Sermon from Sunday, September 9th, 2012
“Good luck storming the castle!” Miracle Max yells out. “Do you think it’ll work?” his wife asks. “It’ll take a miracle.” Miracle Max says in return. I introduced the kids to “The Princess Bride” this weekend, and for whatever reason they both laughed out loud at this exchange, after Inigo Montoya, Fezzick and the Man in Black leave Miracle Max’s house with a miracle pill, covered in CHclate, and with a hope to save PRicness Buttercup from the evil Prince Humperdinck. One of the greatest movies ever made.
There is another wonderful movie called Amelie, many of you may have seen it, it is about a young woman who finds some old nostalgic treasures in the wall of her flat in France and returns them to their owner inspiring her to do good deeds to all the people she is able to help in a day. Little miracles, we may call them, deeds that bring love and light to the people they effect.
The first person Amelie sees in her effort to be a Good Samaritan is a blind man, she grabs the blind man by the arm and takes him across the street and down to the metro station. The entire way she describes to him his surroundings, people’s faces, how much the deli meats and sausages are being sold for, essentially making the world from his home to the metro station come alive with light, color, people and joy. When they get to the station, he gradually fills with light as if his life has been transformed and changed into something vastly different than he was before. It is a beautiful and fun scene I could watch over and over.
The deaf man, from our Gospel, experienced the same transformation, imagine a life full of silence, miscommunication and misunderstanding suddenly changed so that you could hear the birds, the people talking, the sounds of life around you and imagine being able to speak suddenly in a way that breaks down the barriers blocking your ability to communicate with others. Imagine the joy at being restored to the community you desired to belong to for your entire life.
Miracles are life transforming things that cause us to do a 180, that cause us to drastically change our behavior, or, sometimes, miracles simply change the direction we are traveling to, they take us to places we never imagined we would go. Libby Nickel, on our Facebook Page, she is a friend of Gethsemane, where we have a fledgling Facebook Bible Study being formed, wrote, “I remember liking something I read by Marianne Williamson where she addressed miracles. The idea is that sometimes miracles are impossible brain shifts, seeing things in a way you could never have seen them before. No matter how insignificant the shift may seem. If we step outside of ourselves, our own self-imposed limitations and expectations, and allow God to change our perspective, anything is possible, including miracles.”
Shifting our brains, simple changes in perspective that allow us to see the world differently, Amelie offered this opportunity to the blind man, Jesus offered this to the deaf man, and dramatically, the Syrophenecian woman offered this new perspective to Jesus himself.
The same man who just told us all that what goes in our mouths, does not defile, but what comes out of our hearts, defiles a person. We can water it down all we want, but Jesus was clear, this woman was outside his own prerogative. This woman was not someone he was sent to help. This woman, to Jesus, was a dog.
But she doesn’t balk in the face of this tremendous insult, she instead challenges Jesus saying, “even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the table.” Her shot right back at Jesus is still filled with compassion, and still filled with the desperation and understanding that this Jesus can help her daughter and make her daughter whole again.
I read this Gospel to Roger and Judy Lundgren this week as I sat witht hem and prayed with them and shared communion with them. As I read this Gospel I wondered what Roger would think of it, dealing now with a terminal respiratory cancer that will end his life in not such a long time. So I asked him, “Roger, what do you think about this Gospel and what do you think about miracles.” He mulled it over, and looked at me and said, “All things are possible.” But then his eyes sparkled, and he leaned forward and looked at Judy and moved his hand, pointing at her, then at himself, and he said, “This is a the miracle, we are a miracle.”
Of course the emotions started bubbling up as Roger then shared the story of how Judy and Roger met, and how they fell in love with one anther. Judy brought up that Roger himself was a miracle; his Doctor even said so, surviving three bouts with cancer and a stroke. Roger leaned forward again and pointed at Judy and himself, and said again, “We are a miracle.”
I want to echo Roger’s sentiment, his thought, and say that we, all of us gathered together are a miracle. We are all filled with the light of Christ, filled with the joy of the Holy One. We all are a miracle and because of that we have a great call to share ourselves with the entire world, to look for those blind people who would benefit from being filled with light. To look for those people who could be restored to community by the touch of our hand, the words of our mouths. And mostly to listen to those who are asking for our help, to hear those who we think are challenging us, but in reality are asking for our help, our compassion our miracle.
Today we, and I mean all of us, baptize Elena with great joy and anticipation. She is being identified as part of this community, as part of the community of Christ. Today she will be our miracle, she will be our joy, and today her baptism will bring us hope for our future together. In her baptism we will be healed. In her baptism we have two choices, we can proclaim with zealousness the power and glory of our God, or we can return to the places where we will remain cut off and disconnected from the whole community.
The miracles in our life come to transform us and change us give us new direction, the help us see life in a new way, they help us know God more fully.
There is another wonderful movie called Amelie, many of you may have seen it, it is about a young woman who finds some old nostalgic treasures in the wall of her flat in France and returns them to their owner inspiring her to do good deeds to all the people she is able to help in a day. Little miracles, we may call them, deeds that bring love and light to the people they effect.
The first person Amelie sees in her effort to be a Good Samaritan is a blind man, she grabs the blind man by the arm and takes him across the street and down to the metro station. The entire way she describes to him his surroundings, people’s faces, how much the deli meats and sausages are being sold for, essentially making the world from his home to the metro station come alive with light, color, people and joy. When they get to the station, he gradually fills with light as if his life has been transformed and changed into something vastly different than he was before. It is a beautiful and fun scene I could watch over and over.
The deaf man, from our Gospel, experienced the same transformation, imagine a life full of silence, miscommunication and misunderstanding suddenly changed so that you could hear the birds, the people talking, the sounds of life around you and imagine being able to speak suddenly in a way that breaks down the barriers blocking your ability to communicate with others. Imagine the joy at being restored to the community you desired to belong to for your entire life.
Miracles are life transforming things that cause us to do a 180, that cause us to drastically change our behavior, or, sometimes, miracles simply change the direction we are traveling to, they take us to places we never imagined we would go. Libby Nickel, on our Facebook Page, she is a friend of Gethsemane, where we have a fledgling Facebook Bible Study being formed, wrote, “I remember liking something I read by Marianne Williamson where she addressed miracles. The idea is that sometimes miracles are impossible brain shifts, seeing things in a way you could never have seen them before. No matter how insignificant the shift may seem. If we step outside of ourselves, our own self-imposed limitations and expectations, and allow God to change our perspective, anything is possible, including miracles.”
Shifting our brains, simple changes in perspective that allow us to see the world differently, Amelie offered this opportunity to the blind man, Jesus offered this to the deaf man, and dramatically, the Syrophenecian woman offered this new perspective to Jesus himself.
The same man who just told us all that what goes in our mouths, does not defile, but what comes out of our hearts, defiles a person. We can water it down all we want, but Jesus was clear, this woman was outside his own prerogative. This woman was not someone he was sent to help. This woman, to Jesus, was a dog.
But she doesn’t balk in the face of this tremendous insult, she instead challenges Jesus saying, “even the dogs eat the crumbs from under the table.” Her shot right back at Jesus is still filled with compassion, and still filled with the desperation and understanding that this Jesus can help her daughter and make her daughter whole again.
I read this Gospel to Roger and Judy Lundgren this week as I sat witht hem and prayed with them and shared communion with them. As I read this Gospel I wondered what Roger would think of it, dealing now with a terminal respiratory cancer that will end his life in not such a long time. So I asked him, “Roger, what do you think about this Gospel and what do you think about miracles.” He mulled it over, and looked at me and said, “All things are possible.” But then his eyes sparkled, and he leaned forward and looked at Judy and moved his hand, pointing at her, then at himself, and he said, “This is a the miracle, we are a miracle.”
Of course the emotions started bubbling up as Roger then shared the story of how Judy and Roger met, and how they fell in love with one anther. Judy brought up that Roger himself was a miracle; his Doctor even said so, surviving three bouts with cancer and a stroke. Roger leaned forward again and pointed at Judy and himself, and said again, “We are a miracle.”
I want to echo Roger’s sentiment, his thought, and say that we, all of us gathered together are a miracle. We are all filled with the light of Christ, filled with the joy of the Holy One. We all are a miracle and because of that we have a great call to share ourselves with the entire world, to look for those blind people who would benefit from being filled with light. To look for those people who could be restored to community by the touch of our hand, the words of our mouths. And mostly to listen to those who are asking for our help, to hear those who we think are challenging us, but in reality are asking for our help, our compassion our miracle.
Today we, and I mean all of us, baptize Elena with great joy and anticipation. She is being identified as part of this community, as part of the community of Christ. Today she will be our miracle, she will be our joy, and today her baptism will bring us hope for our future together. In her baptism we will be healed. In her baptism we have two choices, we can proclaim with zealousness the power and glory of our God, or we can return to the places where we will remain cut off and disconnected from the whole community.
The miracles in our life come to transform us and change us give us new direction, the help us see life in a new way, they help us know God more fully.
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