Miracles – Bo (Exodus 10:1 - 13:16)

In the thick of the drama and action of Exodus, this reading is full of Big Ones. Not a bad place to ask what they are, anyway.

Exodus is full of big, showy miracles. Burning bushes, blood and frogs and hail and locusts and darkness, and of course the splitting Sea.

But what are miracles? Are they God arbitrarily breaking the rules of His own creation? And, why not? It’s His world, right? If we accept that God created this whole ‘universe’ thing, it stands to reason He can do with it as He pleases. The Book seems to back that conclusion. … But why, then, the Ten Plagues? Assuming God really wanted these specific slaves for a job, He could have done Exodus in several much simpler and direct ways: He could have just shazammed the whole bunch out of Egypt and straight into the Promised Land, one vast burst of light and the Canaanites suddenly find themselves in Egypt, facing a rather nonplussed Pharaoh… and no further damage done. More mundanely, God could have cut straight to the Darkness, under which cover the Israelites could just have snuck out of Dodge (wonder why they didn’t?). Or, the Death of the firstborn could have taken all of Egypt. Or, a meteor could have squashed Egypt, Sodom-style, right after the Israelites scamper. Add a pillar of salt, and no need to split the Sea.

For one, it’s an interesting thought experiment to imagine world history if Egypt had suddenly ceased to exist around 3000 years ago. But maybe God wasn’t done with Egypt. Egypt does seem to have had more of a part to play in History. God does take great pains so Egypt will remain after this sad affair is done… whether or not it learned the lesson. Maybe one principle at play is that of minimum force: never apply more force than required to achieve the objective. God applies the precise amount of force required, at the precise time and place, to obtain the desired result with minimum damage, collateral or otherwise. That most definitely doesn’t mean no damage. Sometimes damage is unavoidable, and sometimes it’s required – either because a point must be made, or simply as the logical consequence of very bad choices (you know who you are).

Others say no, miracles do not break natural laws. They’re just extremely unlikely events. And if so, maybe God need not be involved at all. Locust swarms happen all the time over there. Deadly plagues used to happen most years. Hail’s downright banal (was it global warming already?). Firstborn die all the time, and darkness happens every night. As for the Sea, the text actually says a strong wind pushed the water open. The Exodus plagues can be blamed on an unlikely sequence of natural phenomena, taken to unlikely extremes. A plague taking only the firstborn, but all of them. Darkness, but of unusual duration. Wind, that moves so much water it opens a dry path. Even the pillar of cloud and fire has been theorized as a distant volcano – and who knows? The Rabbis in the Mishnah (Pirke Avot 5), maybe uncomfortable with the idea of God, at a whim, breaking His own rules, even stated that the least explainable miracles (Balaam’s talking donkey, the manna, several others) must have been created at the very end of the 6^th day – as it were, baked right in ahead of time. Personally, this seems an unnecessary attempt to place philosophical limitations on God – did our Rabbis not trust God, that they would try to convince everyone (themselves?) that, by implication, there would be no more world-shaking Big Miracles? Rather preserve the potential for wonder, and hope, that if and when appropriate, God will step in and make His point, however He sees fit. Yes, the Bible teaches that God’s creation is one of order and laws, that it is intelligible, that human reason can work within and upon it. But ruling God’s continued involvement out risks making him into the clockmaker deity of the Deists – and might lead directly and too easily to the reductionist-materialist path our culture has been speeding along, to ends unthought.

Some miracles really are different. Bigger. Showier, partly to make a point. Those in Exodus say, inter alia, there’s a new Sheriff in town. A radically different God just reentered History, and the world is forever changed. The ancients thought the world was eternal and forever cyclical. God says, no. There is a beginning, a purpose, and a direction. Following chapters will teach exactly what that is to be. Oh, and this new God dislikes slavery and oppression – intensely. God uses Big Miracles sparingly (maybe that’s why they’re saved in the Book). But for those willing to look close enough, God’s hand is active in History, all right. Usually, like a master showman, God’s hand just barely moves the curtain from behind, adjusting just the one thing by just the right amount, no more. Studying the Pilgrims, or George Washington and American Independence, or Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, will show that hand at work, if done with open mind and open soul. Modern Israel, which by the ‘normal’ laws of history probably shouldn’t exist, teaches similar lessons – as does a presidential candidate turning his head at the precise time and by the precise amount required for an assassin’s bullet to just miss his brain.

And who’s lived enough but cannot say that life itself, every moment in time, every seed turning into a tree, every child born, every breath taken, consciousness itself, are not constant miracles – in a universe that had to be created just so for any of it to happen at all? Exodus is full of miracles. So is holding your baby, meeting your wife, or whatever ‘just happened’ at exactly the right time. Or even, all those kids riding around on the top of the car, look ma no hands… and not dying. God really loves kids, that’s for sure.

A change of perspective may not make a miracle… but it sure can reveal one.

Are miracles breaking natural laws, or worked into those laws? Yes. Are they God changing the course of things, or something meant to happen all along? Yes. But for sure, they’re not as rare as we lazily assume. Maybe we assume that, because if God is constantly at work in the world, that increases, rather than decreases, our burden of responsibility. It brings home that this world is not just a vale of tears to schlep through, much less a meaningless accident of matter – and that means our own actions matter all the more. But isn’t that the best, most hopeful answer possible?

To the extent that miracles break the laws of nature, then seen from the right angle, God’s light shines bright through the cracks. They’re everywhere, if we know how to see. Maybe that’s a Hallmark cliché for a reason. Shall we take a look? Wonder what we’ll find.

God help us all.