“Signs” is the title of the 2002 apocalyptic sci-fi film starring Mel Gibson as Graham: a father, widower, and former minister. Graham lost his faith when he lost his wife in a brutal accident six months before hostile aliens started invading earth. It so happens that Graham’s loss of faith is as disturbing to his family as are the sinister creatures that form mysterious “signs” in the cornfields nearby. Graham’s naïve younger brother, Merrill, believes that we are part of a grand design and are regularly sent signs to read and to heed that will “save” us. Newly skeptical Graham insists that life is random. In overtly religious symbols and language, the film asks us how we understand signs—be they inexplicable crop circles out in the cornfield or odd coincidences in our everyday experiences.
The questions the movie raises about “signs” are important, but its simplistic answers disappoint. By contrasting the brothers’ understandings of “signs,” the movie’s flawed assumption is that either we believe everything we encounter in life is some preordained, cosmic message to interpret--or there is no overarching purpose or pattern to any of life, absolutely no meaning or design. Superstitious Merrill represents a magical pre-modern view of the world. Skeptical Graham represents an entirely rational modern view. But where is the postmodern perspective that makes room for both science and symbolism, both data and imagination, both the measurable and the mystery? What the film neglects but what scripture and my lived experiences suggest is a third understanding of “signs.” For me, God neither creates a secret code we have to decipher, nor does God remain remote and uncommunicative.
Certainly the Bible speaks of signs. Jesus did “signs and wonders.” In the second chapter of John, we’re told that Jesus’s transformation of water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana was “the first of the signs given by Jesus.” Interestingly, his first sign prefigures his last sign at the Last Supper when the wine on that occasion signified the blood he would soon shed and was a “sign” of the new covenant. Perhaps, because the young rabbi Jesus began his new ministry in a spectacular way—with a “sign”—we should not judge the crowds too harshly for subsequently demanding more and more signs of wonder and for traipsing after Jesus like paparazzi hounding a celebrity. Our Gospel lesson picks up immediately after Jesus fed the multitude from the bread and fish in a little boy’s lunch—a pretty impressive sign. Of course, Jesus had given real food to hungry people. But when Jesus retreats by boat, the sign-craving portion of the crowd, their physical hunger satisfied, seek more signs. When Jesus tries to explain to the crowd he has already fed that he offers an eternal food, the sign-seekers counter by saying that they need to see his credentials. After all, they argue, they deserve a sign from God because their ancestors received tangible signs. Manna, for instance. Bread from heaven. You and I can appreciate this need to be wowed with concrete evidence, can’t we?
Jesus tries again to separate the signs from their referent: “What you really need is the true bread from heaven, not just literal bread to feed your bodies, but the bread of God that feeds your soul. Don’t become so enthralled by the physical symbols that you miss the spiritual truths. Don’t become so fascinated by the glitzy visual aids of my lessons that you ignore me and my message.” And so he denies them another sign.
Jesus tries again to separate the signs from their referent: “What you really need is the true bread from heaven, not just literal bread to feed your bodies, but the bread of God that feeds your soul. Don’t become so enthralled by the physical symbols that you miss the spiritual truths. Don’t become so fascinated by the glitzy visual aids of my lessons that you ignore me and my message.” And so he denies them another sign.
In Matthew’s version of this exchange Jesus is even more emphatic. In that account, the Pharisees and Sadducees ask for a sign to test Jesus and he practically says, “You wouldn’t know what to do with a sign if I gave you one.” Jesus is not being coy. Jesus is saying, “If I provide an enormous flashing neon arrow pointing you to God, I’m afraid you’re going to worship the arrow.” Symbols are symbols. We must ask what they are pointing us to see, what they are urging us to do, what they are reminding us to be. Sometimes religious leaders themselves become the object of worshipers’ fascination and maybe their adoration rather than pointing the people Godward. Even the Bible can become an object of worship rather than a device that points beyond itself to the ultimate. People of faith should not look in the Bible for a secret decoder ring or a cryptic treasure map with a big X drawn to mark the spot where God is hidden As Abba Sisoes, an early monastic, said, “Seek God, and do not seek where God dwells.” It’s always a temptation to seek a religious experience rather than to seek God. People of faith do not seek signs to verify God’s existence or confirm God’s approval of them or to feel some ecstatic religious experience. And what sign do we need besides Jesus? Wasn’t Jesus himself God’s greatest sign that God not only exists but loves us beyond all human loving? Rather than pestering God for signs to bolster our faith or to direct our choices, perhaps we ought instead to consider ways we might ourselves participate in the signs of God, to BECOME SIGNS.
There’s an overlooked story in Exodus that illustrates this meaning of signs as something we ARE rather than something we seek and decode to decide our next move. At Moses’ burning bush encounter, God promised to give Moses a sign AFTER he led the people out of Egypt; indeed, God promised it would be a sign constructed by the people’s response. Listen to Exodus 3:12: “This will be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.” Here’s how I understand this verse. When God first called Moses, God did not initially promise Moses a sign that would publicly authorize him as a leader and inspire trust among the people, as Moses might have hoped. Rather, says this story, God promised that the people’s reaction after their deliverance would itself be the evidence or a sign that they had been saved by God. Hear the verse again: God says, “This will be the sign for you that it is I who sent you.” At this point, Moses is no doubt thinking, “Good! God is going to provide a dramatic and supernatural sign that will convince the people right off the bat that I’m their leader and that will point us exactly where to go.” But God explains their sign will be that AFTER Moses brings the people out of Egypt, they will worship and give thanks on the mountain.
Who needs a sign AFTER they have been rescued?
Who needs a sign AFTER they have been rescued?
I have often wanted a clear sign to guide me in a decision. But mostly I just have to step out on faith and with hindsight recognize that God has been with me.
You might believe that God works in this world by orchestrating some or all of what happens in life. Or you might believe there is no Mover who puts into motion any of the activities, grand and minute, in this universe. Or you might believe that life is chancy, that we are creatures with some degree of free will, and at any rate God is not a magician who controls the discrete movements of atomic particles or people or planets but instead is a name for the noncoercive force or energy or evolutionary propensity that is luring us toward more mature love and connection.
The Pharisees and Saducees of Jesus’s day had remembered Moses’ manna, that tangible, spectacular sign of God’s providence. But they’d forgotten that the very first sign God promised when Moses commenced his ministry was a sign that materialized long after Moses had moved forward in faith. And the sign was not something God sent but that the people themselves created and participated in. This means that our response to God’s saving way becomes, retroactively, a sign of God’s direction! Grateful people are signposts to God. We are to BE signs of God’s presence in this world.
People these days are carrying literal signs, and some of those signs are about other people’s signs: “Eat Mor Chikin” said one last week, and “Tastes Like Hate” said another. Maybe we won’t have to carry signs if we can simply BE signs of God’s love.
As 1st John 4: 12 explains, although no one has ever seen God, if we love one another, God lives in us and God’s love is perfected in us, and we become an approximation or picture or sign of God’s love. Theologian Roberta Bondi explains that early Christians “stood out from the rest of the culture by their unusual love for each other. This love was neither abstract nor a simple matter of good feeling: it was a way of being together, a way of prayer, and a way of living in the world, rooted in their experience and understanding of the God who had come to them in the resurrected Jesus” (To Pray and To Love, 15).
Some folks this week chose to eat or to not eat chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. That meal symbolized something to them. Today as we gather before the Lord’s Table, we are mindful that some gluten-free wafers and alcohol-free grape juice are more than just food and drink. Here God’s love for us and our love for one another and our unity as the body of Christ come together visually and spiritually. We gather at the Open Table and eat the bread of heaven and drink the covenantal wine to become part of an enduring sign to one another and to the world that grace abounds. This is a meal that always includes, never excludes or judges. The Realm of God is here on this earth, we announce by our participation, and all are invited to join in this great sign of love, unity, and community.
This understanding of signs of God reminds me of a song from my youth entitled “Signs,” a counterculture song that lambasted the Establishment’s use of signs to make constricting rules and to exclude certain people. Some of you fellow Baby Boomers will remember this song, the chorus of which went like this:
Sign, sign, everywhere a sign,
blockin' out the scenery, breakin' my mind.
Do this; don’t do that. Can’t you read the sign?*
But in the final verse, surprisingly, the Church, of all society’s institutions, displays the only sign that invites and includes. That last verse about the church begins, “And the sign said, “Everybody’s welcome. Come kneel down and pray.” Many churches have literal signs outside that convey a message to passersby. We have a small, portable, simple sign: “Open Table meets here. Sundays 5 p.m.” But our church and you and I as individuals are constantly signaling something to the world. Is it: “Everybody’s welcome. Come, kneel down and pray”? I hope the signs we intend to convey are consistent with the signs we are wearing on our countenances and in our interactions each and every day.
We do need signs. God knows we do. But we dare not ask to receive a sign passively. We must be willing to construct these signs of love, to participate as signs of God, which is an act of faith.
PRAYER
God, we are here not just to seek signs of your presence or to read signs of your love but to participate in the life of the church so that we together become signs of your grace and goodness. Thank you for the bread and cup that are the enduring signs of Jesus’s way of love and nonviolence. Let us internalize those signs so they can be read by others.
* "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band, 1971
* "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band, 1971
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