Matt Chandler - Awake to the Miraculous

Hey, good morning! Don’t be nervous about that text— we’re going to dive in. You’re going to be fine, all right? Hey, just briefly, as we unapologetically dive into the book, it struck me that one of our worship leaders said, «I found a parking spot, and I wasn’t turned away.» So it might be helpful to lay before you that we are actually working on a plan. We’ve gutted our executive suite to make space for fourth and fifth graders. We think that age group requires its own kind of setup; you can’t put a first grader with a fifth grader and do that well. So we’ve gutted our executive suites, where the whole staff is now three to an office upstairs—it’s as awful as it sounds. We’re going to implement that as our way of doing things for the next couple of years while we work this out. That’s phase one, and it’s already working. We do have plans for the corner we bought all those years ago, and we’re going to start rolling those out for you. We know it’s hard to get in and hard to get out. We know that even the most mature and godly among us will find their faith tested trying to navigate here. So, thank you for your endurance. We do have a plan and are working on that plan; news will be coming soon, but we’ve already started by gutting the executive suites. All right, so we are moving forward. Hopefully, one day, maybe that’s all I have for you right now.

In the late fall and winter of 1819 and 1820, a 77-year-old Thomas Jefferson bought a Bible and a razor blade. Over that period of time, he sat with the Bible in his hand, specifically focusing on the four Gospels. He went line by line through Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, cutting out any reference to the miraculous, any mention of the deity of Christ, and anything other than the moral teachings of Jesus. He then published it; the actual title of that release was «The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth.» What it’s actually called now is the Jefferson Bible, and you can find a copy of it in the Smithsonian. You can also find a copy of it at the Museum of the Bible. What you’re seeing in 1819-1820 is kind of the apex—maybe not the apex, but almost the apex—of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment was the idea that there was a natural, reasonable explanation for everything. Thomas Jefferson fell very much in line with that. I don’t think he was trying to save Christianity, as I don’t think he was a Christian. However, he did see in Jesus what a lot of people see in him: some wisdom for life, some morality that meant if we would listen to it and align our lives with it, good things might happen for a town, a city, and a nation. Jefferson believed that, but he didn’t believe in the deity of Christ; he thought miracles were hogwash. So he presented to the world the Jefferson Bible.

Now, you and I, in the times that God has placed us, will repeatedly find ourselves clashing against this kind of thinking in our day and age. In fact, I find it sad that so many Christians would probably testify with their mouths that God is able, testify that they believe in miracles, read the creeds of the church that say a virgin gave birth to the Son of God, embrace the Incarnation of Christ, celebrate miraculous things, and then live like none of that is available to them—walking as if all of that is merely yesteryear’s fairy tales, looking back even on the things we see in Scripture as some sort of moral fable rather than permission to play. You will not, due to how we’re designed, push the supernatural to the fringes. We are supernatural creatures living in an enchanted world, and the more we push that to the fringes, the more it pops up in other places that are far more demonic and deadly.

So, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, while the Enlightenment pushes all that to the fringes, you’re seeing a crazy rise in New Age practices like crystals, energies, manifestations, and certain types of yoga. Don’t email me—I’m going to India on Wednesday. This mindset globally belongs only to the West. Look at me: this mindset, which says the world is not enchanted and there isn’t anything supernatural, is strictly a Western phenomenon. I will board a plane to India on Wednesday, and I will not find this mindset there. I have been to multiple places in Africa; you will not find it there either. You will not find that in Asia. They believe in an enchanted supernatural world where there’s a God or something behind everything, and we’re in desperate need of a relationship with that. It’s only in the West that we think, «I mean, maybe, but probably not.» The more we don’t fight against that and understand we truly are weird and enchanted supernatural people involved in a weird, enchanted world, the further we step away from what God has for us—what I believe is more normal than most of us think or embrace.