17 Jan 2010
Celebrating Epiphany: The Season of Surprise
Epiphany 2: Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36: 5-10; I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
Being Surprised by Change of Timing in our Lives
Often we set out with great planning and good intention only to find that something else presents itself to us to which we need to respond. And we priests, or we pious Christians more generally, can have our mind on such ‘high and godly' matters that we can neglect the simple and the practical that at any time can present itself in the shape of a human being in need, or a circumstance or event which simply cannot be ignored. Annoyed by such ‘interruptions' I know I can be most impatient! But sometimes these interruptions to our single track determination can bring us unexpected abundance and joy.
This is often the case with me, I confess, when I go walking in the morning with my wife Pene. Being wide awake from the early hours Pene is ready to go and to explore; me - I am still waking up at 10am and feel I need to keep on a well worn path so I don't have to think about where I am going. But, I confess, Pene's desire to explore different ways has often brought me to many a pleasant path and experiences that I might not have otherwise known, and yes in so doing woken me to the blessings of early morning!
We hear about just such an event - a change in timing - in today's gospel reading and the story of events that unfolded at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. This story has a serious side: St John writes his gospel to help us see the true identity of Jesus of Nazareth the Word made flesh. But we cannot sit with this seriousness alone. There is an interruption to religiosity and we find, surprisingly, a story of God's abundance and celebratory joyfulness that also under girds our faith or a ‘true religion' as our old Book of Common Prayer says.
The First Sign of John's Gospel
The serious theology in that this story is the first sign that John gives us about Jesus' true identity. While there is an extraordinary miracle that happens in the turning of water into wine, for St John this is almost incidental, an aside to the fact that this is really a sign to us that Jesus is God's Messiah or the anointed.
The theological meaning behind this story is seen in Jesus' response to his mother: "My hour has not yet come." Jesus is here referring to his calling from God, and God's timing and he is reminding Mary and we his listeners that the higher authority to which he is committed is God. Jesus' address to his mother - ‘Woman' - is not as disrespectful or rude as it seems to our hearing, though this is not to take away from the lesson we are about to learn from Mary in a moment. But this was a common way of speaking, though unheard of for a son to address a mother. His address adds weight to his commitment to the higher calling and to a timing that includes but also transcends family and tribe. This is serious business and it entails a life of commitment to God that will test not only family ties but push to breaking his acceptability in the sight of God's own people! As Jesus says elsewhere, when told that his mothers and brothers were outside:
Mk.3.31-35 ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?' And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.'
This calling, it would seem, is also no less our own:
Luke 14.26-7: ‘Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.
The Interruption: ...nudging God for what is needed
And yet human compassion is intimately interwoven with God's timing and purpose, for we must not allow the seemingly annoying disruption of family or stranger to be ignored as if God were not concerned and as if such timing did not also include my neighbour and my father, mother, sister, brother.
History is littered with the human casualties of distorted and destructive religion that has no room for the ordinariness of human life and frailty. When religion remains a serious, fearful or ideologically driven faith, then casualties abound, cultural and racial overlays are taken to be the real thing; openness to mistakes and fresh understanding is denied; inquisitions, witch hunts and religious wars can abound.
So let's return to this story about the wedding at Cana in Galilee.
To our ears, the story begins a very curt (even rude) response by Jesus to his mother. Mary has, like all mothers I know, seen that a real need has arisen. The wedding has run out of wine and noticing this Mary speaks to her son Jesus. He responds: ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.'
Of course there is perhaps something lost in the translation here from the original conversation but also from Greek to English, and from a cultural perspective that is not ours. But Jesus' response to Mary to our ears seems detached. Not much concern shown by Jesus for the poor wedding guests or for the wedding host whose lack of sufficient hospitality would mean loss of face. "What's it to you and me?" Jesus says. And to make it even worse to our hearing he says very solemnly and it has real theological meaning: "My hour has not yet come." Has Jesus' thinking about his calling from God got in the way of simple compassion and good manners? Did Mary do a second take, wondering what on earth has suddenly got into this son of hers? Where was the compassion with which he had been brought up, his community spirit, his love of neighbour and so forth?
Both Mary's initial request and her response to Jesus may keep Jesus feet anchored in the earth. So she says to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.' In other words, she seems to say to Jesus, ‘Well you may well have a higher calling, and yes your time may not yet have come (whatever that means) but just make sure there is wine for these folks at this wedding!'
Mary's role in the story is very important. As one commentator suggests, the mother of Jesus raised him to practice compassionate justice. There may be deeper insights from Mary that we might otherwise miss: ‘[Mary's] action here "shows that 'she is a woman with all the compassionate sensitiveness to other people's needs, often lacking [from] those in power'"; after all, "Jesus did not grow up in a vacuum."
Is this an interruption (at least in the way John tells the story) that helps keep this higher calling in its true perspective, which is the care for human beings in their need? "To love mercy, seek justice and to walk humbly with God" as Malachi says some 300 odd years before Jesus' birth.
Further more, Mary reminds us that we too have to nudge God about what we have seen and what we think might be done about it. This is rather a shocking thought, perhaps, that we need to point out to God people who suffer? But Jesus himself does tell us parables that also suggest this:
Luke 18:1-8 "Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, "Grant me justice against my opponent." For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, "Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming." And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them.
Mary reminds us that we simply need to keep the conversation between heaven and earth going. Or as the popular song of Bob Dylan says, we need to keep ‘knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door,' but not because we think we might be near to our death but because the God given desire for life within us cries out for God to respond and bring salvation into effect. Our hearts are with the people of Haiti over these past few days, I suspect, doing just that, while we too do what we can and perhaps give generously to these and other human needs.
True Religion includes Abundance and Joy
So timing, no matter how important, takes a back seat to human need at that moment, as it would throughout Jesus' ministry. Perhaps Jesus and Mary understood each other better than it might appear and their repartee may have been well honed over years as mother and son! Jesus' "hour" was indeed, as we soon see here, in the moment of need and here the reign of God came to the fore, as it did in every work of Jesus then and now, in his life, death and resurrection.
But in this story God also does a surprising thing. There is an abundance of wine! An overflowing gift of six stone jars of wine when just one might have been enough. They were large, too, each one holding 90-150 gallons, and they "were filled to the brim." And the best was saved till last.
Abundance sits quietly in the background of this story, as it will be in the story of the multiplication of loaves and fishes, which is another response to the everyday but immediate, pressing human need of the people. No wouser-ish celebration at this wedding feast and Jesus was right in the middle of it! This story sits as a story of Jesus' abundance, ready for us to partake. But it's a very different abundance from the material ‘stuff' that we too often measure life with today in the West.
Furthermore this story is about a celebration that turns our attention to the ordinary but deep joy of living. Sometimes, we in the church have forgotten that our Lord once attended a wedding feast and said yes to gladness and joy." In other words, "God does not want our religion to be too holy to be happy in." It seems that we in the church need to examine our role in suppressing the joy of a life lived in and by grace, a life lived fully, abundantly, vibrantly. "When John's Gospel speaks of salvation as life, the meaning is not mere life, but life in its maximal sense: life invigorated and intensified, "Jesus gives life by connecting people with the divine springs of life from which the vitality of life is constantly sustained and replenished." So Jesus embodies and helps us to embody also the truth of St Irenaeus that "The glory of God is a human being fully alive."
When have you been surprised by a change in timing in your life, especially when beginning something new? When has your church had to change its plans and adjust its timing? What did you learn about yourself in the process?
Don Saines, 17.10.2010
1 Kate Huey, SAMUEL at ucc.org: http://www.ucc.org/worship/samuel/january-17-2010.html, referring to Chung Hyun Kyung in Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women's Theology
2 Huey, quoting, Renita Weems, New Proclamation 2001.
3 Huey, quoting, Robert Brearley Feasting on the Word I and Richard Bauckham The Lectionary Commentary
