ago (the exact number doesn’t matter) a remarkable, probably teen-aged, girl in what is now Israel became miraculously pregnant without having had sexual intercourse and became the virgin mother of the very Son of God, Jesus the Christ, my Saviour.

I believe the Magi made that trip and that the mothers wailed in Bethlehem and refused to be comforted when Herod had their little sons put to death because of God’s miraculous advent among us. I don’t particularly like that bit, but I believe it.

I believe in the encounters with Simeon and Anna in the temple.

I believe that Mary then went on to live a normal life (as normal a life as the mother of the Son of God can live) as a wife and mother as she and Joseph raised their first-born along with his siblings. Mel Gibson’s film, The Passion of the Christ, has given me among the most moving and evocative imaginative glimpses of what her relationship with her son must have been.

I believe Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan; that he then performed many more miracles as he lived his life for God in the midst of that particular patch of, what must be for God irritatingly perverse, humanity.

I believe Jesus died on the cross (I don’t particularly like that bit either, but I still believe it) and, wonder of miraculous wonders, literally rose again from the dead. I believe he is coming back in Glory and that one day I will get to meet him, the Risen Lord, literally, face to face.

Although all of that is God-with-us on a rather grand scale, and Jesus is no longer with us in the flesh, God is still miraculously with us in him and through the power of the Holy Spirit. We’re not in some sort of divine intermission. Miracles still happen.

For example, we get to touch and taste and see God’s glory in Jesus, literally, as we enjoy the Eucharist Sunday by Sunday. That is a miracle. It’s hard to imagine why anyone would choose to miss that. Is it because we don’t really believe in that particular miracle? Or, it’s only a small one? Or, we believe it is a miracle, but because it happens every week, it’s only a routine one?

I suspect we, in the enlightened West, especially we well-educated, upper middle-class Anglicans, drift out of tune with such things. We need some consciousness-raising. We need to have our faith re-enchanted by miraculous truths and possibilities.
What better time to do that than on Christmas Eve? This is an ideal time to ask for God’s help to re-enchant our lives; our relationships, our sexuality, our worship and the way we do our money (other than just hoping for some sort of miraculous deliverance from our post-Christmas debt).

The main thing is to make ourselves available for Jesus, open to the wonder and enchantment of his “impossible” possibilities, re-tuned for miracles. After all, writes Madeleine L’Engle:

This is the irrational season
When love blooms bright and wild.
Had Mary been filled with reason
There’d have been no room for the child.

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