The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

© 2025, Dr. Tamilio

When my daughter was born, there was a large amount of meconium in the amitotic fluid.  Translation: she had a bowel movement while in utero.  This can be a serious issue if any gets into the lungs of the baby.  Immediately after she was born, they had to suction the fluid out of her lungs.  Immediately.  They informed us that they would have to do this and that they’d have to act quickly.  I panicked.  “What does this mean,” I thought?  “What are the risks?”  Long story short: everything turned out fine.  However, there were a few moments when there was a concern.  Immediately after Sarah was born, the medical staff whisked her away and suctioned all the meconium out of her lungs — then handed her over to a very nervous and grateful first-time Dad.

Later that day, I ran home to check on the apartment we lived in at the time: to feed the cats, take a shower, and grab the mail.  On the way back to the hospital, I stopped at a convenience store to grab something to drink and to pick up some copies of the day’s paper so that my daughter could see what was going on in the world the day she entered it.  As I was waiting in line, a boy about ten years old came into the store and was staring at me.  I turned toward him once he caught my eye.  He smiled and said in a very calm, comforting voice, “Everything’s going to be alright.”  When I asked him what he was talking about he paused and said, “You daughter.  Everything is going to be alright.”

I stood there speechless not knowing what to say.  The young boy turned, left, and I never saw him again.  I think he was an angel.

Miracles happen all the time.  They’re not always acts that defy the laws of nature, although sometimes they are.  The Philosophy of Religion is a field that has long been of interest to me.  Among the numerous topics it tackles, miracles is one of them.  Are the miracle stories in the Bible literally true?  Do miracles happen nowadays?  If so, why don’t they occur more often?

All of these questions, and more, require us, as believers, to explore this concept.  First, we need to define what a miracle is.  What I just said a moment ago is a typical definition: a miracle is something that defies the laws of nature.  But that is not quite accurate.  The young boy I encountered in the convenient store wasn’t defying any natural laws.  I do not know how he knew what he knew.  Maybe he saw me in the hospital.  I have no clue.

Miracles can be moments or acts when God makes the impossible possible, but they can also be things for which we have a logical answer.  We know why and how the earth revolves around the sun, but the fact that it does (actually, the fact that we have a sun, and an earth, and a moon, and stars, and planets, and galaxies) is itself miraculous!  It’s mind blowing if you think about it — as are sunsets and sunrises and waterfalls and glorious birds that soar across the sky and so many other things that we think are commonplace, but they are no less amazing the more we think about it.

In other words, miracles abound.

Not everyone agrees.  The eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher David Hume didn’t believe in miracles and offered a blistering attack of them.  One of Hume’s more astute (but by no means totally convincing) critiques of miracles is that they conform to laws of nature that we’ve yet to discover.  In other words, biblical miracles are acts that conform to certain natural laws that humankind has yet to uncover or understand.  The problem is that some of these miracles — particularly the miracles that Jesus performed — do not seem contingent upon anything natural.  What would be the “law” that enabled someone to multiply a few fish and a couple of loaves of bread into a meal to feed thousands of people?  How do the planets need to align for water to turn into wine?  What sort of natural phenomenon must occur for a man to walk on water?

Hume also claimed that miracles seem to occur among more primitive, uneducated people so we have to take what they say with several grains of salt.  (Yes, learned philosophy can be stuck up jerks.)

Hume’s criticisms aside, we need to listen to our brothers and sisters in Christ.  Many of them have something to tell us about miracles.  I did the thing that I typically do when I want to solicit feedback from people: I post a question on social media to see what friends and relatives think.  The question: name something you think is a miracle.  Some of the answers were natural:

• The sun coming up every day.
• Healthy babies.
• Childbirth
• Grass turning green after rainfall.
• Mitosis (which is the process of cell duplication — I had to look that one up, too).

Some were a bit existential:

• Me
• Being
• Living
• The fact that I haven’t died from my poor life choices yet.

Some, of course, were silly.

• My eldest son wrote: Rafael Devers getting a hit. (Spoken like a true Bostonian.)
• In a like-manner, a friend wrote: the 2004 ALCS comeback. (That’s when the Red Sox came back 3-0 to beat the Evil Empire from New York.)

And some were touching:

• Getting all A’s in college at age 57.
• Surviving cancer.

Take a copy of this sermon and add your miracle to the list.

God told the prophet Isaiah (as we read this morning): “I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth; do you not perceive it?”  God is always doing new things in our midst.  That’s because our faith is a living faith.  Miracles are not just acts we read about in Scripture.  Thinking otherwise is to refuse to see the Holy Spirit moving among us.

Keep your eyes open, my friends.  Look around.  Don’t just look above you waiting for a miracle to fall out of the sky.  Look next to you.  There might be a homeless person giving you the opportunity to be the miracle.  Look around the corner.  There may be a soup kitchen that needs the assistance of someone like you — someone who can perform simple (but no less extraordinary) miracles.  Look next door.  There may be a widow or a widower who just needs someone to talk to.  A burning bush?  Walking on water?  Not quite, but no less an example of the power of God at work in the world through you.  (Pause).  No less an example of the power of God at work in the world through you.

I think Einstein said it best: “There are two ways to live: you can live as if nothing is a miracle; [or] you can live is everything is a miracle.”  Choose the later.

Amen.