Death, Bread, Water, and Salvation
It was never about miracles
Liberating Scripture Collective
Most days, I’m mostly agnostic.
I say mostly because if I start thinking about the agnosticism, the questions I don’t know, I begin seeing how people choose to believe. At the same time, I completely understand how utterly absurd it is to make that choice.
This isn’t a game of whose proof is better, the atheists or the Christian’s. Rather, what I begin ruminating on is the meaning behind the event. Let me tell a story to explain.
For a while, I worked as the produce manager of a grocery store. As you can imagine, dates and correct labeling are important so we’re not serving up rotten produce or getting confused about what kind of lettuce is what.
We had label makers that were hooked up via Bluetooth to our scanners. I was in charge of breaking down the pallets, organizing, and checking in new product in the cooler.
I started this round with the tomatillos. I scanned the box and waited for the label to print. And waited. And waited. No label printed. So, I began to check: Was the printer on? Was it connected to the scanner? That was the problem. The scanner was connected to another printer.
At this point, one of the other employees burst into the cooler saying, “I just had a miracle!”
I saw he had a label in his hand as he rushed over.
“I was praying and stocking the tomatillos, and without me pushing a button, the label for the tomatillos printed. Totally a God thing!”
Well, my friends, I knew what happened. My scanner had been connected to his printer, and we both happened to be working on the tomatillos at the same time.
I’m not proud of what I did next: I explained his miracle away. I told him what had actually happened. Crestfallen, he left the cooler and went back to work.
Was I right to explain his miracle to him? Couldn’t I have just let him believe?
Maybe it was a miracle. I mean, what are the chances that we would both be working on the same food at the same time and my scanner would be connected to his printer?
Was it coincidence?
Was it an answer to prayer?
Was it both?
Do I need to know?
Sometimes, we just need a miracle, whether it is miraculous or not.
My coworker needed a miracle.
What he didn’t need was an explanation as to why it wasn’t a miracle. He needed hope, not reasoning away something that, from his perspective, was beyond reason. My coworker needed reassurance. What I gave him was something that stole that miracle from him; instead of letting the miracle give him a reason, I made his miracle reasonable.
But miracles aren’t reasonable. They are actions that don’t make sense but that we ascribe meaning to, meaning that we need, meaning that means something deep for us.
Maybe this is why—why I am attached to the miracles in the Bible.
Look, I know the feeding of five-thousand plus off five loaves of bread and two fish makes no sense. I know that people want to explain it away by saying the real miracle was that people shared what they had… but that makes even less sense in the narrative than a miraculous multiplication of food.
The disciples straight up tell Jesus, “Hey, it’s getting late in the day. These people have to go buy food.”
The crowds—the disciples as well—probably hadn’t eaten anything that day. I mean, they had hunted down Jesus, and had been touched, taught, and cured by him all day. They would’ve been hungry. But if people brought food, why would the disciples say the crowd needed to go buy food before the shops closed? The narrative points to the people who do not have the resources they needed to feed themselves.
But bread doesn’t magically multiply. And how did it work? Was Jesus handing bread out, just copying loaf by loaf? Were the fish made huge? It makes no sense. So it couldn’t have happened.
This oscillation is what my brain does: I hold to the miracles and yet can’t believe they happened.
Here’s the thing though: it doesn’t matter if they happened or not. They are part of the narrative meant to teach us about Jesus and the kingdom of heaven. That is the reason they were made up, recorded, or whatever you want to think about them.
The truth is, in this narrative, Jesus needed the miracle.
See, Jesus had just heard that John the baptizer had been murdered in a heinous way by Herod. John was both Jesus’ predecessor—a voice crying in the wilderness—and his cousin.
The news devastated Jesus, and he sought some solitude to grieve.
I’m sure there were also questions about his vocation. Jesus knew if he carried the good news about the kingdom of God all the way, he would be killed by the state just like John was.
Was it worth it?
Was inevitable death something Jesus could face?
Was it within his strength to carry this mission all the way into suffering and death?
But Jesus wasn’t allowed the solitude he sought. The crowds found him? They were looking for him for the very same reason Jesus was seeking to get away: John had died. There was no moral compass left in Israel. There was no prophet speaking against the oppression of Rome and the religious and political leaders. There was no shepherd for the people left in Israel.
The crowds were unmoored. They needed a figure to latch onto to replace the space John had filled.
So, they looked to Jesus.
And Jesus looked at the crowds and had compassion. That care and orientation towards the people that Jesus felt in his guts moved him to care for them, to heal their sick, to proclaim with action and speech the kingdom of heaven, and to eventually feed people the bread of heaven.
Jesus needed this miracle to help him reassert that this was his vocation, that he could carry it through to the end, that the mission was larger than himself, and that the people needed a liberator.
He was the only one who could do it.
Jesus met the miracle with open hands, with an exhausted spirit, and a mind set to stay the course.
The bread that fed the people fed Jesus spiritually.
It doesn’t matter if the miracle was a historic event or not; in our narrative about the person of Jesus, it was something that he needed based upon where he was at. Jesus was a full, complex, multifaceted human being, and we need to read him as such.
This gospel according to Matthew is a narrative about Jesus and the proclamation of his victory over the oppression, corruption, fear, and violence that the powers and principalities of this world manifest in the empires that rule us. As a narrative, we have to see there is a beginning, a story, a climax, and a resolution. This is a story. It may be historic; it may not be. But it is a story told that we may believe the good news.
So, when Jesus walks on water, when Jesus calls peter out onto the water, when Jesus saves Peter from drowning, these events are told to us that we might come to see Jesus as our salvation. Just like he saved the crowds. Just like he saved Peter—“oh you of small trust. Why did you doubt I would save you?” Just like he saves us.
I’ve seen miracles. I’ve seen non-miracles. I’ve seen failed miracles. But overall, I have seen God sit with the suffering, remain in solidarity with the needy, and bring comfort to the oppressed.
That solidarity is a miracle.
I don’t understand it, but it’s there. Maybe people are seeking an opiate of the masses to relieve some pain they are feeling. Maybe the presence of God touches earth. I don’t know. I remain a believing agnostic.
But I know we all need miracles.
And I know we can’t rely on some invisible, hidden, supernatural ghost to bring change on earth.
We need the miracle moments and the ordinary sweat and tears we are called to that change may happen.
Work the bread.
Watch the fish multiply.
And, either way, let’s live out the salvation.