Scripture: John 4:43–54
Don’t pay attention to the miracle.
I know. Crazy right? When we read a passage like todays from John, the biggest news in there is the miracle! A boy is on his death bed. His father, who appears to be relatively rich and powerful and connected, has seemingly tried everything else at his disposal. But nothing has worked. His son continues to get sicker and sicker, and now it is only a matter of time. He travels to the hills of Galilee, where he has heard a miracle worker has been gathering crowds. But when he finds this man, this Jesus, the conversation doesn’t go quite as planned. Jesus has a brief conversation with him, but refuses to go with him. No magic words will be spoken. No waving of his arms or physical manifestation of a healing act. And yet, the man tells this royal official the words that he has so longed to hear:
“Go. Your son will live.”
And sure enough, we find out later that at that exact moment, the boy’s fever immediately left him. As soon as Jesus said these words, the sickness that was about to claim this boy’s life, forever alter this family, break this father’s heart, was instantaneously and completely…gone. It is clearly a story of a miraculous event that shows Jesus’ power and authority.
And yet, here’s what I want you to do: don’t pay attention to the miracle.
Crazy, right? It’s the first thing that we want to pay attention to when we read this story!
Some of us pay attention to it because it proves for us who Jesus is. He is who we want him to be. In that age-old theological fence walk between Jesus’ humanity and Jesus’ divinity, the Gospel of John definitely leans toward the divinity side of things. In Mark, Jesus is much more human. Earthier. He is healing people, for sure, but it is a more physical, human experience. He puts his fingers in people’s ears and uses his spittle to create a salve. His first attempt to bring sight to a blind man results in partial success. He is literally getting his hands dirty with the things of this world. Matthew and Luke come along and present a picture of Jesus that removes some of that human-ness, with a preference toward the divine. But then, John comes along and blows them all out of the water. I have said before that it almost seems like John’s Jesus is floating two feet above the ground throughout the whole Gospel. And in this story, all he has to do is speak a word. Like at Creation, the Holy and Divine Co-Creator Christ speaks a word and some fifteen miles away, a boy is healed. “How can you not pay attention to that?” you might ask! “This shows us exactly the Jesus that we want to believe in! Powerful! Authoritative! Healing!”
And yet, I am going to ask you not to pay attention to the miracle.
Then again, some of us pay attention to the miracle precisely because it is so hard to believe. I won’t ask for a show of hands or an admission on the chat, but I know for a fact that there are some of you who really struggle with the miracles of the New Testament. Perhaps you are scientifically-minded and struggle with the science of how someone walks on water, or turns five loaves and two fish into a feast for 5,000, or makes children on their death beds stand up and start walking around like nothing had ever happened. We don’t see these things in our world, and so we have a hard time believing that they took place in Jesus’. This becomes for us a real struggle of the faith. “Is something wrong with me if I don’t believe?” you might ask.
My plea is the same for you: don’t pay attention to the miracle.
Then again, there is a third group. I almost started this sermon off completely differently because of this third group. Because some of us pay attention to the miracle because we desperately want the same thing to happen in our lives. We have been exactly where that royal official is. We have a loved one who is sick. Or hurting. Or dying. And we would do anything, pay anything, travel any distance to bring a healer into their lives who could take away the pain. Take away the cancer. Take away the COVID. Take away the addiction. Take away the depression. Take away the crippling anxiety. Take away the infertility. Take away the struggle that they face. If only we could hear those words delivered by Jesus or anyone: “Go. Your loved one will live.” We pay attention because we want miracles in our lives.
BNT
So, why on earth would I ask all of you to not pay attention to the miracle in this story?
Because that’s what Jesus asks us to do.
By the time we get to this passage in John, Jesus has covered a lot of territory, in terms of geography and in terms of disruption of the status quo. The passage begins by reminding us of the last time he was in Cana. Since then, he has completed a full lap: disrupting the Temple worship, making disciples of the hated Samaritans, and it seems performing other miracles that we haven’t even had a chance to hear about. His reputation is growing, and not always in positive ways.
It is just at this point in Jesus’ ministry where the other Gospels include a longer story about his return to Nazareth. The other three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke, collectively known by scholars by the term “Synoptics”—tell this story of Jesus returning home with this growing Robin Hood reputation of snubber of the powerful and worker of miracles. These three include some version of this story in which Jesus challenges his hometown folks, who want to be proud of him, and don’t mind the positive attention he is bringing their way because of his miracles. But they also know him as Mary and Joseph’s boy and really nothing special. John doesn’t include this longer story, but gives us a shorthand version with a line or two, including the quote that “a prophet knows no honor in his own country.”
The reason that this is important to today’s story is because it brings up this question of how much attention that we should pay to miracles. Or in John, what is typically called “signs and wonders.” This royal official is kind of a stand-in for the townsfolk of Nazareth, at least in the way that Jesus talks to him. It feels a little jarring, doesn’t it, as Jesus basically tells him, “You are just here because you have heard about the miracles, aren’t you? You are impressed by signs and wonders and want to drag me down the hills to perform one for your Capernaum coterie. Sorry, I’m not going. Your boy is fine. Go home.”
It doesn’t sound too comforting, does it? But like the Nazareth hometown folks, Jesus has a bigger point to make: “I wish you would believe without the signs and wonders. In short, don’t pay attention to the miracle.”
So this morning, instead of paying attention to the miracle, I want to pay attention to the man. John’s Gospel so far has been filled with these rich encounters. With Nathanael. With Nicodemus. With the woman at the well and her whole community. And in each of these encounters, Jesus invites them to participate in this “fictive kindom” that we talked about last week. This alternative community that believes and trusts and follows Jesus, regardless of the amazing things that he can do. But at each encounter, the folks he talks to have become distracted by the miracles. Nathanael was impressed because Jesus miraculously knew that he sat under a tree. The woman was impressed because he miraculously knew how many husbands she had had. Nicodemus was impressed by the miraculous “signs and wonders” that he had heard about. And now, this man shows up for the same reason. But Jesus is trying to get all of them to trust him whether or not he performs miracles.
Which is exactly what he asks this man to do. Go home. Without a miracle-worker in tow. Without any assurances that anything will be different. Walk all the way home, taking every step of the way fearing that your son is already dead and that there is nothing that you can do. To this man in the midst of a medical and existential crisis, desperate and afraid and helpless, Jesus gave him no verifiable proof that his boy would live. Except his word: “your boy will live.”
Would you do it? Would you walk away? Or would you need something more? Would the image of your son lying there in pain overwhelm you to act? If you were a father in his shoes, would you give up so easily, or would you grab him by the hems of his robe and try again to persuade him to give you want you desperately want? If you had the power of the Roman Empire at your fingertips, like he appeared to, would you command by royal decree that this man be put in chains and drug to your son’s deathbed and tell him to do what you command? Pay attention to the man and what John tells us he did: “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way.”
That’s faith. Scholar Sharon Watkins asks us to pay attention to the man and his place in this story. A royal official, he endangers his place and position and power to literally beg—to grovel before this Galilean peasant. And when that peasant dismisses him without a promise or even an offer to accompany him back home, he trusts that the word that Jesus speaks is true. In John, when the English translation says “believe,” it is much more than an intellectual comprehension. It is a full and complete trust that regardless of what happens, he will do what Jesus says. Watkins likens the story to Henri Nouwen’s image of faith as a trapeze artist without a net. There is a point in the trapeze act when the artist must let go of the bar she is holding and fly into space, trusting that her partner will catch her. That letting go is the act of trust. Of faith. And this man, who has humbled himself enough to find this Galilean peasant, and who knows that the next day he might be on the road again and impossible to find, trusts enough to let go. And walks home.
Karoline Lewis points out that the power of this story is the transformation of the man. At the beginning of the story, he is referred to as “a royal official.” He is a title. Nothing more. Nothing less. Then, later in the story he is named as “the man.” A little more humanized. Finally, in the end, he is referred to as “the father.” He has been restored. He has been transformed. He has been made whole by his encounter with and trust of Jesus. The miracle of the story is not that the boy is healed, but that his father is. Transformed and ready to follow Jesus even without seeing a miracle take place.
So often, I think we approach these healing stories like a flowchart for us to follow the arrows and reproduce the experience. But I think that misses the point. This is a story about this amazing father and his amazing trust of Jesus. However, the point is not for us to follow his example in order to manipulate God into the miracle that we want! In fact, that seems to totally miss the point! Instead, it seems to be a story for those of us on this side of faith, who don’t have all the answers, who often have to live life without the miracles that we pray for, who all that we can do some days is wake up and “start on our way.”
This is not a mathematical flowchart that relies on our faith to be strong enough or verifiable enough. All this man did was take the first steps…and that was enough. Which is good news for those of us who desperately yearn for an authoritative Jesus to be that Divine (with a capital D). For those of us who struggle to believe some days, or most days. For those who pray just as fervently for a miracle in our own lives. It is good news that maybe we don’t have to have it all figured out. Perhaps all we need to do is “start on our way.” For on our way, Christ will meet us with the strength we need to make it home.
Dr. King preached this message to those who fought systemic racism in his lifetime. The injustice seemed so great. The powers of oppression seemed so unstoppable. The apathy of white churches was a wet blanket that dampened their efforts at every turn. But Dr. King preached about this trust: “Faith is taking the first step, even when you don’t see the whole staircase.” Sisters and brothers and siblings in Christ, you may not see the whole staircase. You may not know where you will end up. But hand in hand, let us “start on our way.”
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