I’ve been reading through the Bible four chapters at a time since July 1. Although I am no longer going to attempt to write about it every day, I have been wading into Exodus the last few days, and it has stirred up some thoughts about the church and the world that I wanted to put out there for response and reactions.
In the confrontation with Pharaoh and the ten plagues, the text reports multiple times that Pharaoh’s magicians were able to replicate the “wonders” of God, which played some role in Pharaoh’s hard heartedness. He saw his people doing the same tricks as Moses and Aaron, and it took the fear of God out of him.
I am an English major, and so unlike John Wesley I often move quickly to allegorical or metaphorical readings of Scripture. The “plain reading” as Wesley would call it is not nearly as interesting. So, for instance, I am not really interested in whether Egyptians magicians could actually turn water into blood the way God did.
But I am alert to ways the stories serve as metaphors for our condition and spiritual life.
And so I wonder if part of the challenge the church encounters this day is that Pharaoh’s magicians are so good at replicating so many of the wonders of God. Is this, in part, why Jesus downplayed the important of signs and wonders in his ministry? Wonders could be explained away. Some of them could be duplicated. With time and critical scholarship they could be discounted. The magicians are very crafty when it comes to debunking the miracles of God.
And so, after the apostolic age, the power of God was not seen nearly so much in miracles (although I am inclined to agree with John Wesley that every new birth of a dead soul is a miracle), but in humble witness and testimony of believers one to another. It was not by spectacle that the church spread, but by something more ordinary.
Of course, the urge to spectacle never departs the church. We always have those who want to be like Moses and raise our staff to summon frogs and flies and hail.
But these are exceptions, and perhaps even aberrations. When the church relies too much on spectacle, it may be a sign of weakness or a loss of Christ. It is may be a sign of seeking to go back to Egypt.
These thoughts of mine are not well worked out. They began in margin notes as I have been reading Exodus the last few days. They likely say as much about my mood and mind as they do about Exodus, so, I share them with the warning that they may be little more than that.
I think you’re on to some good reflections here… keep it up.
If the history is valuable, indeed the time of Jesus was replete with healers and exorcists. So in fact, lots of people were out there “duplicating” the kinds of things Jesus was doing, and with likely similar results.
It’s interesting to me that there are a few things Jesus did that others did not do. One, if we are to believe John’s gospel on this, was curing a man who had been blind from birth. John actually makes quite a big deal of this, as this blind man ends up becoming a kind of evangelist/proto-apologist for Jesus.
Another might be the story of John the Baptist’s disciples inquiring of Jesus whether he were “The One,” recorded in the synoptics but not in John. “Go and tell John what you see and hear,” Jesus told them. “The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the dead are raised and the poor have good news proclaimed to them” (Matthew 11:5).
Let me suggest that all of these, individually, except for the last one, had been duplicated by other healers and exorcists. They were amazing, but not remarkable in that sense. Perhaps then it is the last one– the poor getting good news proclaimed to them– or perhaps it in combination with the others that sets Jesus’s ministry apart from the pack, and that might just be enough to identify him as “The One.”
Thanks for the context and the encouragement, Taylor.
I’ve been noticing something similar, I think. I no longer have cable tv. But with my antenna, I receive about 8 “Christian” tv stations. As I scroll through the channels, I am left with the impression that worship generally appears to be like a show. Celebrity leaders, singers, or a band up on a stage entertaining an audience. Often there is significant audience participation, but it still appears to take more from show business than scripture.
(Forgive me if this is not directly on point. But you stirred up THIS English major’s observations with your own.)
As a former Pentecostal minister before coming to the UMC, I believe you’ve hit the proverbial nail on the head. In the Biblical story you recount, it’s interesting that there are court magicians while Moses seems to be in a different category,
Pharaoh keeps the spectacle around himself at all times and, in doing so, is blind when Aod’s working is in his midst. While in the Pentecostal church, I often heard stories of great signs and wonders but the miracle of a changed life did not seem as important unless accompanied by some flash.
We are suckers for flash and sparkle, that is for certain. You don’t have to go any farther than our own entertainment, tourism, and advertising industries to see that.
Well… and “Ooh, shiny!” does appear to be a pretty hardwired human response….