When miracles are gone, everything is holy

Originally published 8 April 2007

What is a miracle?

A man sur­vives a hor­ren­dous auto­mo­bile crash. We say: “It’s a mir­a­cle that he’s still alive.” And indeed it may be a thing of won­der, but it’s not a mir­a­cle, not if it’s pos­si­ble to imag­ine some com­bi­na­tion of nat­ur­al cir­cum­stances that made his sur­vival possible.

A child’s leukemia goes into remis­sion. “A mir­a­cle!” we say. But no. The dis­ease is suf­fi­cient­ly com­plex as to admit a nat­ur­al expla­na­tion. We may not know the expla­na­tion, but we can rea­son­ably imag­ine that one exists.

Rare events are not mir­a­cles. To qual­i­fy as a mir­a­cle an event must man­i­fest­ly exclude every pos­si­bil­i­ty of nat­ur­al explanation.

For a per­son to lev­i­tate would be a mir­a­cle. For an ampu­tat­ed human limb to regrow would be a mir­a­cle. Chang­ing water into wine would be a mir­a­cle. Mul­ti­ply­ing loaves and fish­es ditto.

Ris­ing from the dead and ascend­ing bod­i­ly into heav­en would be a very big mir­a­cle. There is no tes­ti­mo­ny or affir­ma­tive evi­dence for that par­tic­u­lar mir­a­cle that would pass muster in a court of law.

But bear with me for a moment, for I too cel­e­brate this holy day.

Accept­ing the phys­i­cal res­ur­rec­tion of the his­tor­i­cal Jesus means set­ting aside one’s ratio­nal fac­ul­ties and mak­ing a leap of faith. That so many peo­ple are will­ing to do so says more about where we have been as a species than where we are going.

There was a time when every event was a mir­a­cle. That is to say, every event was thought to be direct­ed by super­nat­ur­al gods or spir­its. Sun. Moon. Brook. Tree. Each was ani­mate. Will­ful. Alive. The return of the Sun to north­ern skies, for exam­ple, with the con­se­quent renew­al of plants and fer­til­i­ty of ani­mals, required peti­tions to the gods and cel­e­bra­tions. What if the prayers were not said, the sac­ri­fices not made? Every­thing had a dan­ger­ous chanci­ness about it.

Comets. Eclipses. Dis­ease. Storms, vol­canic erup­tions, earth­quakes. All the work of an inter­ven­ing deity. “A fine soft day, thanks be to God,” they say in Ire­land, and the phrase had a lit­er­al origin.

It was when peo­ple stopped assum­ing the inter­ven­tions of will­ful gods or spir­its, and start­ed attend­ing instead to things char­ac­ter­ized by order­ly rep­e­ti­tion that sci­ence was born. A mir­a­cle by def­i­n­i­tion can­not be pre­dict­ed, except by those who claim to know the minds of gods. But any­one armed with New­ton’s laws of grav­i­ty and motion can pre­dict the return of a comet.

Germs or genes cause dis­ease. Slip on frac­tures caus­es earth­quakes. Pres­sure sys­tems in the North Atlantic cause fine soft days in Ire­land, and any halfway good sci­en­tif­ic weath­er­per­son can tell you what sort of day to expect tomorrow.

This is the most impor­tant con­clu­sion of the sci­en­tif­ic way of know­ing: Mir­a­cles don’t hap­pen. Behind every event there are pat­terns of reg­u­lar­i­ty that are at least poten­tial­ly know­able. Pick­ing and choos­ing one’s mir­a­cle is a fool’s game: Chris­t­ian mir­a­cles, yes; Hin­du mir­a­cles, no. Jesus ris­ing into heav­en, yes; the Mahar­ishi float­ing six feet off the ground, no. What all super­nat­u­ral­ists have in com­mon is this: Our mir­a­cles are mirac­u­lous; your mir­a­cles are superstition.

Saint Paul said, “If Christ be not risen, our faith is in vain.” And fair enough; he was writ­ing at a time when vir­tu­al­ly every­one on the plan­et looked for super­nat­ur­al mean­ing in excep­tion­al events. Mean­while, a small group of men and women, cen­tered pri­mar­i­ly in Alexan­dria, had decid­ed that some­thing was to be said for attend­ing to the unex­cep­tion­al, and in doing so cre­at­ed the sci­en­tif­ic way of knowing.

Of course, sci­ence can­not prove that mir­a­cles don’t hap­pen. But the assump­tion that mir­a­cles don’t hap­pen has proved to be a fab­u­lous­ly suc­cess­ful way of mak­ing sense of the world.

And when mir­a­cles have been swept away, what is left?

What is left is mod­ern med­i­cine. What is left is being able to live out most of one’s life with­out a toothache. What is left is tech­nol­o­gy — iPods, Boe­ing Dream­lin­ers, MRI machines, lap­top com­put­ers. What is left is knowl­edge of the galax­ies and the DNA. What is left is the chance to live our lives free of the con­trol­ling influ­ence of those who claim to know the mind of God. What is left is a recog­ni­tion that it is not the excep­tion­al event that gives mean­ing to life, but the unex­cep­tion­al. What is left is an East­er sto­ry of the death and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus that need not be tak­en lit­er­al­ly to touch us with its pathos, tragedy and triumph.

The word mir­a­cle is derived from the Latin mirac­u­lum, “some­thing won­der­ful.” We should reclaim the word for the com­mon­place, for a nat­ur­al world that is won­der­ful beyond our knowing.

On this holy East­er morn­ing let us praise the yel­low star that sus­tains us, now hav­ing eased its way back into a more bestow­ing ver­ti­cal­i­ty. Let us praise the extra­or­di­nary ordi­nary egg. Let us praise the utter­ly mirac­u­lous gam­bol­ing lamb. The cro­cus and the daf­fodil, arrayed more splen­did­ly than Solomon in all his glo­ry. The child’s bright eyes when she spies the bas­ket of can­dy. Let us praise an ordi­nary world that is more gen­er­ous than capri­cious, that speaks to us of the sacred in every peb­ble and drop of rain.

And, yes, let us praise too the son of the car­pen­ter of Nazareth, who — in the finest telling of his sto­ry, stripped of the super­nat­u­ral­ism of his time — rose from his pal­let day by ordi­nary day and taught us in ordi­nary words to love one anoth­er, who drove mon­ey chang­ers from the tem­ple, cel­e­brat­ed wed­dings, fed the poor, preached to the hum­ble, and who, at a brave young age, gave his one pre­cious ordi­nary life that his peo­ple might be free both in spir­it and in fact.