A Miracle

My wife and I saw that new Captain America movie -- Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I was amused by the guy sitting next to me with his son. Here we have a story built around a guy who died in the 1940's but came back to life and is doing quite well fighting off aliens (The Avengers) and now really, really bad guys. There is a host of essentially impossible equipment and impossible people. You know, like you would expect from a comic book story. But when one character you thought was dead turns up alive at some point, my fellow movie-goer complained. "Oh, come on!" Because that, you see, is unbelievable. A superhero? No, that's fine.

As it turns out, in a world ruled by science where all that occurs is governed by physical laws and the like, not only is that surprise resurrection impossible, but so is the entire movie and the others like it. But people watch them and enjoy them because in a world governed by imagination, such things are perfectly possible.

We meet on Sunday for a reason. The New Testament refers to it as "the Lord's Day", a repeated celebration of the Resurrection. Not just on Easter -- every week. This is no downstream miracle. The Resurrection of Christ is the miracle of miracles. And in a world governed by science and physical laws, it, too, would be impossible. But it is attested to by Scripture and by witnesses (1 Cor 15:3-8). And, as it happens, in a world ruled by God -- a world that is made by God and sustained by God and for God's good purposes -- you would expect miracles. If God rules the universe, then, on occasion, these things that violate the laws of nature will occur. It would be ... natural ... in the sense of "according to the nature of reality".

So we celebrate, at least 52 times each year, a miracle. For those bound by science and naturalism, it can't happen. For those who live in God's world, it would be a given. For those of us who know Jesus, it is a fact. A great, wonderful, saving fact. Something worthy of repeated celebration.