I believe in miracles

One day Jesus called together his twelve apostles and gave them power and authority to cast out demons and to heal all diseases. Luke 9:1 (NLT)

Jesus did not take the apostles through 4 years of medical school and three years of internship and then send them out on the road to heal the sick as physicians. There were physicians in those days of the first century as there are physicians today in the twenty-first century, trained to the best of known science of healing. Instead, Jesus gave his apostles power and authority from the Father God to evict the demons and to heal the diseases in those who received the Good News of the coming of Kingdom of God.

It is amusing that people spend so much time and energy arguing over the existence of God since the dawn of human consciousness. We have been wondering a long time about our self-understood loneliness, pondering our uninvited awareness of our unique existence, lamenting our unquenchable sadness of inevitable mortality. We so much wish that we can believe in God, we so much wish that we can believe in heaven, we so much wish that we can believe in eternity. We question God's existence because we are afraid, though we can scarcely prove that we ourselves exist. Most of us like to take it for granted that we exist just because we do, or we think, or we hurt, or we love, or we die. But we have no proof that any of this is real, any more than we can prove that God exists just because he does, or that he must, or that he might as well, or that he matters not. Maybe it is a flaw of our scientific language that we must believe in God as a real being, as we believe in the number one as a real number, in order that we may be able to compute the rest of our scientific universe.

Let me say then, it really does not matter if you believe in God or not, his existence that is. As you see in Jesus' discourse with his disciples, that question never came up seriously. More important are questions of obedience, of faith, of forgiveness, of hope, of righteousness, of love, of sacrifice. Especially in the presence of Jesus the Master, the Son of Man / Son of God, whose existence no one ever doubted, the question was constantly and persistently asked of the disciples: Do you believe in Jesus who you see, not God who you do not see?

So, I believe in miracles. And I mean real, honest to goodness, old-fashioned miracles, the kind that few modern saints actually believe in any more. People talk about common occurrences as miracles because they evoke a sense of wonder in the beholder, such as a new-born baby, a new sprouting plant, a beautiful sunrise/sunset, a man falling in love with a woman, etc., etc. People talk about modern medical inventions and discoveries as miracles in that we can now do what we were not able to do even a generation ago, such as transplant kidneys and hearts, resuscitate the dead, kill infections, modify psychosis, control pain, cure cancer, reorganize genes, etc., etc. People also like to say that faith in any form, faith in religions, or icons, or signs, or idols, or doctors, or medicines, or incantations, or oneself, etc., etc. all help increase the effectiveness of healing processes. But I am not talking about any of these. These are down-graded uses of the mighty miracle word. Miracle is a power word in the gospels.

I believe in miracle healing. Miracle healing is by definition unbelievable, beyond our common belief, over the top of our common sense, not to be expected by ordinary measures. Miracle healing only happens when all else has failed, when all manner of known therapy has been exhausted, when all hope has been abandoned, when all experts agree that no cure is forthcoming. When a doctor says it would take more than a miracle to heal this disease, when all medical experts agree that no known cure exists for this disease, when all of us including the most optimistic of us are finally convinced that all is lost, then it begins to make sense to talk about miracle healing, the healing of Jesus, the healing of the apostles. Miracle healing is not cheap, it cannot be practiced by every self-proclaimed faith-healer in heat, it does not work in the hands of anyone who decides to take up the task. Miracle healing is practiced by the chosen messengers of Jesus the healer, by those who are willing to bear the cross and pay the supreme price of obedience, by those who look not to themselves but to the master for the power and authority to forgive sins and to heal the sick.

I regret so called faith healers who defy God's good gift of modern medicine and pretend to heal those who are in need of immediate medical attention, or denigrate the benfits we have derived from so many powerful scientific inventions. We cannot go back to the dark ages of ignorance, when the earth was flat, childbirth was a curse, and viruses were evil spirits. However, we have not yet arrived at the age of total enlightenment, when all knowledge has been revealed, all secrets discovered, all limitations transcended, and humans have become immortal eternal celestial beings. There is still a large place for miracle healing, perhaps more than ever before in this day and age when we demand utter perfection and daily miracles from the hands of us physicians -- resulting from the deification of medical art in TV shows like ER and HOUSE, and endless litigation from unsatisfied customers.

This is not any different climate than that which buffeted the apostolic miracle-healers. And they were not even holding medical degrees. We must believe in miracles, you and I who have been given the privilege of healing our generation of diseases. Where our medical knowledge ends is where our faith begins, where our medicines run out is where our faith fills in, where our optimism reaches its limit of reason is where our hope engages its leap of serendipity. Miracle is when our learned hand whithers and our healing hand sprouts faith eternal. Yes, miracles still happen, and only happen when no one else believes anymore but humble you and me, who know our own weakness/limitation/infirmity as the best physicians on earth today.

I challenge my co-workers, physicians and psychologists who obey the Lord, who carry the cross, who sacrifice daily for their patients, to reach out our healing hand just a nanometer more and say ever so nano-quietly to the sick ones we touch -- in the name of Jesus, your sins are forgiven and your sicknesses are healed. And I guarantee you true miracles.