The World Is Itself
Epiphany 2 : 20 January 2013 : John 2: 1-11
Father Hugh Bowron, 2013Thinking back over wedding receptions I have attended one stands out in particular. We had arrived at one of the better Christchurch hospitality venues, and I relaxed and prepared to enjoy the occasion after the rigours of officiating at the wedding. Just then the photographer came along side, and urgently whispered in my ear -"they haven’t done anything about speeches, toasts, or an MC, it looks as though you are it by default." There followed one of the more stressed impromptu performances of my life.
Since then I have encouraged wedding couples to be as focused on the choreography of the reception as they are on the details of the Church Service. That way they avoid major social embarrassment. My hunch is that the wedding in Cana in Galilee had a similarly under organized reception. A bride and groom, pre occupied with organising the wedding of all weddings, just didn’t think through with tough-minded realism about the drinking habits of their friends and families.
Ah well - somebody always steps in to try and rescue the situation. But we have become so familiar with this Jewish mother and her precocious son story that we don’t see how unusual the details are. We don’t even know that the miracle has happened until the Steward inadvertently tells us that a large supply of high quality wine has turned up in an unlikely place. Then there is the amount of wine involved - a vast supply of twenty to thirty gallons that is far beyond the capacity of the guests to consume. And what about the rudeness of that exchange between mother and son that is at the centre of this story. Just three weeks ago this holy family was held up for our admiration as a model of a household that gets along.
But the biggest puzzle is about the nature of this sign. Usually New Testament miracles are about giving someone back their sight, or about drawing a child back from death to restore it to their parents, or about rescuing desperate people from the power of a storm. We can understand divine power deployed in these life and death situations. But this is quite different. The worst that could happen to that wedding party was some social embarrassment for the bridal couple, and the wedding guests going home in a more sober condition than they expected.
This is a messy story with all sorts of loose ends that can’t be neatly tied up and reduced to improving religious messages. It is like life itself in all its uncontrollable narrative richness and confusion. But it leaves us with an intriguing question. What are we to make of a God who behaves with such reckless generosity in non life threatening social situations - who overthrows our conventional expectations of self controlled, disciplined, restrained religious life styles?
This first sign in John’s gospel frames up our expectations of what God is about, but it does so in such a way as to make us think deeply about what the world is about.
What did God think he was up to in making the world? Creation involved bringing in to being something that was not him. All that is around us has a life of its own. It is about its business of being itself. Gerard Manley Hopkins got it in one in those lines:
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same….myself it speaks and spells, crying what I do is me, for that I came.
God lets the world be itself. Maybe it is sustained in being by the hidden ground of love. But God remains well and truly out of sight. Most sentient beings are unaware of him. God enjoys the world for what it is. He does not feed off it, or need it, or use it as an advertising sign. As Jacques Pohier wrote:
God does not want to be everything.
I have called this sermon the world is itself. That is God’s perspective on the matter. He just enjoys it, and us, for what we are. We are worth celebrating in his eyes. Life itself is worth celebrating. And gifts are given to help that happen. The wisest commentary on today’s gospel story puts it this way:
The gifts of Jesus extend well beyond meeting the needs of the moment for health or safety or food. In this story, those gifts encompass the celebration of life itself. That is to say, the sheer abundance of the gifts Jesus brings to humankind extends beyond what any human being can ask or think or comprehend.
In the January holiday season we are free to just enjoy the world for what it is. There are plenty of celebrations going on too. Can we go to the next stage and have that disinterested love of the people around us that celebrates who they are without wanting anything in particular back from them? Can we see these people as being what the free love of God has made them? Can we get a glimpse too of how free God is from the need to insert himself into all this.
It was Thomas Aquinas who pointed out that it was inappropriate for us to love things or persons as a way of loving God or as leading us to God. We should love them for what he called their "autonomy and consistency," for what the free love of God has made them. God puts all that love in to the world without trying to corner the market on it and get it re directed back on to him. As Rowan Williams says, "It is God who makes it possible to love things and persons for what they are."
It was a bold risk that God took in creating all that not God otherness that is the world of things and persons. He is not possessive about us and lets us be free as we go about the business of being ourselves. He enjoys our little quirks and peculiarities, and he is interested in life, all of life, even in wedding receptions that go wrong.
And apparently he knows a thing or two about viticulture and wine making also. As Capernaum Estates 31 was plonked on the banqueting tables wine buffs were left with two tormenting questions - was this the best wine that ever slid across human palates, and - was it a red or a white?
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