Sunday 17 January 2010

On being an ham

Being an absolute ham it was my delight to turn water into wine during my sermon this morning. The audible gasp titillated my vanity.
The art of magic is to cause people to look physically or mentally in the other direction while the trickster fiddles with the evidence. The good magician confounds the thinker/analyst...let's face it anyone can do tricks which people can explain.
My point? The reading was John 2...the miracle of water into wine (see one version of some of my thoughts here)
Miracles are not magic tricks, they are perceptions by the faithful of what God might be doing. Those who don't have, or aren't interested in faith won't get the miracle. That's OK, their scepticism challenges the charlatan (and there are plenty of those around). By and large the sceptic can only insult the truly faithful, because the person of faith.....assuming they are not just blindly naive...will be operating at a deeper level, than the tricky.
By and large the world is only interested in the shallow trick...but the life of the Spirit is likely to be involved with the conversion of life.
Using the example of Mother Mary Mackillop (over whom there has been some miracle controversy of late), can't help but think that (practical woman that she was) she would be the first to promote the idea that our lives are what needs to be given to God, not some cheap trick

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ham that I am, I turned grape juice into water this morning

Stephan Clark said...

well there you go!!!