Jan. 17, 2016
John 2:1-11
1 Cor. 12:1-11
I’ve read, in just one commentary, that according to the ancient prophecies (and proclaimed by Amos and Joel in the OT,) “the abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol.” We’ve discussed that word, “eschatological” before. It means, “referring to the end times,” the end times whose victory, John believes, has broken into the present with Christ. In Christ God’s ultimate victory has entered the “right now.” The abundance of good wine, says the prophecies that John relies upon, was a sign “of the joyous arrival of God’s new age.”[1]
This bit of information was comforting for me to discover because otherwise, at least initially, today’s well-known story of Christ’s first miracle seems a bit misplaced or anti-climactic. In just the previous chapter John introduces the Good News of Jesus with his famous prologue: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.”
This is the Jesus John wants us to know – a cosmic, pre-existent Christ who is one with God and the source of all creation and life. There is something more explicitly divine, you might argue, in John’s Jesus than, say, Mark’s Jesus. Unlike the other gospels John has Jesus saying quite a bit about himself, all of it an indication of his divinity. “I am the Way, and the truth, and the life.” “I am the bread of life,” “the light of the world,” the Good Shepherd,” “the resurrection.”
We go today from Jesus being the Eternal Word of the Eternal God to just another guest at a local wedding in a po-dunk town, in a insignificant province of a great and powerful Roman empire. And, what does God Incarnate do to inaugurate his reign in this world? He makes wine. That’s his grand entrance, his great foray into the salvation of creation. It just doesn’t seem to jive.
My lectionary group sat together for a while on Tuesday, all of us a bit flummoxed by the passage. What do you do with this odd, magic trick story? How does it translate to a message for the faith journey that we’re living today, that God is guiding us on now? Lacking any great answers we moved on to the passage from 1 Corinthians. It seemed a lot easier to talk about our spiritual gifts and the good uses to which we might put them.
Last week we talked about the complexity and simplicity of our faith – the complexity and simplicity of our God – and how in that juxtaposition there’s a certain kind of power. “This God – this holy and transcendent God! – knows me, calls me by name, loves me.” That statement alone, when it sinks into our hearts and minds, is the substance of a spiritual awakening. And, I wonder if there’s a bit of the theme still going on in this wedding at Cana that we’re talking about this morning. What is the real miracle here? Is it water into wine? Or, is it the very fact that God Incarnate would take joy in simply celebrating the wedding of two common people in an ordinary town on an ordinary day in the world?
I think that to a certain extent we’ve trained ourselves to believe that God would look down upon human existence from God’s heavenly throne and see it for the miniscule time blip of insignificance that it is. God has bigger and better things to do. If we are going to find God we need to see beyond the common in order to find the sacred, we think. But, I think we’ve been wrong. I think John’s telling us the opposite. The Word of God that was in the beginning with God, and was God, finds great joy in the common realities of God’s common people – in their lives, in their thoughts, in their giftedness, in their celebrations.
David Bartlett, my preaching professor and advisor at Yale Divinity School, became a friend too and was kind enough to preach at our wedding. Most wedding sermons are easily forgotten, but this one wasn’t, in part because I had a hard time agreeing with it. Of course, I don’t have his exact words and I even cringed as the gist of his message came back to me. He named all the important events happening in the world those 12 and a half years ago – the news makers and world changers – and perhaps he nuanced it in a more acceptable way, but he seemed to say that none of it was more important that what Angela and I (and our families, and friends, and congregations) were doing that day. None of it measured up in God’s eyes to the exchanging and cultivating and honoring of love that was happening with us right then. Of all that God was doing in the world that day nothing was more important or profound.
To agree with him seemed egocentric and perhaps delusional. Who were we in the big scheme of all that God has going on for all eternity? But, that’s the miracle, says John (and David.) Its not the water to wine so much as it’s the one who makes them both finding joy in the moment and in the people who fill that moment.
Serendipitously, Miroslov Volf has written an article on this very theme in the most recent issue of The Christian Century. He says, “In choosing between meaning and pleasure we always make the wrong choice.” That is, whichever way we go: whether it’s opting for what is sacred and purposeful and value-giving, or opting instead for what is pleasure-inducing we make the wrong choice. And, that is because each option on its own is a pitfall. Each is nihilistic. Rather, it is the unity of both options – the bringing together of purpose and pleasure that is the meaning of joy and our taste of a God who is the “light of all people.”
Giving voice to our common thinking, Volf asks, “When God gives meaning, doesn’t God take away ordinary pleasure? When we embrace God, don’t we drop our hold on the world [just a bit]?” Then he answers, “But if God created the material world inhabited by sentient beings (Gen. 1:1), if God became flesh in the person of Jesus of Nazareth (John 1:14), if the bodies of those bound to God in faith and love are the temples of the Spirit (1 Cor. 6:19), then claims that some people make about attachment to God being opposed to the enjoyment of the ordinary things of life must be false. More: not only is there no necessary opposition between them, but the two can be aligned: attachment to God amplifies and deepens enjoyment of the world.”[2]
In other words, God makes the common sacred. Stop looking for the sacred out there somewhere. The sacred is right here, and “here” is exactly where God is.
This is where that Corinthians passage comes into play, I believe. God has given each member of that church a fabulous gift, the most fabulous of all being love. And, instead of using those gifts for building each other up, for tapping into the sacred new age into which they’ve been born, they fight over which gift is best and they tear each other down. They have aimed their sights too high. They are looking for God where God is not. If only they could remember that God is in the common people who were first introduced to them as brothers and sisters in Christ, and not in the most exalted people who have the most exalted gifts.
President Obama, in his state of the union address, shared his regret over not being able to bridge the political discord in this country. Rather, divisions seemed only to grow. In this season of political campaigning candidates will continue tearing one another down. The process will intensify, of course, as it moves forward and we get closer to election. The discord will be reflected and perhaps cultivated in the news programs that we watch. And then we’ll take to Facebook and fight about the issues. We’ll argue our opinions thinking poorly of those who disagree with us. We’ll care less about learning anything, and more about being right. People will turn into opinions – smart ones or dumb ones, and any hope of finding the sacred will have to be met somewhere in the beyond, somewhere in reality’s escape.
Of course, it won’t be all that bad. This pattern won’t consume our entire reality. But, it won’t be hard to find either and it won’t easily relinquish its pull.
So, it seems to me that now more than ever we need a God who is in the common. We need a God who sanctifies – makes sacred – the real moments of the real lives we live. And, now more than ever, the word needs a Church – an alternative to what is so easily found – a Church that knows that in order to meet the sacred we must meet one another.
[1] Feasting on the Word, Year C Volume 1, page 265.
[2] Miroslav Volf, “The Giver and the Gift,” The Christian Century, January 6, 2016, page 10.