August 17, 2025

Leaning Into a Miracle

I remember once a parishioner gave me a sermon. We were standing in the church office and he said to me, “I just had an epiphany! I figured out what the miracle of Jesus feeding the five thousand was. The miracle was the sharing. They only had a few loaves and fishes, and they all shared what little they had with each other. That’s the miracle!” I paused for a moment and then said, “That’ll preach.” I’ve thought about that comment several times since then. And it finally led me to think deeply into the true nature of miracles. I’d like to share some of my thoughts with you this morning.
What is a miracle anyway? I take issue with Webster’s New World Dictionary. It defines a miracle as “an event or action . . . thought to be due to supernatural causes.” Now I realize that such a definition jibes with most people’s idea of a miracle; what I have trouble getting behind is the word “supernatural.” I don’t think the word has any meaning. For something to be “supernatural” it would have to be outside the realm of “nature,” in other words, something that happens in a way that’s not the way things happen in this natural world. So you see my problem? I think miracles are part of the way things happen in this natural world. The fact that we often can’t get our minds around some things that happen doesn’t make them somehow “beyond nature,” it just makes them a little mind-blowing.
And if you want your mind to be blown, just consider the power of this moment recorded in the gospel of Matthew: five thousand people gathered in a large grassy area on the banks of the Sea of Galilee. They had traveled from all around, been there a long time, and it was late in the day. The disciples passed out a little food, and people did not stomp on each other trying to get to it. It is not recorded in the gospel that anyone was trampled, or beaten up, or accused of taking too much for himself. There’s as great a miracle as you can find. People sat together in this huge crowd and shared what they had and what they were given with each other. I imagine many people leaning to pass a basket of food to someone – leaning into a miracle.
That’s the posture for miracles, I’ve decided – leaning. There are a lot of reasons for leaning. And this morning I’d like to take some time to consider the many ways and times and occasions we might have to lean. One of them is like the experience of those who gathered in the lake shore with Jesus, leaning to reach across the gulf that separates one person from another to share a precious piece of bread. That kind of leaning goes against our nature. We’re hard wired by our DNA to get what we can for ourselves. It’s a question of survival. And with the future so unknowable, with tariffs, national debt, and the weak job market creating so much uncertainty, with the ever-present possibility of a devastating illness or catastrophic natural disaster, we all know the wisdom of the old adage: “you can never have too much.” And leaning toward another person to share what you have is miracle enough in my book.
People also lean toward one another to consult, to confer, to share ideas and to learn from others. You see it all the time at conferences, lectures, and meetings – people leaning together to share a thought. That may not sound very exceptional, but I would submit that on capitol hill today it might indeed constitute a miracle. America is built on the possibility that just such a miracle can happen day in and day out, that three separate branches of government, two separate houses of Congress, representatives of different political parties and different constituencies can, in fact, put aside narrow interests in service of the larger interests of the nation, and lean towards each other to govern. There has perhaps never been a time when such an assumption seemed more like banking on a miracle.
And sometimes our leaning is a very personal matter. It can have to do with simple decisions or with life issues. You’ve all heard someone say something like, “Well, right now I’m leaning toward not going.” And what decision we make in any moment can have a significant impact on our lives, or on those around us. Aristotle offered some good counsel as we consider which way to lean. He said, as I recall, “Temperance and courage are destroyed both by excess and deficiency and are kept alive by observance of the mean.” The term “mean” to Aristotle did not refer to some lukewarm, non-committal middle ground; it meant taking the right action at the right time. It is, indeed, left up to each one of us to know when it’s wise to press on despite the obstacles and when it’s better to stop beating your head against an impervious wall. Making such decisions cannot be boiled down to some formula, simple enough to write up in a self-help book. It requires of us that we draw upon every bit of knowledge, instinct, and intuition that we have at our disposal, along with some reliance on that invisible hand of grace, that indefinable virtue of maturity, and, admittedly, a little luck. And when we lean in the right direction, I consider it nothing short of a miracle.
People can lean also either away from or towards that which is unknown, unfamiliar, or frightening. Our world is filled today with people who are frightened by one another because they are different. It all grows out of the seed-bed of fear that is the instinctive human reaction to the “other.” But the prophet Isaiah spoke the Lord’s word to the ancient Israelites and advised them not to lean away from those strange people from distant lands, but lean toward them, and discover them leaning toward you as well. He put it this way, “See, you shall call nations that you do not know, and nations that do not know you shall run to you . . .” When humanity grows up sufficiently I truly believe we will put all of this fear, distrust, and hatred of one another behind us. We’ll learn to lean toward rather than away from our distant brothers and sisters. And to my way of thinking that will be quite the miracle.
Jacob found himself leaning as he walked away from a wrestling match with the Almighty. It’s a bizarre story recorded in this thirty-second chapter of the book of Genesis. Jacob lies down to sleep by the river Jabbok, and in the middle of the night starts wrestling with a divine being who gives him a new name, “Israel,” and who, in the process, strikes him on the hip and puts it out of joint. Jacob regards this encounter as a miracle and says, “I have seen God face to face, and yet my life is preserved.” But as he leaves his camp, he is leaning to one side, limping because of his injury. It’s only then that the greatest miracle happens. Jacob, perhaps because of the blessing he wrested from the Lord at the cost of a dislocated hip, summons the courage to come face to face with his brother, Essau – the same brother whom he cheated, and whose birthright he stole. Jacob fully expects that Essau will want to kill him, and he humbles himself, leans forward and bows. But upon seeing him, Essau runs to him, leans toward him, embraces and kisses him. And Jacob, who had come face to face with the Almighty the night before looks into his brother’s eyes and says with the conviction of one who knows, “To see your face is like seeing the face of God.”
Sometimes profound and life changing lessons are learned the hard way. Those painful lessons can leave us scarred or wounded. But they can also leave us blessed by courage and self-awareness. And that’s when the real miracles happen, when we find ourselves free to lean toward an estranged brother or to look deeply into the face of an opponent and see the face of God. In my book that’s miracle enough.
So, what’s a miracle? I think it’s when a human being discovers that he or she is more than a collection of needs and wants and survival instincts, but is, in fact, a child of hope, a child of promise. It’s when someone is so blessed and perhaps so injured by that discovery that they are freed to be more than they are; they are freed to share what they have, freed to listen and learn and to yield where necessary, and to persevere and struggle where necessary, freed to learn about and accept those who are very different and alien, freed to enter into reconciliation, to humble one’s self and to see the divine countenance where you might least expect it.
And freedom is indeed the byword for such miracles. Isaiah got it right. Leaning into miracles is not a rare exercise, it’s not exceptional or expensive. It’s simply what happens when we’re encountered by holiness in the midst of the routines of life and, by grace, respond. Such miracles are readily at hand, and freely available.
Isaiah entreated us to “incline our ears” and hear – to lean toward him so we would not miss his word. Here’s the clarion cry that rings down through the centuries to rattle us out of our well-ordered, self-absorbed lives, our familiar fears, and our dependable prejudices: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” Those are words you can lean on. And by my way of thinking, that’s a miracle.