Christians have an interesting semantic challenge with our relationship to the divine.
The Triune God is three persons and also one God, which is often a kind of mind-bending philosophical explanation for a physical-obsessed population. We don’t always want to live with an unanswerable paradox: it is easier when we have a clear, delineated order of things.
This gets even trickier when we have to remember the attribution for the miracles goes to God rather than Jesus. Even as Jesus keeps reminding us this throughout the gospels. It’s like we want to think it is false humility rather than accurate teaching.
Water into wine? God.
Granting of sight to the blind? God.
Raising Lazarus from the dead? God.
All of this is God stuff that Jesus has access to.
And further, in the synoptics, we see the disciples have access to some of the same stuff, too. They heal and exorcise demons, too. But that isn’t because they have magic powers, but because God does this stuff with them.
The theologian doesn’t struggle with any of this, of course; but this is why our language can be so boxy and weird. Jesus doesn’t rise; he is raised. He isn’t the agent of the miracle, but the recipient of it. A similar thing will happen in forty days when he is ascended by God into heaven.
Followers of Jesus tend to give him all of the credit, even as Jesus tends to give it all to another persona, Father. Maybe this all seems a bit extra, but it is also humble and relational: our central themes.
And as we prepare this week to read about the things humans do — which can be distorting and monstrous as well as engaging and beautiful — we also will read about the things God is doing.
All of it is part of a love revolution. A reordering of the nature of creation toward community, love, and grace. New life for the whole world. And the life and teaching of Jesus helps us see it.