In the middle of the night
about 30 years ago a nurse (who was a parent of one of my students) smuggled me
into a Connecticut hospital via a side door; she hurriedly draped me in green
hospital garb, complete with a mask. At a parent/teacher conference with her a
month or so earlier, I had mentioned my hope someday to witness the birth of a
baby, and that 2 A.M. telephone call was her response. From behind an
observation window, I experienced the birth of this new person, so small, yet
more complex than any computer - truly astonishing.
As a youngster, I was
fascinated by astronomy. In my mind the universe was the fascinating artwork of
the God we worshipped and learned about in church. Recently I updated the
chapter on science and philosophy in a textbook. With the sense of mystery I
had as a youngster, I wrote: "The immensity of the universe is beyond our
imaginations. Our planet is a small part of the solar system. As far as we
know, the solar system consists of 1 star (the sun), 9 planets, 32 moons, about
50,000 asteroids, millions of meteorites, 100 billion comets, dust specks, and
an assortment of gas molecules and atoms . .... Our sun is one of 100 billion
suns or stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. This galaxy stretches for about 920
quadrillion miles. About 100 billion galaxies of different shapes dot the
universe . ... The earth is traveling 67 thousand miles per hour in its annual
journey around the sun. The Milky Way galaxy speeds along at 1.3 million miles
per hour, propelled further into an expanding cosmos. Every 4 seconds the
universe adds to itself a volume equivalent in size to the Milky Way." Sharing
my sense of wonder, a physicist recently wrote in his book The Mind Of
God, "Through my scientific work I have come to believe more and more
strongly that the physical universe is put together with an ingenuity so
astonishing that I cannot accept it merely as brute fact. There must, it seems
to me, be a deeper level of explanation." For this physicist the deeper level
of understanding is rooted in God.
The birth of a baby, the vast
expanse of interstellar space -- they bring to mind words from Psalms 95 and
96: "O come, let us worship and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker .
... 0 worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness; let the whole earth stand in
awe of him." Within this marvelous context I am not impressed by an
unexplainable change of water into wine! The miraculous qualities of an
ordinary birth and the everyday universe are more awesome and spectacular.
What we are given in today's
Gospel from John is neither an attempt to compete with the wonder of God's
created order nor an historical deposit of parlor magic designed to win
converts; instead, we hear "symbolic narrative" providing a faith-filled
understanding of Jesus Christ. Miracle stories such as the Wedding at Cana
affirm God's power active where it is not expected. Miracle stories go beyond
mere explanation of an event: they convey mystery and meaning, as well as an
occasion for our faithful response.
Consider the setting - a
wedding - Jewish imagery of joyous fulfillment. The Good News of Jesus Christ
includes the joy of the new age. Life in the new covenant relationship with God
is neither a list of religious rules and regulations nor an assembly of
frowning saints. Rather, lives of Christ's disciples manifest a celebration of
the goodness and love made known in creation; life is to be basically a festive
occasion, a banquet! God is with us in joy as well as in our sorrows.
Consider the new wine! Jesus
and his path is the good wine replacing the bland, insufficient water
and old wine of his day. Following Him as God's Word for us drastically changes
one's circumstances. Moreover, the best wine provided by Christ is available
now. In other words, the joy of the new age is attainable by the faithful. In
this story set by John at the beginning of Jesus' ministry we have a portrayal
of Christ's mission: an invitation to be saved from a diminished life by
drinking from the cup of salvation: life is transformed, a change for the
better. Jesus acts in the Cana story so that a celebration may continue rather
than remain mediocre or come to an embarrassing end. What a parable of living
we have from John's Cana story!
Virtually all pastors ca look
back over their ministries and count the many times that boring patterns,
dejection, rigidity, troubles, illnesses, adversities, and even deaths have
been turned into the means of saving and transforming people's lives. Grown
children estranged from each other for years praying together by a parent's
sick-bed, children who for the first time since childhood, begin talking to
each other, not small talk, but the talk that releases anger and resentment and
brings healing and love. Changing water into wine: common experiences, as
common as water, turned unexpectedly into the sweetness and richness of wine by
people whose lives shine in prayer with the radiance of Christ's glory.
Consider ourselves. The Creator
provides laws of nature giving each of us life; each of us has certain talents
and abilities. Every one of us has the magnificent capacity to love and be
loved. That's miraculous) That's abundance in and of itself! Yet, there are
those who close their eyes, their minds, and their hearts to who they are as
children of God and what they already have. Some of us focus on our deficits
rather than our assets: glasses are always half empty rather than half full.
Others hold to rigid patterns - tight, right, somber, and inflexible. And, some
of us suffer from troubles not of our own making. Nonetheless, we are all
invited to make a choice: either to remain as water in stone jars or as
inferior wine, or to be a person in this community of new wine. To think and
feel in Christ's Way, we have to make a decision to experience the ordinary -
from birth to the universe itself - as wondrous, miraculous, and awesome, to
realize that the mundane can be spectacular. We may need God's healing of
physical and emotional pain and suffering, to be strengthened at our broken
places, enabled to cone with betrayals and grief, but we may also need healing
from toxic faiths of habitual darkness, hardness of heart, and voluntary
ignorance.
The Season of Epiphany calls
you and me to manifest an awakened, joyous, faith in Christ and to journey on
his pathway, whether in our hills or valleys. The only way others outside will
be convinced that we have something valuable, something they lack, something
they'll come running for, is if we shine with the radiance of Christ's glory,
nurtured and illumined in this very place by our ordinary yet miraculous
celebration of God's Word and Sacraments.