Words'nTone

Over the past few days I have posted a four-part thread on miracles, and in particular the difference between Jesus’ miracles and or more contemporary claim on them.  I pointed out that Jesus was not mere miracle-worker and did not utilize them to provoke faith, stir faith, build faith, and especially for gaining a following.  In fact those who know the Gospel well know there are times he won’t “perform” miracles and times when he chastised others who followed Him only because of the miracles.  I suggested that in the world where Jesus did miracles, the elite and powerful of the Hellenistic world used miracles to maintain order—to keep people in place so as to maintain their own position and status.  Miracles were a way of keeping their class way of life.  I suggested that, I some since, we follow the Hellenistic high class use of miracles, rather than Jesus’.  The Messiah used miracles, not to gain or maintain power and control over people, but to demonstrate the presence of the Kingdom of God, and this always did two things.  First, it confronted the status quo and order of life—in fact, as one author puts it, miracles offered disorder to the world (to the community, whether it be the village, synagogue, temple, the State of Rome, or Israel) where the socio-economic structure was challenged, upset, and reordered.  And in this reordering, Jesus both met the need of those marginalized and disenfranchised by the existing socio-economic structure and confronted that structure at the same time—this is always the nature of the Kingdom of God.

My contention (my suggestion) is that social action is a fair application to the significance of miracles (especially as I demonstrated that Mark 5 is an obvious confrontation to the socio-economic structure of the day).  Social action that has Kingdom values (which is obviously something to be explained and maybe even debated) addresses the needs of those who are effected by anti-Kingdom socio-economic structures and confronts (seeks to reorders) that socio-economic structure.  Yes, I know this doesn’t seem to address the spiritual need of the individual and the reordering of socio-economic structures does not guarantee outcomes of individual salvation, but it certainly offers parables of the presence of God’s dominion in our present time.  This is what I am after here: this seems to be the portrait of the Gospel painted by Mark (and the others as well).  Here’s the problem: Such a view and actual participation in this type of Gospel-application, that is social action, can also cause us be identified us with the marginalized and the poor and, be accused of being a traitor, and thus we could lose our power and place and this world.  Maybe we don’t like this possibility of ministry of the Kingdom because such confrontation of the social, cultural, and economic structures can lead those who seek to bring the reordering to a cross. 

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