A wedding feast and wedding imagery shows up in the
readings for today,
and
I would guess that Hunt and fellow parishioners have had a visit to Cana.
It’s a small town in the Galilee
area not too far from Nazareth,
and
there you can purchase wine produced locally.
It is also a good place to get
married or to renew marriage vows.
The imagery of marriage comes up
frequently in the Hebrew scriptures
in
the Prophets especially,
for
speaking about the relationship between God and God’s people.
In the reading from Isaiah 62
God’s love for the people of Jerusalem,
for
those called into Covenant relationship with God,
is
described in the language of a bride and a bridegroom:
“You shall be a crown of beauty
in the hand of the Lord…
You shall no more be termed
Forsaken…
but you shall be called My
Delight Is in Her…
for the Lord delights in you…
…as a young man marries a young
woman…
…as the bridegroom rejoices over
the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over
you.”
This is a very intimate way to describe relationship with
God,
so
loving, and with the idea of becoming one flesh.
This passage is not just for the people of Jerusalem,
but for all called into covenant
relationship,
all brought into adoption as
sons and daughters of God.
The wedding imagery is the most beautiful and intimate of ways
for
expressing God’s love for us.
And then in John’s Gospel we see this first sign of Jesus,
this
sign of the Kingdom of God at hand,
in a story in which the setting
is a wedding.
But the wedding in this story is really more in the
background;
yet
it has an underlying, subliminal message,
in
which something very profound is being expressed.
For isn’t it a little odd that this first sign of Jesus
is
not his preaching and teaching,
such as
in the early chapters of Matthew’s Gospel
with the
Sermon on the Mount;
it
is not healing offered to all sorts and conditions of suffering,
but this first sign appears as an occurrence “behind the
scene,” so to speak,
in
the kitchen,
and only the servants know what has happened.
The steward in the wedding party knows nothing
about where the wine came from,
and doesn’t know of any
connection between Jesus and the wine.
He just knows quality when he tastes it, and tells the
bridegroom,
“Hey! This is good wine! Better than we had before!”
Now hold that thought,
because
now I want to shift to the Epistle reading for today.
The Apostle Paul writes,
“Now
concerning spiritual gifts, brothers and sisters,
I do not want you to be
uninformed.”
This is from an extended section in 1 Corinthians
in
which he describes the community of faith as the Body of Christ,
one
in being,
later
described as the Bride of Christ.
Here the focus is on the gifts of the Spirit,
“there
are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit;
and
there are varieties of services, but the same Lord;
and
there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God
who
activates all of them in everyone.”
And Paul emphasizes:
“To
each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.”
The passage makes it clear that every ministry and service
that Paul lists here
is
understood to be gift, given by the Spirit:
“All
these are activated by one and the same Spirit,
who
allots to each one individually just as the Spirit chooses.”
Paul is writing to the Corinthians to encourage them
in their
ministry and service to our Lord.
There is no question about engagement in ministry
-
this is assumed as something they all are called to do -
but
there needs to be clarity about just who is doing the ministry.
This is the Holy Spirit’s work,
the activity of the Resurrection Spirit of Jesus.
Now this is good news,
because
while there is work to be done
and
all baptized into Christ are to take part in that work,
the skills and abilities for doing that work are present
in the faith community,
but
are not dependent on just one person being skilled and equipped.
And, most importantly, we can’t
even claim ownership
of
any specific talents or skills, for they are all gifts.
And, notice, it is the Spirit who decides who gets what.
So our job is to be useful vessels of these gifts of the
Holy Spirit
that
we have been given,
and
put them to use as intended.
The intention, according to verse 7, is that this is for
the common good.
We are called to active ministry, each and every one of
us,
but
it’s not our ministry,
and
whatever effectiveness there is in
that ministry
is
not ours, but comes as a gift that passes through our hands
and
doesn’t stay with us,
all for the sake of the whole of
humanity.
Now, let’s go back to the wedding in Cana again,
and
see if there is any connection
between
this passage in 1 Corinthians
and
turning water into wine.
There is so much in this Gospel story,
but
I will pick up just a couple of points for our attention today.
First let’s look at what is going on between Jesus and his
mother.
Did you ever wonder about what may seem like a harsh
remark?
“Woman,
what concern is that to you and to me?”
Who is Jesus talking to? His mother! Is
that how you talk to your mother?
Or you might ask, why is Mary telling Jesus about the wine
running out?
What
does Mary know about Jesus that the others don’t?
What
are her expectations of Jesus?
She knows first hand, from the time when she carried him in
the womb,
that
the One she could call her son is also her Lord.
She expresses faith in her Lord
acting
on her experience of him,
calling
upon his compassionate and generous heart
in the
midst of a very human situation of impending social catastrophe.
And Jesus responds,
not
by acknowledging the family relationship between them,
but with a response that is
characteristic of a Teacher or rabbi testing a disciple.
Mary, the mother of our Lord,
was quite possibly, we could say, his first disciple.
She
believed before anyone else.
Mary passes the test.
She continues expressing explicit trust,
and
she actively engages in drawing others into the same trust.
For what servant in such a situation
would
dare take water to the head of the feast,
passing
it off as wine?
But they comply, and so they are the only ones who then
know
the
incredible transformation that has occurred,
the
act of creation of the Spirit hovering over the water in those 6 stone jars.
Water into wine. The
first sign.
Later at another feast,
Jesus
would take wine and pass it to his disciples
and
tell them to drink,
and then he would say, “This is my blood,”
blood
of a New Covenant, a new marriage between God and humankind.
Revelation 19:6-9 brings full circle this wedding imagery
from Isaiah
in
the marriage of the Lamb with the Bride, the Church, the Faithful.
Here Jesus, the Lamb of God, is the bridegroom at his own
wedding
in
this spiritual marriage with all his disciples,
where his own sacrifice, his life blood poured out on the
cross,
is
the wine at this table,
and the love in this marriage is none other than the agaph love of
God,
that
unitive love of “I in thee and thou in me.”
May our prayer, as we come to this table today, to drink
of his wine,
be
an openness of heart to realize this great love
and
a willingness to be like those stone jars, those vessels
to
be filled with the Spirit’s gifts
to
be poured out for others.
And may our hearts be glad. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment