Red Bison Faith: Akbaakuxshé: 2nd Sunday after Epiphany, January 20, 2019, "God intends joy"

Thursday, January 24, 2019

2nd Sunday after Epiphany, January 20, 2019, "God intends joy"

C Epiphany 2 BFC 2019

John 2:1-11

January 20, 2019

John Dominic Crossan, early Christianity scholar, would regularly share this tongue-in-cheek observation about taking the Bible literally. He would say in his great Irish accent, “We may take Jesus’s healing and miracles literally, but where does that get you? Jesus did a miracle. How nice for Jesus! We, in fact, miss the deep and poetic meaning when we take these things literally.”

The Scripture before us today we regularly use for our holy communion liturgy. It begins the public ministry of Jesus in the gospel of John. So, for a storyteller, it is a summary statement, a topic sentence, which expresses who Jesus is and what his ministry and teaching are all about.

Remember that, in the ancient world, there are Divine claims being made right and left. So if the Jewish God's work is being made manifest in this time and place, Jewish peasants living in occupation, persecution, and poverty are not so sure if God is for them or against them. Wouldn't their present situation indicate that God was against them? If God is Almighty and chooses how the world runs, endorses the status quo, wouldn't our present suffering indicate what God intends for us?

What does God intend for us? Marcus Borg, in his book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, believes the author of John seeks to answer that question with the beginning of Jesus' public ministry. And how we interpret Scripture, it matters here. For if this story is taken literally, it is simply a miracle story that has Jesus turning water into wine, then how nice for Jesus. It shows how God can solve all of our most embarrassing conundrums. The wine has run out at the wedding. Pray to Jesus, and God, all-powerful, takes care of it. Is that how faith works? If we pray hard enough, God eliminates suffering, struggle, and death from our lives?

I believe this Scripture passage, maybe more than any other, is a reminder that much of the Bible is written in poetic language and not intended to be taken literally. As poet and educator, Dr. Elizabeth Alexander has said, good, poetic language is about words that shimmer and deep meaning. “We crave truth tellers,” Dr. Alexander says, “We crave real truth. There is so much baloney all the time.” What we hear most of the time is like one of those comedy newscasts where the reporter, as he is reporting, has a ticker running underneath that says, “He’s lying.”[1] Dr. Alexander goes on to say, in one of her poems, “Poetry is the human voice . . . and are we not of interest to each other?”[2] Good, poetic language is about keeping our eyes on the prize, not losing track of what’s important, when politicians and media moguls use studies and statistics that confuse and hide truth.

We break the hearts of our children,

The jewels that have been given to us,

When we stunt their teachers,

Forbid them frolic,

And tell them, “Hmmph, you know, your generation.”

When their refracted and reflected light

Off their many facets

Should tell us something

Of the divine

Shining shafts through floor boards and ceiling beams

And we say, “Ah, child, the color is not pure white,”

To beautiful browns and reds, blacks and golds,

All they need us to say is,

“Ah, child, light, warm light.”

Ever refracting and reflecting.

Hear in that poetic language values that will not be obfuscated by statistics and surveys, politics and pandering. Our children are valuable as they are, in all of their diversity. Deep meaning is conveyed.

In contrast to the literal interpretation of Scripture, Marcus Borg believes this is the author of John trying to relate the character of Christ and his ministry. This is poetic language. Again, although this story is not found in any of the other gospels, the author of John places it at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry.

What does God intend and what is it like to live with Christ? Here is the setting: a marriage, a time of celebration for the whole community, where diverse people come from different families to surround what will become a basic unit of community life, a family themselves.

One of the basic symbols of this story is wine. Wine is that mythological symbol that represents joy, frivolity, and play. So Biblically, what does joy mean? If one would listen to the Japanese organizing expert, Marie Kondo with her on show now on Netflix, “Tidying up with Marie Kondo,” you are to keep only the material possessions that spark joy. That is where we are. We are making it a spiritual practice to determine what material possessions spark joy. Though I know there is wisdom in what Ms. Kondo shares, I’m not sure “joy” is the word I would use for it.

For the Jewish people, wine represented a messianic joy, the understanding that the whole community would share in a liberation and freedom God intends for them. Throughout Scripture, the Biblical meaning of joy is to be in God’s presence, to know God is at work, that God may intend something different than the status quo. The moment is made even more poignant when the wine runs out. So is this what God intends? Is that all there is? Is this not a symbol for what the Jewish people are experiencing? God's will for their liberation and freedom runs out.

But with and through Christ, not only is there wine in abundance, the best wine is yet to come and the wine never runs out. So what John is trying to convey is—life with Christ is like a marriage feast where the joy never ends, where God's will for our liberation and our freedom does not run out.

Nowhere in this story is a requirement for such intent. All we have to do is invite God's presence to the feast, make space for God moving among us. God is there to be noticed, for us to be aware of God's presence. All we have to do is lift the veil that has us believing we do not deserve God's will for our joy. Understand, this is a radical statement that says the status quo is not the will of God. God does not will the occupation, persecution, and poverty of the Jewish people. God intends joy.

In the midst of societal suffering and pain, do we believe this is God's intent? And, if not, do we believe it is intrinsic to God's character, to overtake, capture, and wrestle to the floor anything that gets in the way of God's will? What is the nature of God's work? How does God work? In the Gospel of John, a Samaritan woman, excluded from her community, becomes the teller of God's good news to that whole community. A blind man, from his birth, begins to share the good news of God's will for him with all the religious authorities who want to tell the man whose eyes are opened that this cannot possibly be God's work. A person who is crippled to the point where he could not seek his own healing finally experiences the stirring of God's healing power for him. A community, wondering where they will find something to eat, finds that bread shared becomes bread abundant. God intends joy!

The scary part is that they lived in a system invested in these wretched of the earth never believing that they are worthy of joy, joy was never intended for them. Christ changing the water into wine unmasks the foundations of a system and structure that profits from keeping these Jewish peasants in place. No longer will these Jewish peasants believe that God wants them without inclusion in community, without healing when there is no recourse, without bread when there is no resource.

Christ initiates struggle and protest. The world as it is, this is not God's intent. This is not what God wants. If God does not intend, want, or will it, in fact, if it is the opposite of what God intends, wants, or wills, then why should we accept it?

Some time ago I got to see one of my heroes, famed educator, Jonathan Kozol speak. One of Kozol's most well-known texts is, Ordinary Resurrections, a chronicling of his experience in inner-city public schools where, too often, money and resources are missing and environmental poisoning in communities is rampant. Kozol begins the text by talking about the tough work of desegregating public schools in the 1960s. He speaks of a small, African-American girl who walked courageously to the entrance of her new school, escorted by police officers. White folk ringed the area, shouting insults and racial epithets her way. One woman seemed particularly strident in spewing hatred at the child. Looking to the sky, the little African-American girl smiled. Disarmed and surprised by her smile, the woman addressed the child with the “n” word and asked, “Why are you smiling?” The young girl responded, “Because I see Jesus smiling at me.” The woman was left speechless. God intends joy. It was the message and ministry of Christ, the message and ministry of Dr. King, and the message and reality of a small, African-American girl who knew the will and work of God.

I arrived late to see Jonathan Kozol, and the place was packed. Kozol talked about several children he had written about in his books and related the grave differences between the investments we make in our schools. Public schools, without money and resources, Kozol concluded, put school children in situations where to succeed is the exception and to fail is the rule. We have built a world where we act like God smiles on some of us because of our virtue and does not smile on others because they somehow “deserve” injustice.

The gifts of God are intended for us. Such that we might know God's gifts to us day by day, throughout the year. I believe those gifts are communicated through this community we call Billings First Congregational Church. This community of faith seeks to communicate God's inclusive gift that no matter who you are or where you are on your journey you are welcome here. This community of faith seeks to communicate God's gift of healing love by the way we say that we are invested in joining hands with others to piece together a stronger and more resilient city. This community of faith seeks to communicate God's gift of life-giving bread by the way we call attention to injustice, provide a safe place for recovery, and offer a model of what it looks like when people join hands across ethnicity and culture, gender and sexuality, socioeconomic status and caste. This community of faith communicates messianic joy for all by the way we encourage embodied spirituality, religious literacy, and public liturgy here and outside our four walls to say there is good in here but there is beauty and good and life outside these four walls. This is Billings First Congregational Church, a gift of God to Yellowstone County and the wider world. We are a gift . . . and if you haven't already received the message by the long Passing of the Peace, the wisdom shared by our children, or the playfulness found in everything we do . . . we intend God's joy to be ever refracting and reflecting. Praise God. Amen.