A
Meditation for the Third Sunday after Epiphany
John
2:1-11
1.
This week, I’ve been thinking
a good bit about my friend Ghassan Manasra, the Muslim sheikh and community
activist who first introduced me to Nazareth and the Galilee almost five years
ago. Some of you have met him here at
FCC: a brave man with a huge heart. And I
remember the generous pride, the sweet light in Ghassan’s eye that day five
years ago, as he led me first (before anything else) to a rocky outcropping
just outside Nazareth. The old city Jesus
called home. And there, on a cliff, my
Muslim friend told me about the day Jesus preached an edgy sermon to the home
folks and in no time got himself run out of town. “We remember this as the place,” Ghassan told
me, with a wink, “where they chased Jesus that day, and where he escaped their
madness, and slipped away untouched. So
he could do so many good things.” I’ve
still got that picture at home: a great shot of the Muslim sheikh smiling on a
cliff and recalling Jesus’ sneaky getaway.
“So he could do so many great things.”
Ghassan insisted that
our next stop be Cana, the nearby village where Jesus—the story goes—turned water
into wine and turned an ordinary reception into a wedding feast. You’ve heard the story this morning: how Jesus
and his mother get into it a little bit, some conversational jousting about
party provisions and the timing of miracles.
Jesus isn’t convinced. But you’ve
heard how his mother slips away and kind of provokes Jesus to do his
thing. Water into wine. And so the ordinary wedding reception becomes
an extraordinary feast—and a sign of things to come.
To be honest, I didn’t
have Cana on my list of places to visit in the Galilee or sites to see there. There were so many others. But Ghassan insisted: there was that sweet
light in his eye, and I couldn’t say no.
So we parked his little car a few blocks from the town square and walked
up to the medieval church that sits on the holy site. And we stepped into the place where Galileans
celebrate Jesus’ first miracle.
Now the church had
been built, obviously, long after Jesus’ time.
But the memory of the place, its significance in John’s Gospel, draws
believers still from all over the globe.
Ghassan and I sat and watched from the back pew as a steady stream of
women and men approached the old altar up front. Several were weeping at the rail, and several
more praying aloud in Spanish and English and what must have been an African
language. Ghassan was even more excited there
in Cana than he’d been on that cliff in Nazareth.
And in that back pew
we talked. We talked about our families
and our faith; we talked about some of the fears that keep us – awake at
night. And we talked about Islam and
Sufism, and why it is that a Sufi sheikh likes to visit Cana where the rebel
rabbi turned water into wine. It was an
extraordinary conversation and really an extraordinary morning for me. And when we stood to leave and Ghassan put
his arm around my shoulder, when he pulled me in close, I think I understood
that trip to Cana and why it mattered so much.
The story, after all,
is about transformation. It’s about
Jesus as an agent, a reluctant agent mind you, but an agent nonetheless of
transformation. It’s about life breaking
open—and revealing depth and maturity and meaning. Out of the ordinary stuff of human
existence—partners getting married and guests showing up and wine served on
tables and water waiting in pots—out of all this ordinary stuff, God coaxes
wonder, delight, celebration and joy. We
walked through the little village, arm in arm, back to Ghassan’s car; and then
we drove on to his family home in Nazareth for a traditionally magnificent
midday meal. And I think – I
understood. We are made for days like
that. We are made for friendship and
feasting. We are made for wonder and
delight. Christians and Muslims and
Jews. Guests and hosts, brides and
bridegrooms. We are made for wonder and
delight. Cana makes sense to me now.
2.
In the ancient world
of course, weddings were almost always held outdoors—in lush spring gardens or
fragrant community courtyards. That’s
important because John’s Gospel seems to be playing a bit, improvising on the
first stories, the earliest themes in the Book of Genesis. The ancient texts of Jewish faith. You remember the story of the first man and
the first woman in the garden: how they come to one another and tempt one
another and grow up and even out of the garden together.
Well, John’s Gospel
invites you and me back: back to the garden of wonder and delight; back to the
garden of gratitude and celebration. No
sooner does Jesus call his first disciples—Andrew and Peter, Phillip and
Nathanael—than he takes them out to Cana, to a wedding and a garden. Discipleship will test them; it will be
challenging and hard. But faith takes
time to stop and smell the roses. Faith
takes time to learn the names of the budding blossoms and the singing
birds. Faith takes time to enjoy the
garden.
And notice the new
twist. John’s new twist. Instead of tempting one another, as Adam and
Eve did in the beginning; instead of deceiving and blaming one another, as Adam
and Eve did in Genesis; Jesus and his mother—well, there’s kind of a
playfulness to their banter. Playfulness
and provocation. She merely mentions,
right, that the wine’s running out. He
intuits her suggestion: that a miracle might be nice, might put a pretty bow on
the whole afternoon. But he resists,
unsure that the time is right for such merriment. “Don’t push me,” he tells her. But she’s not so easily dissuaded; she gives
him the slip, goes right to the wait staff and sets in motion the whole,
wonderful, transformative experience.
Water into wine. Out of the
ordinary stuff, all this wonder and delight.
If there’s a sin—among
all the rest—one sin that ticks me off in the Christian church, it’s that we
have so often bored one another and bored the world with our banter, our
beliefs and our blah blah blah. I’ve yet
to find the verse in the Bible or the prayer among the mystics that says: “Thou
shalt be boring.” Instead, over and over
again, the mystics describe faith as a kind of falling in love, a wild and
passionate affair of the spirit, a deepening awareness of God’s mystery in a
world of constant wonder and delight. The
last thing on Jesus’ mind—or, let’s be honest, his mother’s—is boring us.
Have you watched the
sun rise this week, over Monterey Bay, the way the sky blushes and the birds
sing and surf comes to life? That’s
God’s mystery in a world of constant wonder and delight. Have you stood there at the cutting board,
making something savory and sweet for friends?
What happens when you love what you’re doing, when you enjoy the process
of cooking, when you turn those simple ingredients into a scrumptious feast? That’s God’s mystery in a world of constant
wonder and delight. As we get together
this afternoon to celebrate eight core values, eight motivating values, is there
any doubt that we are made for wonder and gratitude, that wonder and gratitude
are holy dimensions of our human vocation?
And is there any doubt that the world aches for just that kind of
religion: the kind that embraces wonder as holy and gratitude as sacred? Can we find new ways to share that sense of
wonder with neighbors and friends, with the curious and the broken and the
bored? I think we can.
3.
Of course, wonder
makes its claim on our lives too. And
Jesus will go on from Cana to show Andrew and Peter, Phillip and Nathanael,
just how this works. Wonder opens our
eyes and hearts to the gift of life and the amazing grace of God’s heart. We cannot cling too tightly to that gift or
claim that grace exclusively as our own.
Jesus traces a pattern that is generous, daring, kind and just. So that the wonder we taste in the garden
goes with us wherever we go: feeding the hungry in shelters, visiting the sick
in nursing homes, confessing our mistakes and making amends over and over
again. Wonder sows seeds of delight in
our souls; it plants a song in our deepest parts that lifts us in the hard
times and takes flight to heaven in the good times. But it makes its claim on our lives. Wonder makes it claim on our lives.
I wonder how many of
us have seen “Les Miserables” at the movies this month. Jean Valjean is one of those characters who
has almost lost his capacity for wonder and delight—so cruelly has the world
beat it out of him. But when a priest
shows him kindness and offers him forgiveness—rather than sending him back to
prison—Jean Valjean plunges into a crisis unlike any other he’s known. He’s come to think of himself as an angry
man: a wounded and vengeful one, justifiably bitter and defiant, and
disinterested in human kindness. But
mercy shakes him to the core and demands a choice: Will Jean Valjean turn away
from wonder, from grace, from human kindness?
Or will he yield to mercy, embrace his capacity for love and live out of
the heart of God’s grace?
There’s a scene—in the
movie—where Jean Valjean wrestles with this choice, dramatically, where he
agonizes over the change it demands and throws himself at last into the wonder,
into the challenge, into the joy of this new life. It’s not easy. It’s never easy. But it is life. It’s the opportunity to love and be
loved. It’s the opportunity to serve the
cause of freedom. It’s the pleasure of
watching the sun rise and cooking good meals for friends and living life in the
garden of grace. If you haven’t seen
“Les Miserables,” I hope you will. It’s
a powerfully made film—with all manner of Christian metaphor and themes. I think you’ll like it. A lot.
Something I’ll be
thinking about this week is this bit about Jesus and his mother egging one
another on in the garden at Cana. Maybe
it says something about community, about relationship, about what can happen
when we risk friendship and delight together.
I get the impression—in John’s telling of this tale—that there is no
miracle, there is no water into wine, without that relationship. Without Jesus
and his mother egging one another on.
It’s kind of like there is no future, no transformation for Jean
Valjean, without the old priest giving away the candlesticks, without the old
priest’s courage in doing what his savior did before him.
I’ll be thinking about
that this week, and this afternoon as we gather for our congregational
meeting. What a gift we have in this
circle of faith, in this community of Christ!
God has planted us in a garden, a California garden—holy and wild, sweet
and wondrous—and she’s planted us here together. You and you and you and me. May these wonders—little ones and big
ones—inspire in us all the courage, all the generosity, all the love they
inspired in Jesus and in his mother so long ago. In Cana.
Amen.
