The crowd following Jesus after the miracle of the loaves and fishes were still unconvinced as related in this Sunday's reading from John 6:24-35,
So when the crowd saw that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum looking for Jesus.
When they found him on the other side of the lake, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’ Jesus answered them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal.’ Then they said to him, ‘What must we do to perform the works of God?’ Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.’ So they said to him, ‘What sign are you going to give us then, so that we may see it and believe you? What work are you performing? Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, “He gave them bread from heaven to eat.” ’ Then Jesus said to them, ‘Very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.’ They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.’
Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.
Does it seem hard to believe that witnesses to one miracle would demand another? Not really. Most of us "need convincing", and the scientific method requires reproducible results.
So, if Jesus appeared today and worked a miracle, what would people say?
How about you and me? Would we need him to produce another one before we believed?
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Only partly on-topic, but I had a discussion on the way home from church today with my husband, raised Catholic. He just discovered the 39 Articles and wanted to know what they are. Gave him my Prayer Book. We talked about transubstantiation. My own, probably odd, view, is that the Scholastic doctrine is a brilliant reconciliation of Aristotleian physics and church teaching. As no one uses the old physics these days, I need not argue about this reconciliation.
ReplyDeleteHowever, for me, what it boils down to is this: What part of "This is my body" and "This is my blood" are modernists choosing not to believe? What part of "I am the bread of life" do they reject? I don't need to know how miracles are accomplished; I only need to know that God performs them.
I don't know the mechanism, but He feeds us when we partake of the blessed sacraments.
DeleteAnd this one is entirely off-topic. Perhaps you'll want it for a Wednesday post sometime. There is a five-minute podcast about freedom linked below, which is very powerful. I highly recommend it.
ReplyDeletehttps://redstate.com/kiradavis/2021/07/31/must-watch-british-commentators-monologue-on-the-nature-of-freedom-will-make-you-stand-up-and-cheer-n419415