January 14, 2007
(Second Sunday after the Epiphany)
The REAL Miracle at Cana
By The Very Rev. Terry White, Dean
Isaiah 43:1-7 • Psalm 29 • Acts 8:14-17 • Luke 3:15-17, 21-22
(From
The Lectionary Page)
“Dearly beloved, we have together in the presence of God to witness and bless the joining together of this man and this woman in Holy Matrimony. The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee.”
At every wedding rehearsal I stop at this point and ask the wedding party if, for extra credit, anyone can name that first miracle performed at a wedding. On a good day, a few can. My guess is that given a multiple-choice list, many people could identify changing water into wine as a miracle of Jesus. Many would find it harder to identify the setting of the miracle. And I continue to work on my answer to the question, “What is the meaning of this Our Lord’s first miracle?”
Katerina Whitley suggests that there is something almost mystical about a new beginning. “It is exactly what Epiphany calls forth—with the coming of Light, with the announcing of the coming Kingdom of God, and the revealing of the well-beloved Son at his baptism, we enter into a new time, a new season of hope. All will be different, we pray, and this will be a better year than the last. We enter each new year hoping.
“The Gospel of John is quite different from the synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), and there is something absolutely fitting in the story John chooses to tell as the first sign that ushers in the public ministry of Jesus. It happens at a marriage feast, where hope abounds.” (K. Whitley, Sermons that Work)
Marriage is the beginning of a new life for the couple and for their extended families and friends. Mary’s presence at the wedding may suggest that she was related to the bride or groom given that fact that she has access to the kitchen and wait staff and they followed her directions. Jesus arrived with group of followers in tow who may not have been expected. Thus, perhaps, the shortage of wine. Thus, perhaps, his mother’s irritation. Nonetheless, the scene is a joyous peasant wedding in a peasant village, where a mighty act will give us a glimpse of the glory of God. Glory is all around us.
On this particular weekend in January, three revelations of that glory that surrounds us leap to mind for me.
For two families in Missouri and their friends, miracles have occurred, as kidnapped boys, one missing for four days, another for over four years, are found and given back to their families. If you heard even a few words from those involved following the reunions, you know that a season of hope has dawned. The story will unfold well beyond the joy of this weekend. Once attention shifts, real and hard issues will be addressed, pain will be shared so that healing can begin, and for years to come these boys and their families will encounter problems stemming for the abductions. The strength these families need to persevere is found in the Life and Presence of the One who changed water into wine. Because Jesus is among us, despite our trials and pain, there will also always be hope and light and life. May Ben and Shawn and their families continue to be sustained by that hope.
A second manifestation of God’s glory. Here in Kansas City today we remember the late Larry Stewart, who shall forever be honored as the ultimate Secret Santa. His story is both amazing and rather eloquent in its simplicity: he struggled through part of his life and was blessed one day when a man handed him $20 and took the time to put his faith into action by caring and sharing, by manifesting God’s glory in a concrete act of love. And Larry built upon that act and took such living and giving to a new level. His now famous gifts of money given to shoppers in a thrift shop, or handed to a homeless person on a street corner, or given to a single parent outside a low-income day care center gave people hope. Repeatedly recipients said, “Secret Santa has renewed my faith in humanity.” And while news stories the last several years highlighted some gifts, and Donna McGuire’s book has done much to inspire others to such a life – for years very few people really knew about these small miracles. But the works still had the same impact on the recipients’ lives. At the wedding feast in Cana, only a handful of people knew anything about the miracle Jesus worked, and even fewer had any notion of its meaning. But the effect lasts to this day and will motivate and inspire people until the end of time. Miracles can have audiences of various sizes.
A third manifestation of God’s glory. The nation this weekend honors the witness and legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr., who helped usher in new hope, new life, and a new way of living. His life and death taught that evil and discrimination and hatred could only be defeated though non-violent action. He wrote: Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
Dr. King preached the words of the prophets and used the witness of the Church as his foundation: The church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of popular opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society, he wrote from a Birmingham Jail in 1963. Today we seem more uncomfortable with the Church avoiding taking a position on most things, placing the cause of false unity above the call of Christ to be agents of God’s transforming power. But like the water in Cana, the Church can be transformed.
Brother Martin said, Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. (Martin Luther King Jr., Strength to Love, 1963)
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love. (Martin Luther King Jr., December 11, 1964) While the direct quote is from Dr. King, one can imagine Isaiah, or Micah, or Jesus sayings those same words. In fact, they more or less did.
Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has dawned upon you. A new light has come; this is a new season of hope. Hope for ourselves, and hope for all people. Can our eyes see the glimpses of God’s glory around us? Can our hearts thrill to the hope spring forth all around us?
When two kidnapped boys are found alive, that is a miracle, worth giving high thanks for and demanding that we our petty complaints about life into perspective.
When a Secret Santa not only helps people directly but causes others to imitate his life, that is a sign that our society is not lost, that people do care, and can care, if we put forth the effort and sacrifice required. If we put ourselves before others.
When a nation learns it must do more to fight oppression, when each generation is more successful than the last in living into our national ideals and into our faith’s demands that we not judge or care about others based upon the color of one’s skin, or gender, or first language, or who one lovingly commits to – the miracle at a wedding of Cana in Galilee lives on. In fact, changing water into wine may just take a back seat to these other miracles.
So on a morning like this, when, given the snow and ice, just getting to the cathedral was a minor miracle, we ponder that first miracle of Jesus. And let us be open to the possibility that the miracle does not rest alone in the transformation of water into wine, but also in our transformation into people of hope. People who have hope, and share hope, and live hopefully. By caring for others. By sharing our wealth. By being simply and purely thankful for life. By living as people who will not tire from creating justice and opportunity and respecting the God-given dignity of all, especially of those who are denied dignity today.
May we celebrate the certainty that the most powerful agent of transformation in life is love. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.
Let love transform us and this cathedral into wine for a world thirsting for hope.
Lighting Up the Night
by The Rev. Carol Sanford,
Curate
Christ’s glory was revealed at the wedding in Cana, and light shone forth in the world. What a perfect evening this is to talk about light. It’s cold and dark and icy and snowy, and some of us may be getting a little desperate for warmer, brighter days. There isn’t anything we can do about the weather, but there is a great deal that we can do to bring warmth and illumination into this night and into the world. That is why we’re here, and that is why the cold and dark could not stop us from coming. We gather in a greater light and a greater warmth than those noted on the weather charts.
We gather in the same glory of God revealed in Jesus at the wedding at Cana. On this weekend when we prepare to honor The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Spirit is working within us to respond to a dream; helping us to respond to God’s dream for us; the dream for us revealed in Christ.
Let me put that another way. Chances are that we will not be turning water into wine any time soon, but we could be participating with God in changing someone’s life. I believe that somewhere inside we all know that we are given gifts to help change the world, and that this knowledge scares us just a little. We’re not sure what our gifts are or how we’re supposed to use them, or if we even want to do so.
We are none of us Martin Luther King, but, then, we are not supposed to be. This may be one of the hardest things for some of us to understand, no matter how often we hear that there are varieties of gifts. We just can’t seem to believe that all we really need to do is be who we are.
Our difficulties are often a variation on a few basic themes: One variation is that we believe ourselves to be ungifted or unworthy. Forgive me for speaking plainly, but that idea is simply an odd inverted arrogance which, instead of saying we are better than others, insists that we are worse. To each is given a manifestation of the same Spirit. Period. Ask for assistance in identifying your gifts, and keep reading tonight’s passage from First Corinthians if you need help in understanding that all of God’s children are gifted for God’s work.
Another challenge we often have with finding the light of God within ourselves, is that we want someone else’s gift. Some of us are pretty sure that if we only had a real talent for music or a clever way with words or, God help us, enough money or good looks, then we, too, would shine radiantly with Christ’s glory. Silly us. We get all confused about what true radiance is, because we see through a cultural lens that prizes celebrity and fame, and grand gestures.
Try the old exercise of remembering those who have brought light into your life. There may, indeed, be famous persons on that list, but there will no doubt also be quiet and largely unknown examples of God’s love. When I make such a list, as I do periodically, I often think of my friend Peggy’s grandmother.
She blazed forth God’s glory in welcoming into her household yet one more noisy little kid from the neighborhood, and in giving, oh greatest of delights, ice cream and Hershey’s syrup to the dusty crew fresh from digging holes to China in the back yard. She did this of her charity and love at a time which, as an adult, I now recognize must have been very difficult. She was a plainspoken, no-nonsense presence of God in flowered dusters and stretchy old-lady sandals.
God’s glory was revealed in her acceptance and generosity to other people’s children. That was her gift, and it changed my life. With God’s grace, the acceptance I saw in her sometimes shows up in my acceptance of others and does not, I presume, stop there. God seems to work that way. The gifts we carry from God cannot be contained and survive; they are gifts for the common good.
Sometimes we get confused about this, and are hampered by working for the wrong things. A man we knew from California named Paul once said that he had spent years praying for God to help him to reach his goals, seemingly with little response.
Paul said that he finally figured out that God empowers us to reach God’s goals. Most grownups eventually learn this. When we work hard for our own satisfaction and glory, things often go awry. Either we are unsuccessful in achieving what we want, or the success feels hollow, once achieved; the glory we thought we wanted has a dull shine after all.
We remember The Rev. Dr. King because he used his gifts for the common good and the Glory of God shone forth accordingly. For us to do the same is not, perhaps, as complicated as we may fear. Our part is to show up in faith to let God empower us for God’s work; to be willing to use our gifts in bringing about God’s dream.
Dr. Rosa Smith said this about Martin Luther King. “Dr. King understood that there were people who did want a better and just world. But only for some of the children. He also understood that it was a dangerous thing to love all of the children. But he did it anyway.”
God’s dream for us encompasses all of God’s children, and living out that dream can, indeed, be a dangerous thing.
Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke a part of that dream loudly and clearly as he envisioned our nation ringing out freedom for all children and overcoming our history of hatred and discrimination. In so doing, he risked and eventually gave his life that God’s glory might be seen and God’s dream realized.
The Rev. King opened a way for the turning of the historical waters of despair and violence into the new wine of hope and change. Do not think that God’s miracles ended with the earthly death of Jesus. Christ is risen and the Holy Spirit is active in and through us today.
We come together and are illumined by God’s Word and Sacraments, and we go out, bearing God’s dream. Herein lies our true happiness; the bringing forth of Christ, God’s illumination and warmth, into a dark night and a chilly world.
