A healing priest is in the process of a miracle. He goes to a man sitting in a wheelchair and says, “Stand up.” The man slowly stands up. The congregation gasps. The priest says, “Now walk, my child. Walk.” The man slowly starts walking. And the crowd was shocked. The priest then gives the microphone to the man and asks, “Now, what can you say upon the miracle of God that you’re walking?” The man says, “I still can’t see.” He didn’t have trouble walking. He couldn’t see.
Miracles are everywhere. Some may be small and insignificant to the human eye, but some are in your face and unbelievable. Such as this modernday miracle of Emma McKinley. Anybody heard of Emma McKinley? I didn’t either till I found this song. In 1993 on Easter weekend, Emma McKinley lost her balance and fell from a storage locker at work. Her foot got wedged when she fell. Her body hung upside down until a coworker found her and called 911. Her head hit very hard and she didn’t come too until the next day. So, she was out cold hanging there. As she was healing from the fall, she developed RSD.
RSD is a chronic and progressive nerve disorder that left her entire body in severe pain. Now, a little side note, I had an aunt that had RSD and they didn’t there isn’t much research on RSD. She had fell and broken her arm and because it damaged the nerves, you couldn’t even hardly breathe on her arm and she suffered with that till the day she died because there’s no real uh cure for it that can give you she had a pump with morphine in it but there’s really no real cure for RSD. So, you know that Emma McKinley was in a lot of pain.
Because of this trauma and this accident, she leaned on Jesus more than ever before. As she began to heal, she was confined to a wheelchair. As time went on, her left hand closed into a fist and she was unable to open it. Her neck and spine twisted to the left, leaving her body in an awkward and painful position. Jason, her son, saw how hard life had been for Emma. He said it was hard to see somebody go through that much, much less a family member.
Through all the years of her pain, discomfort, and her confinement to a wheelchair, her attitude was positive. I know mine wouldn’t be. She said, “I kept pressing forward each and every day, knowing that Jesus was going to give me strength and that he was going to be there for me and he would never let me down.”
As time went on though, things went from bad to worse. Blood clots formed in her legs, which posed a threat to her health. The doctors wanted to amputate both her legs, but she refused. She said, “I never get gave up. I kept praying and thanking God for my healing because I had that much faith in my Jesus to know that someday he was going to give me the healing I was praying for the night before Christmas Eve 2011.” Now, did you remember what I said? The accident happened in 1993. We’re at 2011. That’s 18 years later. She’s been suffering this.
She fell out of her wheelchair. For 8 hours, she laid on the floor in excruciating pain, crying out to Jesus for help. Emma says that Jesus came into her room and reached out and touched her. She said she couldn’t see Jesus, but she could feel that her left leg was twisting back into the right position. She felt that Jesus was straightening out her crooked foot. She felt her spine was being straightened and she felt her left hand that had been clenched in a fist for over 18 years was starting to open. She said I could take my hand and I could flex and use my fingers. She said she felt that Jesus Jesus was kneeling on one knee right beside her and he extended his hand out to me asking me for mine. She said Jesus took her hand and she stood up. Even though the bones were creaking like crazy because they hadn’t been used in 18 years, she knew she had to start walking. And she used those feet and legs. She started walking for the first time in 18 years.
Just a few hours later, Emma’s two sons and her grandchildren came over to celebrate Christmas Eve, unaware of the miracle of his mother’s experience. They didn’t know she was out of the wheelchair. Jason said, “I hadn’t seen my mother out of a wheelchair since my wedding in 1993. At that moment, everything I knew was different because she was supposed to be in that wheelchair, but she was walking. It was a surreal moment seeing her walk. It was like it’s a miracle. There’s nothing else it could be.”
Emma says that being able to stand and walk on her own has changed her life forever. Although she still has the RSD symptoms, she and her family believe that God is in control. Jason says, “This is such a story of hope. This miracle is not just for my mom, not just for our family, but it’s for everybody. Whatever difficulties people may be facing, there’s always hope.” Emma said, “Jesus has never let me down. He has always been there for me. In his word, he says he will never leave or forsake me.” And I knew that and I trusted his word.
Now, I read this story and I thought, hm, I’m not going to be like I always am. Just read the one story and not research it. So, I did research it. This is a true story. This actually happened because it’s all documented by the Mayo Clinic that had been following her since her accident in 1993. So, that was a true story. 18 years that woman suffered and she believed it was Jesus who was there helping her. Was it? Who knows? Only we can trust that he said, “You’ve suffered enough. Go ahead, stand up.”
So, just like Emma’s miracle, we read about miracles performed in the Bible all the time, don’t we? One of these which we have read in both our New Testament and our Old Testament readings is the feeding of the 5000. So how would you interpret this miracle? Did you know that there’s the feeding of the 5000 is recorded in all four gospels? So to me that means it’s very important right if all four of them are writing about it.
But there might be a or two that we miss when reading or hearing about this miracle. For instance, in the Gospel of John, which we read this morning, John 19, it says, “There is a lad who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are these for so many people?”
I had always heard and assumed when I heard about this particular passage, as many did, that there was a little boy giving Jesus his lunch. Now, after reading that passage again and again, I just did. But that’s not what the Bible says, is it? He doesn’t say there’s a lad who gave Jesus his lunch. Now, it’s very possible and it might be true that he gave Jesus his lunch, but sometimes I think we assume things are true because we’ve heard them told over and over and over again the same way. Right? So it only says here is that that the boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go among so many? Now that’s all it says. It doesn’t say anything about a lunch being packed by his mama. Right?
So why is he there? Where is he going? What does John why does John mentioned him when the other gospel writers don’t. They don’t even talk about this boy. I think there’s a story behind this. Let’s explore this a bit more. When we are curious about things and ask questions, it doesn’t make things believable. It actually makes us believe more. Think about that statement. Doesn’t make things believable. It makes us believe more. Because when we’re curious, what do we do? We figure out what’s going on, right?
The truth is we don’t know the actual specifics about this boy. But what if we’ve been assuming wrong all along and it wasn’t his lunch? What if his mother sent him with a little bit of money and said, “I want you to get some food for our family because we don’t have any food.” What if it was only enough for a day’s worth of food? What if it was all the money that they had? What if that boy stopped by a lake and maybe some fisherman gave him the two fish? Or maybe he caught the two fish himself and he was going to be so proud to show it to his mom because he only had enough money for the bread.
There’s a lot of whatifs here, right? So, I’m not saying that’s what happened, but the Bible isn’t specific, but it is possible. And in if it’s that’s the case, the story takes on a whole different meaning, doesn’t it? Because the boy’s not just giving him his lunch. He’s not just giving him a snack. We’re talking about a kid giving away everything he has to give. This changes things, doesn’t it?
We’re now talking about a boy placing something very valuable into the hands of Jesus. He is giving Jesus something that his family may have been counting on, something that he could have justified holding on to. Why would I give something valuable to Jesus? I need it. Right? That’s where faith usually gets tested, right? Not with things we don’t care about, but with things that we do care about. Just like we were talking about Linda and Dan who lost their friend that they care about. They are being tested.
So the disciples looked at the crowd and they saw a problem. But Jesus looked at the crowd and saw an opportunity, an opportunity to preach through a miracle. Jesus said, “Bring those loaves of bread and fish to me. Put them in my hand.”
Then something incredible happens. The people don’t just take a bite or a little sample. They eat until they’re full. And afterward, Jesus tells his disciples to gather the leftovers. Leftovers? We only had two fish and five loaves. How do you get leftovers? There were 12 baskets of leftovers. All four gospels say the same thing. 12 baskets of leftovers. Not only did it feed the people, but there were leftovers.
Make a note that none of the gospels tell us what happened to the leftovers. They just told us that there were 12 baskets. So that brings up another question. H what happened to those leftovers? So instead of bringing a little bit back, did the boy bring back enough food to feed his family for a long time? Did he get a basket of leftovers?
The Bible doesn’t say it, but what if the boy walked through the front door carrying more than he had left with? What if when his mother sent him out with a little money to buy bread, he caught a couple of fish, placed everything he had into the hands of Jesus, and then came back home with this basket overflowing. Doesn’t that sound like something God would do when we trust him and put our valuables in his hands?
That’s how the kingdom works. It really does. When we cling to what we have, we only have what we have, right? But when we place it in the hands of Jesus, he has a way of multiplying it. When we re when we surrender, it’s beyond what we can do ourselves.
Here’s a question we might want to ask ourselves. What are we holding on to today that we’re afraid of to release? I know I’m holding on to some stuff. Have we convinced ourselves what we’re holding on is too small to matter?
The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 was never even in the size of what the boy had. The miracle was in whose hands he placed it. If Jesus can feed 5,000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, imagine what he can do with the thing that we’re holding on to right now.
Just like in the case of Emma, she had so little to hope for, but she placed it into Jesus’ hands. And what did she get? A miracle. Jesus is still extending this invitation to us today. Jesus says, “Bring me what you have, no matter how small, and not what somebody else has, and put it in my hands.” and I will take care of it. Amen.
