Epiphany 3
John 2:1-11
©Suzanne Grimmett
The wine had run out.
This would have been a situation of social shame for the host where guests are gathered for a wedding feast and prepared for long celebrations. There is real comfort, I think, in this story of a God whose first human public act of divine revealing is to alleviate such a domestic moment of dishonour and social discomfort. I mean, really? The God who flung stars into space comes to earth and is still concerned about an embarrassed family with not enough wine?
However, because this is John’s Gospel, a text full of symbol and deeper meanings, we can also read a lot more than that. This section of the text is also known as the book of signs. The smaller section from which we read today begins and ends in this town of Cana, famous now of course for the place where Jesus rescues the wedding feast by turning water into wine. After this miracle in chapter 2 and before the return to Cana to heal a royal official’s son at the seventh hour, (a number signifying completion) in chapter 4, Jesus will explain that his body is the new temple, tell Nicodemus that he needs to be born anew, and will offer living water to the Samaritan woman at the well. We are being shown the revelation of God in temple, birthing, water, deep wells and in healing. This story is rich in symbolic meaning, pointing over and again to the mystery of the incarnation- a mystery that is given shape through the “I am” statements which come later in the Gospel. In this domestic drama of a local wedding feast, a place where the hospitality has dried up and shame and despair are on the horizon, God comes. John’s Gospel will tell us that into all the desolations that this life can hold, great or small, God comes ….as wine, as bread, as shepherd, as light, as way, truth and life.
The wine no longer flowing symbolises a community where joy is absent, their religion empty and hope distant. This is the experience not only of Jews in first century Galilee, but of us all, surely, at different times – both personally and communally. This chapter begins, “On the third day there was a wedding…” nudging us to the understanding that something about to happen here is about resurrection life. There are times in all our lives where we become disheartened, or where suffering robs us of joy. No life is exempt from such trials, and neither is the church free of times where joy and abundance no longer flows and we struggle to be faithful. Sometimes, the wine just seems to have run out and we are left with disconnection and shame or the questions that remain unanswered in times of great suffering.
Perhaps we may notice in this story the role of Mary.
“Do whatever he tells you” says Mary, in what looks like a complete disregard for the wishes of this child of divinity she has birthed. This is one of the mysteries of this text- that in attending to his mother, Jesus brings forward the hour of his revelation with this first of the signs. Perhaps we, too, might feel sometimes the need to provoke God to action in the face of injustice or pain. Times when we feel the hour has most certainly come and we wonder at the apparent inaction of God. Times when we are struggling to see the light. On this day when we hope for the beginning of a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, and a release of hostages after more than a year of terror, violence and bloodshed, I know I hear with great dismay statements in the media about ‘reserving the right to resume hostilities.’ We might find ourselves asking God, why not now? Why not end the suffering now?
We can work and struggle for justice, pouring ourselves out in efforts for peace, and yet the world still knows no peace.
We are faced instead with the limitations of our one small life and only silence before some of our most urgent questions.
For those of you who have ever felt this way, you might appreciate as I do, the poem, “Let this darkness be a bell tower” by Rainer Maria Rilke which I think draws inspiration from this story and the incarnational symbolism of John’s Gospel. I share it now, conscious that it is better taken in slowly and meditatively.
Let this darkness be a bell tower By Rainer Maria Rilke
Quiet friend who has come so far,
feel how your breathing makes more space around you.
Let this darkness be a bell tower
and you the bell. As you ring,
what batters you becomes your strength.
Move back and forth into the change.
What is it like, such intensity of pain?
If the drink is bitter, turn yourself to wine.
In this uncontainable night,
be the mystery at the crossroads of your senses,
the meaning discovered there.
And if the world has ceased to hear you,
say to the silent earth: I flow.
To the rushing water, speak: I am.
From Sonnets to Orpheus II, 29
There are depths in this poem that reveal themselves more when we sit with it for longer, but for now, hear in it the paradoxical possibility of weakness becoming strength, darkness light and the bitterest cup of suffering transformed into the finest wine. The sacramental imagination is alive here, sensitising us to the sign of God’s grace working through the medium of our lives and continuing the work of incarnation. To draw on the language of the poem, Christ can be recognised as the human exemplar of a life where darkness became a bell tower, ringing out all the more clearly when battered by religion and empire, by betrayal and crucifixion, becoming a life where the bitterest of drinks was turned into the finest wine. The life, death and resurrection of Jesus means that the infinite mystery of God has made a home amongst us on earth, enabling us to live into the fullness of our own mystery, discovering meaning “at the crossroads of our senses” where we learn that our own becoming is caught up in the great “I am” of God present in us.
This, of course, is different to the way Christianity is represented a lot of the time. Talk about the mystery of God overcoming the binaries of divine and human, spiritual and physical, is missed when we make the faith into some kind of self-help product or else simply a way of ensuring a heavenly future. Christianity is about following Christ…more than that, about becoming one with the mystery and participating in the eternal becoming of Christ. It is about taking our darkness and allowing the author and sustainer of all to turn the bitter waters of our lives into the richest wine.
But this is not something that happens quickly, nor does God ever work with dominance or coercion. Spiritual ‘becoming’ in Christ requires the vulnerability of surrender, openness to the disarming power of forgiveness and the faithfulness of intention- even if we rarely are going to have our motivations right. We come with our hands held out empty each week to receive the Christ whose Spirit breathes love and freedom into our lives through the transforming power of God’s grace.
Every single Sunday we celebrate resurrection and the Spirit poured out amongst us- and it is an act of faithful defiance to gather in this way and proclaim love as the greatest power on earth, in spite of all we hear and see daily in the news. We hold in tension the paradox of God’s presence and absence and the lived experience of a peace that passes all understanding amongst a world that knows so little peace. Following Christ is about living a life nourished by prayer, meditation and the Eucharist, a life in which the hospitality and love of our neighbour are practices which we renew daily and shape our lives. As we do this across a lifetime of faith, we catch glimpses of where, even amongst brokenness and struggle, love can fill to abundance lives that have become joyless and hope distant. We might begin to recognise the fine wine that is our own lives in the presence of the crucified and risen one. We forget sometimes that scripture seems to frequently use the metaphors of joyful unions and banqueting tables where all are invited to the feast. May we recognise the Spirit’s presence flowing through our own lives and share the abundance of grace received with all who hunger for love and meaning.
+Amen.