What If the miracle occurred?

Rev. Peter E. Bauer

United Church of Christ Minister

Have you ever wished or hoped for another outcome in a situation even though the data indicated that something might end? This can be felt when you wish, pray that someone will survive a terminal medical illness, when a divorce can be cancelled if there is hope that the marriage can survive.

This can also be operative when you are trying to keep a church alive despite dangerous risk factors that it could close or no longer be a part of your denomination.

I have witnessed and lived through two examples of this phenomena.

Years ago, I was asked to serve in an Interim capacity to close a church. I will tell you it was a gut-wrenching experience. After 125 years this congregation which had served its community well was closing its doors. The decision was made by denominational officials, who, in the words of singer songwriter Jackson Browne, expressed the perspective of “when property is valued more than lives.”

More than brick and mortar were lost, it was relationships including loss of membership for people who had been in this church for 55 years, history outreach to the community, a haven for LGBTQ people, a divorce for the chief lay leader, a near psychiatric hospitalization for another member.

At the time I thought that it would have been great, even miraculous had this group of 35 people chose to merge with another congregation. There had been an earlier opportunity, but it was not taken. So, unfortunately this church disbanded and ended its ministry.

Just a few years ago, I was called again to serve as an Interim Minister and this church ended up deciding that it wanted to leave the denomination during the Covid-19 pandemic. The feelings of frustration and helplessness were immense for me. It was like watching a car wreck or seeing someone that you love about to get derailed off their course. There was no help extended to me in my attempt to prevent this disaster.

When new life triumphs over death and adversity, we cheer. We say Halleluiah! There is redemption, there is the hope that good can triumph over evil, that death, in the words of St. Paul “does not have the final word. “

Yet we find ourselves in a world that continues to get more messy, more chaotic.

There is a lot of grumbling coming from many people right now.

 “Are we there yet? “

In 1967 in Ballygar, Ireland there is a group of women: Lily Fox, Chrissie Ahearn, Eilleen Dunne, Dolly Hennessy. All these women have sustained significant losses in their lives: the loss of an adult child, the loss of a baby, the potential loss of health and of faith, and the loss of desired full health for a young child.

The movie “The Miracle Club” (2023) beautifully depicts how these women come to terms with what has happened to them and what they can do now to begin to heal.

Early in the film, the women participate in a church fundraiser and through some artful maneuvering they win a trip to Lourdes.

They depart from their seaside town in Ireland, and they go on a spiritual pilgrimage.

Lourdes is a town in southwestern France, in the foothills of the Pyrenees mountains. It’s known for the Sanctuaires Notre-Dame de Lourdes, or the Domain, a major Catholic pilgrimage site. Each year, millions visit the Grotto of Massabielle (Grotto of the Apparitions) where, in 1858, the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to a local woman. In the grotto, pilgrims can drink or bathe in water flowing from a spring.

These ladies are hoping for a miracle. If they go to Lourdes, like pilgrims before them, if they bathe in the waters that somehow all the maladies and misfortunes that they have experienced will be resolved.

Like the kids in the car who ask “Are We There Yet? “And like the people who grumble, who want their needs met now, these women face the same urgency, the same desire to heal immediately.

What happens of course, like in many situations in life, is that there is no immediate healing. There is new insight, new awareness, new appreciation of life and the bond that they share in their human experience.

Father Dermot Byrne says to the women when they return from Lourdes to Ballygar

“The purpose of the pilgrimage is to sustain one’s faith even during the absence of miracles.”

What will this time be like for us? What will we achieve together as people of faith?

Solution Focused Therapy (De Shazer, Imsoo-Berg, Miller) is a form of psychotherapy that focuses upon the present and is also geared to problem solving. Solution Focused Therapy is usually short-term and time-limited in the number of sessions. This therapy also asks the question what are the exceptions to the problem? When have there been different interpretations or outcomes to a particular concern?

Solution Focused Therapy also asks what is the “Miracle Question?”

In other words, if you woke up tomorrow and your problem or concern was gone, totally resolved, how would know that the Miracle occurred?

I hope we can continue to ask one another has the miracle occurred and how would we know if the miracle has happened and that we have been changed?

May our time together be blessed and full of inquiry and exploration as we seek to continue to be the people of God serving others in our time and in our place.

May it be so.

Rev. Peter E. Bauer is a United Church of Christ minister. He has been a regular contributor to the Huffington Post and Medium.Com.