John 2:1-11
The week after Christmas we had a full house. Both of my children were home, my son’s girlfriend joined us for part of the time, and some very dear friends, whom we have known for decades, stayed with us as well. We played a lot of games — in my case, I lost a lot of games; we joked; we ate Indian food; we hung out. It was all very normal — nothing exciting or spectacular happened — but as we gathered around the table to bless the food one night, I had a small epiphany, one of those “God moments” that I imagine all of us have occasionally, and I realized how holy it all was. That ordinary gathering of ordinary people was permeated with the presence of God and thus extraordinary at the same time.
And that thought comes to mind as I reflect on this Gospel today. Jesus does many miraculous things in John’s Gospel, but John does not refer to them as miracles: he calls them signs, events which point us to the truth. Some of those signs are quite dramatic, like giving sight to a man born blind and raising Lazarus from the dead. But the very first sign, the one that sets the tone for the whole Gospel, takes place at this wedding in Cana. There is no debilitating illness here, no blindness, no tragedy. Running out of wine at a wedding feast would no doubt be a bummer and socially embarrassing, but it’s not a matter of life and death. This story, though, does establish something that is absolutely crucial for everything that follows. Jesus takes water and turns it into wine, and not just any wine, but the finest wine. He takes something that is ordinary — and there is nothing more ordinary than water — and transforms it into something extraordinary. Or maybe transformation isn’t the right term. Maybe this sign points us to the truth that nothing is ever just ordinary when seen in the light of Christ.
That certainly accords with our understanding of Incarnation. God Almighty enters into our world as a baby, a helpless infant born to a poor family in an obscure town. Outwardly, Jesus’s circumstances are nothing if not mundane, and yet at the same time he is Emmanu-el, “God with us.” And while we sing gorgeous music and don beautiful vestments to celebrate that fact, at the heart of our sacramental worship lie the most basic and ordinary materials: water and oil, bread and wine. But more important and more wondrous than that are the human materials God employs. Jesus forms a community with the most ordinary people. Paul insists in our second lesson today that within every ordinary believer lives the Holy Spirit, who gives to all of us — no exceptions — extraordinary gifts for ministry, manifestations of God for the common good. To believe in Jesus Christ is to realize that the whole of creation is infused with the presence of God, and that we ourselves are filled with that presence, with the very same Spirit that lives in Christ.
That’s awesome, but I think it is safe to say that we are well-defended against this truth. We resist it in multiple ways. We see that we are sinners, that as individuals we often fall short and miss the mark: we hurt others and we hurt ourselves by what we do and by what we fail to do. And then, looking beyond ourselves, we see all the injustice and suffering in our world, a staggering amount of pain that would seem to belie any notion of God’s abiding presence. But during his earthly ministry, Jesus lived in a world that was also rife with sin, suffering, and injustice, arguably worse than what we experience. And yet all his teaching, all his healing, all his signs point to the truth that God is love and God is with us, always. And just as he commissioned his first followers, a bunch of ordinary sinners, to share that astounding good news, so, too, he gives to us that same mission. It’s our calling to show the world that God is love and God is with us. We do that in many ways, including being kind and merciful people, forming loving communities of faith, caring for the sick, offering relief to the poor, standing up for racial justice, working for peace and reconciliation. But it all begins with our acceptance of this great truth: we have to see and believe that God can and does use ordinary people like you and me to reveal her presence and her power.
We are sinners and we are channels of God’s Spirit; we are ordinary humans and we are Christ. And if that shocks us, then perhaps we need to be shocked. Symeon the New Theologian lived around the year 1,000 and is venerated as a mystic and saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church. He wrote a beautiful hymn that speaks to what I am trying to say. It reads like this:
We awaken in Christ’s body,
As Christ awakens our bodies
There I look down and my poor hand is Christ,
He enters my foot and is infinitely me.
I move my hand and wonderfully
My hand becomes Christ,
Becomes all of Him.
I move my foot and at once
He appears in a flash of lightning.
Do my words seem blasphemous to you?
—Then open your heart to him.
And let yourself receive the one
Who is opening to you so deeply.
For if we genuinely love Him,
We wake up inside Christ’s body
Where all our body all over,
Every most hidden part of it,
Is realized in joy as Him,
And He makes us utterly real.
And everything that is hurt, everything
That seemed to us dark, harsh, shameful,
Maimed, ugly, irreparably damaged
Is in Him transformed.
And in Him, recognized as whole, as lovely,
And radiant in His light,
We awaken as the beloved
In every last part of our body.
We are living signs of Christ, his body in the world. In the most ordinary ways and in the most ordinary circumstances, we point to the extraordinary truth that God’s light fills our world and God’s love permeates everything.
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