The Bible provides us with the record of God's initiative in bringing salvation to mankind. Both the Old and New Testaments reveal the working of God in human lives and in human history. When God enters the scene of human events, He produces mighty acts of wonder and amazement. The presence of miracle surrounding God's activity should not cause us to be surprised. God, who is the source of all life, always acts in a miraculous way. We can consider the whole creation to be a visible expression of the miracle of God's love.

     For a modern person the existence of miracle is a difficult subject. We have been taught to believe that everything happens according to some scientific law. When something doesn't seem to go in accord with what we know of as a scientific law, we either say it couldn't have happened at all, or else we say that somehow the laws of nature were changed. Neither of these viewpoints is correct in relation to miracle. Miracles really do happen, but God does not rearrange His universe in order to perform them. A false view is presented by the play on Broadway "Green Pastures", in which God would ask His angels to get the smoke ready because He was going to pass a miracle. No, that is not the way miracles happen.

     Actually, we know very little about the nature of the universe. In spite of our scientific advancement over the last four hundred years we have only scratched the surface in understanding the way this wonderful creation works. Miracles are a higher form of nature of which we, as yet, have not developed an understanding. Miracles are just as natural as ordinary every day events. They are all part of the totality of God's creation. There is no essential distinction between some marvelous work of wonder and some hum drum day to day activity. St. Augustine in the fifth century taught us to think of miracles in this way. "Mankind has not yet developed a sufficient understanding," he said, "to grasp theses acts of wonder." There is no essential difference between the sun coming up in the morning and going down at night, the grass growing in the fields, or as we heard this morning, the revelation to Moses in the burning bush, or the man being brought back from the dead by Jesus. They are all part of one whole system of life, which comes from God and goes to God. As the Palmist said of God, "Remember the marvelous works that He hath done, His wonders and the judgments of His mouth." The key to understanding miracle is not be asking, "Did it happen, or did it not?" Rather, we should ask: "What does it mean? How do we respond to it?" A better definition for our day of miracle is "A wonderful act which inspires faith in God." Forget the old definition that you once learned that a miracle was a violation of a natural law. That is not true. A miracle is an amazing event, which produces faith in God.

     Many years ago a young Marine officer sat in my office and told me how one time his whole helicopter disintegrated around him when he was hit by ground fire over Vietnam. Instinctively he lifted his heart and mind to God. Someone grasped his arms and he was picked up and deposited 200 feet away in a tree. He was unhurt except for a few burns on his uniform. That was a wonderful act, which for him restored his faith in God. He had been an acolyte as a young boy, but since that time he had dropped out of the Church.

     I am sure many of you have had in your own lives similar occurrences that you can remember of amazing events, which led you closer to God. Without faith, however, these events become mere coincidences. If you don't believe in God, if you have not faith, then you can easily say that the burning bush that Moses saw was only desert foxfire and he didn't know what he was seeing. Or you could say that when Jesus brought back to life the young man who had died that this was only a case of suspended animation where people thought he was dead. We know of such instances. It has happened on occasion where individuals have been declared dead by all the authorities and they have revived.

     You can doubt the existence of everything if you want to. Many of the people of the Jews who accompanied Jesus and actually saw the wonderful acts He performed were led to withdraw further and further from Him, and to doubt Him more and more because of these very acts. When Jesus healed the sick some of His enemies said, "Aha, it is by the power of Satan that He is doing this." They exhibited complete disbelief. When Jesus performed the most stupendous miracle of His entire career, which was bringing back to life Lazarus who had been in the grave four days, they said, "We have to kill Him because now all the people will follow Him." The reality of miracle depends on faith. If you respond with faith it will lead you closer to God.

     The key to the great life-giving revelation of God, which He pours into the world, is the response of the human subject. Suppose Moses, as he was leading his flock through the desert of the Mount Horeb area of Arabia had not turned aside when he saw the flaming bush. If he had ignored it, or if he had explained it away, then the whole incredible story of the deliverance of the Hebrew slaves who for four hundred years had been held captive by the most powerful nation of that time would have never been told. The biblical record of God's love for His people would never have occurred. All the tremendous developments growing out of that miraculous deliverance would never have entered into world history.

     When you think of it never before or since, in the history of the world, have a group of people in such a condition freed themselves and then founded a nation. It was incredible, it was miraculous. In the story of Exodus wonderful act follows wonderful act. All of them can be explained scientifically and historically. All of them have a basis in fact and in the normal operations of life. They were wonderful, they were amazing and they produced faith in God on the part of the Hebrews. The last great act of deliverance was, as they were fleeing from Pharoah and his soldiers, the Red Sea parted and they passed through on dry land. Then, as the chariots of Pharoah were thundering down upon them to drive them back into slavery, the waters closed in again and the soldiers were drowned.

     The biblical history of the deliverance of a suffering, enslaved people has inspired, ever since that time, the aspirations of all mankind to be delivered from their oppressors. Our ancestors who crossed the ocean were seeking religious freedom and they settled in this land in order to be able to worship God in the wilderness like the children of Israel. They believed that God was leading them across the seas to the Promised Land. The American Civil War, which was fought with so much bloodshed and heartbreak in our land, was looked upon by many people as a miraculous deliverance of a suffering people from slavery by the wonderful hand of God.

     There is an even deeper and more important human need than political liberation and social freedom. We need a miraculous deliverance from our old enemy of death, which holds our souls in enslavement. Ancient Egypt was both politically and sociologically organized around the principal of death. The pyramids are gigantic tombs bearing witness to the cold hand of death. In the New Testament St. Paul says, "mankind's last great enemy is death."

     When we look upon the revelation of Christ in the gospels in relation to the Old Testament we see how the historical events of the Old Testament story are actually a pattern or figure, if you will, in history of the deliverance of each human being from the kingdom of death. This is also done in a way which is beyond human comprehension, and which is a way filled with wonder and inspires faith. Mankind is delivered from his slavery to death by the miraculous death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We see in Christ the fullness of God's liberating, redeeming power.

     The miracles that are reported in the gospels are all true. They all happened. If you had been there with a camera and a tape recorder you could have recorded them all. They all have scientific explanations. There is no alteration of natural process here. There is a higher form of natural process and higher form of scientific understanding required. Our Lord, Himself, the source of true salvation, was absolutely bursting with this spiritual power. Everything He touched, everything He said was incandescent with the life-giving presence and love of God. It would be unbelievable if He didn't perform these miracles. It is pathetic to observe the mind of today which has closed itself off from the existence of miracle. This is the mind that is so prosaic, so earthbound, so shallow, which says, "Because I can't understand it, it couldn't happen."

     On the other hand, one must be willing to let the first flashes of faith enter our consciousness as we observe Christ receiving the people who are sick, who can't hear or can't speak, who are demented, and who are bereaved. We will observe His healing touch upon them, His love, and His compassion, all of which was the motivation for His miracles. If one can only believe in a loving God, and the possibility of love in life, in spite of all the hurts and disappointments, gradually the wonderful life-giving power of God will be opened up and revealed to us. One can then understand more and more the miracle of regeneration that is in Christ. Finally, for the faithful believing Christian, not only is Christ seen as a miraculous being, but life itself becomes miraculous. The sun in the morning, the stars and moon at night, the flowers of the field, human associations, friendship, joy and happiness, all these things are signs of the miraculous love of God. The grave is no longer a horrible gaping emptiness. It is filled with the possibilities of new life, new joy and reconciliation in the life beyond this one.

     We have presented to us in the gospel today the real purpose of the wonderful acts of God that were wrought thousands of years ago in the land of Egypt on a people beloved of God, who were delivered from slavery which resulted in their faith in Him. We receive in the Gospel of Luke the revelation of all mankind being delivered by Christ from the slavery of death in the person of the widow's only son. Jesus had compassion on the widow who had lost her only son. Out of His compassion, out of His love, He touched the coffin as it passed on the way to the cemetery. He said, "Young man I say unto thee, arise." He says this to every young man. Arise from the death of Sin, the death of selfishness, the death of hopelessness and stand on your feet and live. The man sat up and began to speak. Jesus then restored him to his mother, and the disciples believed in Him. As St. Luke tells us, "And there came a great fear on all: and they glorified God saying that a great prophet is risen up among us and that God has visited His people." The love of God not only comes to save each one of us individually; it unites us with our loved ones and puts us into a loving fellowship with one another. It gives us the foretaste of that eternal fellowship which God has prepared for those who love Him.

     Miracle then, is a wonderful act, which inspires faith. May you open your eyes to see the hand of God in everything around you. May you believe in Him and serve Him, the Lord Jesus Christ, who has come to free you from your last great enemy, which is death.