Word to the Wise
Monday, February 17, 2014 - Monday in the 6th Week in Ordinary Time
[Jas 1:1-11 and Mark 8:11-13]The Pharisees came forward and began to argue with Jesus, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.
In Shakespeare's play, Julius Caesar, Mark Antony's funeral oration contains the well-known comment: "The evil that men do lives after them. The good is oft interred with their bones." The Pharisees may be trying to trap him into doing "soothsaying," which was forbidden by Deuteronomy 18:10-11, or else trying to get Jesus to do what he had refused to do for Satan in the desert - i.e. to turn himself into a magician and treat God like one. His message would then be presented as mere "magic" to live after him and his mission would be "interred with his bones." He refuses to be trapped.
Christian faith today lives in an uneasy relationship with the miraculous because of the advances in scientific knowledge since the "age of enlightenment." The great English spiritual writer, C. S. Lewis, in his classic, Miracles, shows that it is completely reasonable to accept the miraculous as a part of creation and faith. However, it is questionable to treat the miraculous as a form of "proof" of the existence of God. Jesus consistently resisted outright demands for "signs" and worked them only when there was sufficient faith to support the action. He had a message to preach and his ultimate "sign" would be his death and resurrection. AMEN