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Sunday, January 20, 2013

Epiphany II - Suzanne Colburn

God is Able

May the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in Thy sight, O God our Strength and Redeemer. In the Name of the One, Holy and Living God, Amen.

Good morning, and welcome to any of you who may be new to Christ Church.

Welcome also to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend. As we know, Martin Luther King, Jr. was a preacher as well as a larger than life figure in our Nation’s history. In one of his sermons, Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote,

“At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and in history. This conviction is stressed over and over again in the Old and New Testaments. The God whom we worship is not a weak and incompetent God…This ringing testimony of the Christian faith is that God is able.”1

God is able. Where we cannot, God can. Where big and little events in our lives prove us out of control, God is able. Where we are frustrated, tired, perplexed, stuck, God is able. Where we are heartbroken, angry and withdrawn, God is able. Where we are bored, uninspired, confused; God is able.

The Apostles and Prophets knew their message was to tell people just how able God was. Paul’s letters, the earliest descriptions we have of Jesus other than the Gospels, speaks of Jesus as being the human face of God’s Glory; of God’s able-ness.

If this is the case, as we continue to ponder the revelation of Jesus in his public ministry, what do we see of God in the narrative of the Wedding at Cana?

First, a little background.

Wine is a very ancient and complex metaphor in the Bible. From Old Testament times, the Israelites and YHWH portray an ambivalent relationship with wine.

On the one hand, positive and on the other hand, negative.

On the positive side, wine is an expression of God’s delight in God’s people. Like all signs in the Bible, wine points to a reality that is larger than itself, and in this case, wine points to the Coming of the Reign of God in a Joyous, abundant new age.

Wine also, from the earliest times, reflected God’s wrath. When YHWH was displeased with how the Israelites were behaving, their behavior was characterized as excess, drunkardness and impurity.

This ambivalence, or really, dual symbolism, makes its way right into the New Testament. New wine is God’s in-breaking into our world in a way that transforms old, painful realities. But new wine also demands “new wineskins…” as Jesus tells us.

We must change our thinking to be able to receive the abundance of God. We cannot fit the new reality of the Kingdom of Abundance into an old reality constructed with concepts of fear, lack, competition and greed.

In the Bible wine is sometimes just called, “the Cup.” The Psalmist speaks of God as his or her portion, “my Cup.” Wine as “the cup” appears in the Last supper, and the texts that we base our Eucharistic prayers on.

“The Cup” figures large in The Garden of Gethsemane, and symbolizes Jesus’ anguish as he struggles to follow the Father’s will even to the grave.

One can see how many different levels and interpretations there are to this one word, “wine.” Perhaps the most transcendent meaning of wine is that it represents the fact that God’s love “extends beyond the known boundaries of heaven and earth.”2

Theologian NT Wright would put it this way: “It is about transformation: the different dimension of reality that comes into being when Jesus is present.”3

Now we know a lot more about the context that informs John’s Gospel of The Wedding at Cana. If we were hearing John’s Gospel as contemporaries of Jesus, we would know how loaded this text is.

We’d know that the first hint is that the narrative begins with “On the third day…” We’d know that something surprising was about to happen. We’d remember that Jesus rose on the third day. We’d know that on a very human level, God was about to do a new thing, and we’d know that there would be both moments of delight and moments of challenge.

What a setting for a great story! God is a God of surprise, and there are several surprises at this wedding (like there often are a most weddings, one might add).

So we have a wedding. We are told that Jesus’ mother is there first, and then Jesus and his disciples arrive. Something surprising does happen. Jesus’ mother notices that the wine ran out. Jesus doesn’t notice, his mother does.

Then there ensues one of those all too human tugs of war between a mother and her eldest son. (We remember that before at Jesus’ Baptism, in the version in Matthew, John and Jesus have a “moment,” where they struggle, too, about who is going to baptize whom.)

In this early stage of Jesus’ “coming out” into public ministry, we glimpse these unformed moments of entirely human interaction. Whether it’s Jesus and his mother or Jesus and John at the Jordan, there is a minor struggle about whose authority is going to win out.

Why Jesus’ mother thinks it’s her son’s responsibility to help the host family “save face,” socially, we’ll never know. Why Jesus is a little bit ornery, claiming that “his hour has not come,” we can only speculate.

Perhaps Jesus doesn’t want to be at work spiritually; maybe he just wants to enjoy the wedding. Perhaps Jesus doesn’t think he’s ready. Perhaps Jesus isn’t even sure what he’s supposed to be doing. Perhaps he thinks to himself, “ What can I do to help these people?”

Perhaps Jesus is still getting used to his own dual nature as the Son of God and the Son of Man. Being fully human Jesus would not have just appeared as a completely formed, perfect, human being. Despite his divinity, he would have had to develop just like the rest of us.

Like the Baptism of Jesus at the Jordan, we have a miracle, the divine intersecting of heaven and earth where the needs of other’s are met by the compassion of God. We also have another surprise: the revelation of just how human this God, who is able, really is.

In this moment between Jesus and his mother we glimpse a very familiar dynamic.

A mother is still being a mother to a son who is growing up; who is trying to claim his own identity apart from his family. Jesus needs to discern for himself the need at hand and the action to follow. This may be why he says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not come.”

To us in our time, Jesus sounds a little cruel, calling Mary simply “Woman.” In Jesus’ time, though, and in his language, calling his mother “woman” is a way to de-personalize the relationship; a way for Jesus to gain the detachment, the separation he is seeking.

Like John at the Jordan, Mary acquiesces. She steps back from a potential argument and turns to the servants acknowledging her son’s authority by saying, “Do whatever he tells you.”

We have another amazingly human moment in John’s Gospel that we can all relate to. It is these rare glimpses of Jesus the son that make us love him so much. Now we know how familiar Jesus really is with the dynamics of human life. We can trust that when we come to him in prayer with our own very human problems and needs, Jesus really is able to help us.

Jesus knew (and probably his mother did too) that he would have to develop a stronger relationship with God his Father, than with his human mother if he was going to be as able as God his Father, is able. Jesus knew that he would have to have a strength within that would lead him unerringly to do his Father’s will.

Even so, it is Jesus’ fully human mother who teaches him to become aware of the needs of others, even if those needs are simply saving face for a young couple at a wedding.

Psychologist Carl Gustave Jung talked about the role of Mary in the church. He applauded the Catholic Church for elevating Mary to the level of the Trinity through the human construct of the Assumption.

In Roman Catholicism, Mary is still the one who is most sensitive to the needs of others. She is the one closest to us; she is the great intercessor. Jung saw this feminine principle of awareness as a healthy addition to an otherwise male Godhead.

Like many of us, Jesus had parents who taught him well. Like us, Jesus had to become his own person, understand his own spiritual nature, and discern his own call.

Once again, this morning, the true miracle at Cana is the miracle of the Incarnation. It’s the miracle of how intimately our God, our Lord and our Savior understands us, loves us, and offers us new life in a new context. Our task is to dare to let Jesus be near to us, even if just for a split second.

“When Jesus is present, a different dimension of reality comes into being,” and surprising things happen.

And today, right now, Jesus is present.

Whether millions of molecules of H2O, a mother and a son at a wedding, or all of us in our own particularly human lives, nothing in Creation can resist the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

Nothing can really resist the best wine; the best that God always offers.

Amen
__________
1 “God is Able.” A Sermon by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. edited by Charles Henderson. Online God Web. Charles Henderson. 2013

2Brown and Bartlett, Editors. Feasting on The Word. Year C, Vol. 1.Westminster John Knox Press. Louisville, Kentucky. 2009. p260-265

3NT Wright. John for Everyone. Vol. 1. Westminster John Knox Press, 2004, 2009.

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