In the Eggplant was the Word
Unlike similar claims, you didn’t have
to strain your brain to see this one. You may have heard, for example, about
the Jesus seen in a Chihuahua’s ear or the Virgin Mary found in the grease
stain of a pizza pan.
So, the question was asked, was it a
sign?
Felicia’s husband Paul noted that if
she would have cut the eggplant in a slightly different way, it might not have
spelled God. If just a fraction different, it might have spelled GOP for Grand
Old Party.
"I’m not sure if there is a message
here," Paul said, "but God made the eggplant, he formed the seeds, and he
guided my wife to cut the eggplant where his name would appear."
At the time the article was printed, the Teskes had decided to keep the
heaven-sent slice safely stored, while they pondered its meaning . . . or, pondered perhaps, whether to sell it on ebay as had another pair of sign-gatherers who claimed
to have discovered the face of Jesus in a slab of concrete. The couple made
$1,525.69 when they sold the "sign" online.
Deb Serio, a high school teacher and
active Lutheran who made the sale, told the Associated Press that she considered the smudge of driveway sealant
on her garage floor just an odd occurrence, not a sign or a miracle.
"There are some people who need this kind of thing to start them on their
faith journey. I don't," she said. "That's why I don't mind parting with it." The family hired a contractor to remove the section of concrete.
Signs – that’s the focus of this entry.
In Matthew 12:38-42, we read:
Later a few religion scholars and
Pharisees got on him. "Teacher, we want to see your credentials. Give us some
hard evidence that God is in this. How about a miracle?" Jesus said, "You’re
looking for proof, but you're looking for the wrong kind. All you want is
something to titillate your curiosity, satisfy your lust for miracles. The only
proof you’re going to get is what looks like the absence of proof:
Jonah-evidence. Like Jonah, three days and nights in the fish's belly, the Son
of Man will be gone three days and nights in a deep grave. On Judgment Day, the
Ninevites will stand up and give evidence that will condemn this generation,
because when Jonah preached to them they changed their lives. A far greater
preacher than Jonah is here, and you squabble about proofs.' On Judgment Day,
the Queen of Sheba will come forward and bring evidence that will condemn this
generation, because she traveled from a far corner of the earth to listen to wise
Solomon. Wisdom far greater than Solomon’s is right in front of you, and you
quibble over 'evidence.'" (The
Message)
Sign, Sign, everywhere a sign
Blocking out the scenery breaking my mind
Do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign?
And the sign said everybody welcome, come in, kneel down
and pray
But when they passed around the plate at the end of it
all,
I didn't have a penny to pay,
So I got me a pen and a paper and I made up my own
little sign
I said thank you Lord for thinking of me, I'm alive and
doing fine.
The foregoing is what
the Five Man Electrical Band had to say about signs back in 1970. The band
Tesla has made some updates to that song, portions of which I wouldn’t repeat
from a pulpit or in this blog. Other contemporaries like Beyonce, Justin
Timberlake, and Snoop Dogg have all sung about signs. It seems many of us are
looking for some writing on the wall or in an eggplant.
I was stunned when I
started research on this topic and discovered that people have claimed to see
the likeness of the Virgin Mary on a grilled cheese sandwich, on a chunk of
firewood, on the glass façade of a finance building, and in a two-inch tall
column of chocolate drippings. Folks have claimed to see the image of Jesus in
a fireplace brick, in paint on a wall, in a piece of sheet metal, in the dirt
on a truck’s tailgate, in a tortilla, in a pierogi, on a fish bone, on a shrimp
tail, in a dental x-ray, in a couch pattern, in an overspill of hot chocolate
on a mug and on a water-stained piece of plaster in a bathroom (this last one,
called “Shower Jesus,” sold on ebay for $1,999.99).
One of my particular
favorites in this whole catalogue of sightings is the “Nun Bun,” the face of
Mother Teresa that folks claimed to be able to see in a cinnamon bun. The Nun
Bun was shellacked and went out on tour; her usual gig, however, was an
attraction at the Bongo Java coffee shop in Nashville. That is, until she was
kidnapped during a break-in. A $5,000 reward was offered for her return. At one
point, photographs of the pastry were sent to the newspaper The Tennessean by a
person identifying himself as “Hu Dunet.” I don’t know if the bun was ever
returned to Bongo Java.
Sometimes signs can be
right square in front of us and we can completely miss seeing them and seeing
that to which they point. Ever noticed the arrow in the "FedEx"
logo?" Anyone? Anyone? If you haven’t, look in the white space between the
second "E" and the "x."
Again, sometimes signs
can be right square in front of us and we can completely miss seeing them and
seeing that to which they point. We should always be on the lookout for the
Lord’s coming into our lives. He is always surprising us: through a
circumstance or a place, through a telephone call, through a “chance” encounter
with another person, through a conversation with a family member or friend.
If
we take a moment to consider, if we are alert, eyes opens, senses sensitive to
His presence in our lives, we can see Jesus there in that situation, in that
conversation, in that experience. We are to live with the expectation and
alertness, that God’s kingdom, God’s possibilities, God’s opportunities are
forever before us and around us, breaking into our lives. But we have to
know how to read the signs that the Lord gives us so that we may keep moving
forward in our journey of faith.
Signs are something
with which we are very familiar. We see them along the road—guiding, directing,
giving information, cautioning, inviting our investment, tantalizing our taste
buds, letting us know what kind of establishment lies behind an entrance. We
see signs in our bodies. An ache in the stomach alerts us to problems with
something we ate. Aches in the knees mark an injury or the creakiness of age.
The swelling of the abdomen may signal the imminent arrival of a child. We
recognize and know how to read a multitude of symbols and signs. They are all
around us, sometimes to our dismay, sometimes to our delight.
And the scriptures are
chock full of passages on the subject of signs. Romans 1:19 and 20, for
example, tells us that, since the creation of the world, God’s invisible
qualities – His eternal power & divine nature – have been clearly seen,
being understood from what has been made so we have no excuse for disbelief, no
excuse for sin. God has set up signs in everything around us. The universe He
has created speaks to us.
 |
| NASA image of Earth and its moon. |
“The Earth is also placed at a ‘just right’
distance from the sun and the other planets in our solar system. If we were
closer to the sun, we'd burn up. If we were farther away, we'd freeze. Because
Earth's orbit is nearly circular, this slightly elliptical shape means that we
enjoy a quite narrow range of temperatures, which is important to life. The
speed of Earth's rotation on its axis, completing one turn every 24 hours, means
that the sun warms the planet evenly. Compare our world to the moon, where
there are incredible temperature variations because it lacks sufficient
atmosphere or water to retain or deflect the sun's energy. Speaking of the
moon, it’s important that there is only one moon, not two or three or none, and
it's the ‘just right’ size and distance from us. The moon's gravity impacts the
movement of ocean currents, keeping the water from becoming stagnant.
“Water itself is an
important part of a ‘just right’ world. Plants, animals and human beings are
mostly made of water, and we need it to live. One of the things that makes
Earth unique is the abundance of water in a liquid state. Water has surface
tension. This means that water can move upward, against gravity, to bring
liquid nutrients to the tops of the tallest plants. Everything else in the
world freezes from the bottom up, but water freezes from the top down.
Everything else contracts when it freezes, but water expands. This means that
in winter, ponds and rivers and lakes can freeze at the surface, but allow fish
and other marine creatures to live down below. The fact that we live on a ‘just
right’ planet in a ‘just right’ universe is evidence – a sign -- that it all
was created by a loving God.”
And that loving God
came in human flesh and when asked if He was the Messiah, the promised Savior,
He said yes. The fact that His unbelieving listeners decided then to kill Him
shows that they realized He was claiming to be Yahweh, God Almighty.
But words are cheap,
so Jesus backed up His words with miracles and signs to validate His
truth-claims. He healed all sorts of diseases in people. He healed the blind,
the deaf, the crippled, lepers, epileptics, and even a woman with a twelve-year
hemorrhage. He took authority over the demons that terrorized people. He even
raised the dead. Jesus showed His authority over nature, as well. He calmed a
terrible storm with just a word. He created food out of thin air, with bread
and fish left over! He turned water into wine. He walked on water.
He showed us what God
the Father is like. He was and is loving and sensitive, at the same time strong
and determined. Those who were willing to read the signs were drawn to Him like
a magnet, but the arrogant and self-sufficient were threatened by Him. He
drenched people with grace and mercy while never compromising His holiness and
righteousness. And after living a perfect life, He showed His love for us by
dying in our place on a cross, promising to come back to life. Who else but God
Himself could make a promise like that—and then fulfill it?
The literal, bodily
resurrection of Jesus Christ is the final, greatest proof that there is a God,
that Jesus is God Himself, and that God has entered our world and showed us the
way to heaven so we can be with Him forever. He said, "I am the way, the
truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father except by Me."
Don Fortner,
commenting on our passage for today, noted that the first thing that confronts
us in this is the fact that unbelief always looks for a sign. The Pharisees in
their brazen, obstinate, arrogant self-righteousness and unbelief said, "Teacher,
we want to see a miraculous sign from you." These folks pretended they merely
wanted a little more evidence in order to be convinced and become His
disciples. The healing of the sick, the cleansing of the lepers, the casting
out of demons, and the raising of the dead was not quite enough evidence for
them. It was not enough because they were determined not to believe the Son of
God!
And that is exactly
the state of many today. They claim a willingness to believe if only they had
enough evidence, enough proof, enough in the way of signs. But faith is the
gift of God and, if we haven’t seen enough already, a Jesus in concrete or in a
water stain or in a dental x-ray or in a chihuahua’s ear may not do the trick
either.
Verses 39-42 in Matthew 12 demonstrate
clearly that the authority of the Old Testament and the New Testament stand or
fall together. In those verses, Jesus likens His experience to that of Jonah as
He foretells what will become of Him after His suffering on the cross.
The Cliff Notes version of Jonah might
go something like this: The prophet is told to go to Nineveh, the Assyrian
capital, and deliver a message that Yahweh entrusts to him. Refusing to go to
Nineveh, Jonah instead flees to Joppa, where he boards a boat that is bound for
Tarshish. The ship on which he is riding encounters a storm and the sailors in
charge, believing Jonah to be the cause of storm, throw Jonah overboard in
order to save themselves. Jonah is swallowed by a huge fish. However, he not
only lives inside the fish for three days and three nights but is carried to
shore and thrown onto the land.
When the call to go to Nineveh comes to
Jonah a second time, he very reluctantly obeys. The only message that he
proclaims is one of destruction that will be visited on the Ninevites because
of their sins. When the people of Nineveh hear what Jonah has to say, they
repent of their sins, expressing their remorse by sitting in sackcloth and
ashes. Their repentance makes the threatened punishment unnecessary and the
story goes on from there.
Then in Matthew we read: “A wicked and
adulterous generation asks for miraculous signs. But none will be given it
except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three
nights in the belly of the fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three
nights in the heart of the earth. The men of Nineveh will stand up at the
judgment with this generation and condemn it; for they repented at the
preaching of Jonah and now one greater than Jonah is here.”
Jesus spoke of the sign of Jonah not
only in reference to the three days and three nights Jonah spent inside the
fish but also in reference to Jonah’s appearance as a visiting prophet giving
warning to a wayward people. The Pharisees in our passage, hearing this, cast
our Lord overboard, just as the sailors did Jonah. As the sea was calmed for
those sailors by the sacrifice of Jonah, so our Lord’s death made peace for us.
As Jonah’s mission and message were certified by his resurrection from the sea,
so is our Lord’s mission and message certified by his resurrection from the
dead. That man who had come back from death and burial in the sea commanded the
attention of all Nineveh. Even so, our risen Savior demands and deserves the
obedient faith of all who hear his message. The resurrection of Christ is the
sign of the prophet Jonah; but that sign is supplemented by others. Two
witnesses step forward.
As the Queen of Sheba diligently sought
Solomon and heard all his wisdom, so all who seek Christ shall find him and be
taught of him all things pertaining to life and godliness. – “Behold, one
greater than Solomon is here!” This queen of the south shall rise in judgment
against all who have Christ clearly set before them, but refuse to trust in
Him.
As the fame of Solomon caused the Queen
of Sheba to seek him, so the truth of Christ commands the attention of the
whole world. Though the Pharisees and lost folk of our day refuse Him who is
the Wisdom of God, chosen multitudes--scattered over all the earth--gladly come
to Him, bow before His majesty, and gratefully receive His Word.
The excellence of Solomon’s wisdom
stands for our Lord as another sign, a sign that cannot be disputed. Our
Savior’s royal wisdom meets all the needs of humankind. Who else has revealed
such grace and truth? Who but the Son of God could have revealed the Father to
us? Signs. Signs.
I’d like to leave you with one more
sign: the cross of Christ that – to the Christian -- is the sign of love and
forgiveness, redemption and eternal life.
After the horror of 9-11, something
remarkable was found in the rubble of the World Trade Center. The "Ground
Zero Cross" stood straight and tall, 20-feet high, surrounded by many
smaller crosses. The cross at Ground Zero, however, was not simply the cross
beams remaining from an existing building. No, it was formed out of beams from
Building One plunging, splitting and crashing into Building Six.
 |
| Crosses found by firefighters in Building 6 of the World Trade Center following 9/11. Photo by Michael Rieger. |
After it was discovered, construction workers,
firefighters, police officers and family members began holding weekly Sunday
services at the site. The names of fallen police officers and firefighters were
also scribbled on the cross, along with a prayer for God’s blessing of those
who had died in the tragedy.
Some saw the
crossed metal as a Christian cross and felt its survival was symbolic. Father
Brian Jordan, a Roman Catholic priest, spoke over it and declared it to be a
"symbol of hope, a symbol of faith, a symbol of healing.” A sign. One
minister at the site said that when the family of a man who died in the attacks
came to the cross and left personal effects there, "It was as if the cross
took in the grief and loss. He said I never felt Jesus more." The same
thing happens to each one of us when we lay our burdens down at the cross and
reach up for Jesus.
