C Epiphany 2 BFC 2022
John 2:1-11
January 16, 2022
Ok, Biblical geek
time. This is a Scripture verse that
begs us to see the deep meaning in Scripture not because we take it literally; but because we engage Scripture to be
understood seriously and literally.
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.”
I have regularly used the
Scripture before us today for holy communion liturgy. It begins the public
ministry of Jesus in the gospel of John. For a storyteller, this wedding feast
at Cana story is a summary statement, a topic sentence, which expresses who
Jesus is and what the author of the gospel of John thinks Jesus’s ministry and
teaching are all about.
In the ancient world,
there are Divine claims being made right and left. Augustus Caesar is the most
well-known, claiming to be the Son of God, the divine Julius Caesar. Caesars regularly claimed that the status quo
showed off the will of the gods. We
conquered you. Therefore it is
evident. The gods favored us—wanted our
joy, our peace, our well-being. The gods want us to be in charge.
If this 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? Tough not to think that when Caesar’s message
is blaring out at you from every piece of art, architecture, and
heavily-armored centurion.
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's 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, as
Crossan says, how nice for Jesus. If the story is taken literally, the meaning
is that 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 the Bible is written
primarily in poetic language and not intended to be taken literally.
And, 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 they are reporting, has a ticker running
underneath that says, “They’re 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]
Author Toni Cade Bambara reminds us that the role of
the artist for those in power is to enforce the status quo with their columns
and pyramids and temples and biographies.
But the job of the artist whose heart sings in the midst of an oppressed
people, Barbara writes, “is to make the revolution irresistible.”[3] The artist writes to help others see light
happening in the deepest night, the ability to be born again when all seems
dire and desolate. 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. Hear this
countercultural poem said in a world that values only whiteness.
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's 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. Jesus turns the water into wine at the wedding
feast. Wine is that mythological symbol
that represents joy, frivolity, and play. So Biblically, what does joy
mean?
I know, culturally, “joy”
is strongly tied to the organization of our material surplus. If you remember
organizing expert, Marie Kondo with the popular show, “Tidying up with Marie
Kondo,” we are told to organize our lives by keeping 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 shared, I’m not sure “joy” is the word I would use for this practice.
Rather, joy sustains us
for the difficult journey, the action we need to take on behalf of each other
and God’s good earth. [W]hen [we] face a
politics that aspires to make [us] fearful, alienated, and isolated, joy is a
final act of insurrection.[4]
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 Go may intend something different than the status quo.
The moment in this poetic
story is made even more poignant when the wine runs out. 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, the
wine never runs out. 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 intent. All we have to do is invite God's presence to the
feast, make space for God moving among us, join in the feast. 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 of domination that profits from keeping
these Jewish peasants in place. No longer will these Jewish peasants believe
that God wants them to be without inclusion in community’s soul force, 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 and healer, Jonathan Kozol speak, at a local
high school amphitheater. 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
Ordinary Resurrections 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, knowing that her life mattered to the Living God, 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. The status quo told her she
had no right to smile. She knew
differently.
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 Pilgrim Congregational United Church of Christ. 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 community through care packages for migrants, food baskets for
the indigent, and clean water for those facing systemic injustice. This is Pilgrim
Congregational United Church of Christ, a gift of God to Berrien County and the
wider world. We are a gift . . . and if you haven't already received the
message by the Passing of the Peace, the wisdom shared by our children during
Children’s Sermons or while coloring, or the playfulness found in goofy
Christmas pageants, there is a playfulness in everything we do . . .
For here, in this place, we
intend God's joy to be ever refracting and reflecting. A warm light . . . ever refracting and
reflecting. Praise God. Amen.
[1] “Elizabeth Alexander on
Words that Shimmer,” On Being,
January 17, 2013, http://www.onbeing.org/program/elizabeth-alexander-words-shimmer/transcript/4993#main_content.
[2] Ibid.
[3]Toni Cade Bambara, “An Interview with Toni Cade
Bambara: Kay Bonetti.” Conversations with Toni Cade Bambara
(Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2012), p. 35
[4] Rebecca Solnit, Hope in
the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild
Possibilities (Chicago: Haymarket
Books, 2016), p. 24.
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