John
2:1-11
2nd Sunday after Epiphany
17th January 2016
Well, that was quite a wedding, wasn’t it? Don’t you wish
you were on that guest list? Wouldn’t you have loved to be on the guest
list? It was quite the party. Everyone was there. The disciples were there and Jesus and his
mother, who bossed Jesus about. And lots of wine was consumed, so much they ran
out of it, no doubt embarrassing the host.
That’s probably why Mary told Jesus, the ever-responsible one, to do something
about it.
Having wine at a wedding was a sign of generosity and
hospitality. Wine didn’t flow freely in
Jesus’ time. It was a cash crop, like
olive oil. The poor drank little
wine. They drank water with their daily
diet of cheese and bread and olive oil.
Weddings were different. The
couple’s family had to save for a long time in order to have wine at a wedding
reception. Family and friends passed
harsh judgments on those who couldn’t throw a wedding in style.[1] The wine was supposed to flow freely. So there’s shame here in Cana. The family couldn’t afford their guests. It was not enough. Mary tells Jesus to do something about it and
then she say to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Jesus orders the servants to take the large, stone water
jars used for purification, six of them, obviously empty, and fill them with
water. They did as they were told, drew
some out, and gave it to the wine steward who, unaware of the miracle, was
impressed by the quality of the new wine.
The steward says to the groom, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and
then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept
the good wine until now” (John 2:10).” It’s
a sign, John tells us, Jesus’ first sign.
Ah, but what does
it signify? That’s the
question. This “miracle” story is highly
symbolic. When we read John’s gospel we
need to remember that there’s always two narratives, two levels of meaning, two
stories going on at the same time.
There’s what’s happening on the surface of things and then there’s the
deeper, more significant symbolic meaning.
This is “just” a wedding that runs out of wine. I’m sure that happened all the time. It’s an ordinary domestic scene. And, yet, this miracle actually symbolizes
something else for those with eyes to see.
This text, like most of John’s gospel, is swimming in symbolism. A surface reading of the story misses the
point—which I’ll get to shortly.
First, I’m struck by the way today’s gospel lectionary
beautifully complements the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday this weekend. It might seem like a stretch to suggest that
Jesus’ miracle at Cana has anything to do with King’s life and witness and
struggle. But there’s a connection. The text has something to say to the Church as
we continue to dream the dream.
We know his famous “I Have a Dream”
speech given on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom in August 28, 1963.
We’ve seen photos of that event.
Seen the film footage. You might
have been there (Al Davies). Whenever I
visit the Lincoln Memorial (my favorite
monument in DC), I’m always struck by the juxtaposition of the massive statute
of Lincoln, with the Gettysburg Address carved into the wall to Lincoln’s right
and the Second Inaugural Address to his left, one of the most theologically
profound addresses ever given by a president.
Whenever I’m there I look for the stone marker at the top of the steps
that indicates the exact spot Dr. King offered his speech, with Lincoln looking
over his shoulder. “I have
a dream,” he said, “that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men
are created equal.’”[2] One day.
Two days after the speech, the
COINTELPRO, a covert program of the FBI, which at times acted beyond the law,
said, “In the light of King's powerful
demagogic speech yesterday he stands head and shoulders above all other Negro
leaders put together when it comes to influencing great masses of Negroes. We
must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro
of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro and
national security.”[3]
There was much suffering and pain and death in the years
following that speech. And, thank God,
we have come far, very far, since the days of segregation and Jim Crow. It was said with the election of Barack Obama
as president that we entered into a post-racial America. I didn’t believe that in 2008 and I certainly
don’t believe that now.
It’s all too painfully obvious to
us, especially in light of recent events in Ferguson, New York, Charleston,
Chicago, and right here in Baltimore this year, that for many
African-Americans, that dream is still “a dream deferred,” to quote the poet Langston
Hughes (1902-1967). King’s “I Have a
Dream” speech was actually connected to a poem by Hughes, written in 1951,
called “Harlem.” It goes like this:
What
happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up/ like a raisin in
the sun?
Or fester like a sore—And then
run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over—like a
syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?[4]
It’s
a good question.
Maybe
there’s a problem with the dream itself?
Some might say, “Well, what King offered was only a dream,” meaning it
was a “fantasy,” it wasn’t realistic. “It
raised expectations that can’t be fully realized in American society. It’s nice to be optimistic, imagine a future,
but don’t get carried away.” Some
contemporary authors, such as Ta-Nehisi Coates, who grew up in West Baltimore,
seems to suggest in his recent bestselling Between the World and Me, a
series of letters to his son, that King’s dream, rooted in the Judaic-Christian
vision of justice and redemption, along with the American dream, are both
illusions, at least for African-Americans.
Struggle, he says. Stop dreaming.[5]
Unfortunately,
people don’t put a lot of stock in their dreams, in the power of dreams to
transform us and change us. Some, such
as Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), think our dream life is a big trash compactor
that processes all the stuff from our waking life. Others, such as Carl Jung (1875-1961),
believed that dreams are given by the psyche, maybe even by God, to compensate
for the extremes of our waking life, to offer balance. Dreams can also have a prospective dimension
to them; their message originates from some place deep, often with a greater
wisdom and generosity than our skittish, frightful egos. These dreams call for action, for change, they
move us forward; they lead us toward transformation and wholeness. Jung also believed that profound dreams, “big
dreams,” can be lived and relived in order to fathom their meaning and depth.[6] Dreams can be a kind of North Star that leads
us in the way we should go. From this
perspective, we need to dream the dream forward, or, better, live the dream
forward. (I’m firmly in Jung’s camp, by the way.)
King’s
dream, vision still needs to be lived forward.
We’ve made great strides. But as
they sing at the end of the musical Hairspray, “I know
we've come so far, but [baby,
baby] we've got so far to go.”[7]
There’s still so much work that needs to be done.
Throughout King’s ministry the dream was expressed in his
vision of the beloved community. King said, “Our
goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative
change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives" (Nonviolence: The Only Road to Freedom, May 4, 1966). His words resound with the gospel; they echo
Jesus' teaching on the Kingdom of God (or Kin-dom or Realm, even Empire of
God). The beloved community is the
dream—a dream that shapes our waking life.
And if we’re going to enter into that community, if we are going to live
from the dream, if we’re really going to get there and are serious about
wanting to get there it will only come through change: qualitative change in our individual souls, in our hearts,
change in the nature of our thoughts and feelings and quantitative change in
our lives, in our actions, collective action strong enough that moves us off
from dead center or the way things are.
The status quo is often status woe, especially for those without
power or privilege.
Why is this so difficult for us? Why? Why
is it so difficult for us, both as a Church and as a nation, to talk honestly
and openly about racism? We all struggle
with this, whether we’re black or white or neither. Whether it’s the sin of racism in our past or
the consequences of the unconfessed sin of racism that plagues our present, we
need to honest about it. Racism is sin
and every institution—church, nation, corporation, family—that benefits from
being racist or helps to support racism is sin, is caught in sin, is a partner
in crime against the human spirit. It’s
why Jim Wallis, of the evangelical-social justice Sojourners community, calls
racism America’s “original sin.”[8]
Philosopher Eddie Glaude, Jr., who teaches at Princeton University just
released a book this week with the title Democracy
in Black: How Race Still Enslaves the
American Soul.
Until we confess the
sin of racism, both as a people and as individuals, and acknowledge our own
complicity in it—no matter how difficult and painful it is to do so—and then
repent, which means changing our hearts and our minds and actions, both
individually and collectively, nothing will change. Christians have to act. Christians have to call out other Christians
when they’re being racist. Christians
needs to confess their complicity in the sin of slavery. Christian culture isn’t innocent. We helped to cause the mess we’re in. The first slave ship to arrive on these
shores in 1564, a British vessel, was named “The Goodship Jesus.”[9]
 |
| The Goodship Jesus, the first slave ship to arrive in America. |
Ta-Nehisi writes to his son, “You cannot forget how much they took from us and
how they transfigured our very bodies into sugar, tobacco, cotton, and gold.”[10] History is never destiny, though. The Church
must be able to embody the change and transformation that it teaches. If the Church, of all places, can’t be a
model for reconciliation, if we can’t change ourselves and bring about the
change, then what are we here for?
Why is it so difficult?
I was recently remind of W. H. Auden’s (1907-1973) searing words:
We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.[11]
We
can’t do this ourselves. That’s why the
water is changed into wine. There is no
way for the followers of Jesus to follow him and claim his name without change.
Sure, the wedding guests needed wine. So
Jesus made wine. But there’s another
level of meaning in this story that says something about what matters most to
Jesus and those who love him. To trust
in him means that we will undergo change and experience change until we
die. And we need to change. We need to be transformed. The entire Christian life is all about ongoing
change and reform. Those six, stone jars
were originally made only to hold water, water for purification. They must now be put to a different use. “The water of one era must be replaced by the
wine of another.”[12]
Wine,
itself, in this story is symbolic of the New Age, it’s the New Way that Jesus
offers the world. It’s a sign of the
Messianic Age. In the book of First
Enoch, written before Jesus’ time, we’re told “in those days,” the Messianic
Age, the vines will produce wine in plenitude.
Philo the Jew (25 BC – 50 AD) of Alexandria, a contemporary of Jesus, spoke
of God’s presence in the world in terms of rich, red wine. Curiously, this comes from Philo’s treatise
called On Dreams. Jesus provides wine, loads of wine–do the math–about 180
gallons of the finest wine! This
revealed his glory “and his disciples believed in him” (John 2:11).
If
Jesus can do that to water, just imagine what he is doing and wants to do with
us and for us—we who are mostly water. We need to be made into new wine ourselves
something needs to occur within us. We are supposed to embody God’s New
Order, God’s New Age, God’s Kingdom.
Dr. King’s dream
wasn’t King’s dream. It was and is God’s dream and we need to allow God’s
dream to dream through us, to dream
us forward, allow God’s dream to shape us and to change us—into new wine!
[1] Gerard Sloyan, John (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1988),
36.
[3] Memo hosted by American Radio
Works (American Public Media), "The FBI's War on King.”
[4] Langston Hughes,
“Harlem,” Selected Poems of
Langston Hughes (Random
House, 1990)
[5] Ta-Nehesi Coates, Between the World and Me (New York:
Spiegel & Grau, 2015).
[6] See C. G. Jung, “General
Aspects of Dream Psychology,” The
Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, The
Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 8 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1981), 237ff.
[7] Hairspray, music by Marc Shaiman and
lyrics by Scott Wittman, 2002.
[8] Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White
Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America (Brazos, 2016).
[9] Coates, 71.
[10] Cited in Howard
Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited
(Boston: Beacon Press, 1976), 14.
[11] W. H. Auden, “Age of
Anxiety” (1948).
[12] Sloyan, 39.
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