 Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5, John 2:1-11, True Christianity 249 (see below)
See also on Youtube Photo by Vinícius Estevão Today we find ourselves exploring Jesus’ very first miracle in the gospel of John. Jesus, his mother Mary, and the disciples, were at a wedding which had run out of wine to serve. Perhaps it is hard for us, today, to muster any real alarm at the idea of there being no wine left. Weddings in those days were often multi-day affairs and the implication is that there was some wine to begin with at least. Surely, by now, everyone had already had their fill, we might say? Context is certainly helpful to us in understanding why it is that Mary thought this was worth bringing to Jesus’ attention. He was, after all, just a regular guest, not a member of the family or the wedding party. Well, we in the Western world, for the most part, experience an abundance of fresh and clean water. This is not something we can assume of Jesus’ day, particularly in a desert climate. Wine was an important drink because fermentation killed various pathogens that might otherwise be present in fresh water. Today we think of wine as an indulgence, but it is possible in that context there was no alternative to the wine; the wedding party was in danger of not having any liquid at all to serve at an event in a dry climate. In addition, in Jesus’ context, much more so than today, there existed a stringent hospitality culture. For the wedding to run out of wine to serve the guests: that would have been extremely shameful. Cana would not have been that big a place; the bridegroom would from that point onward have been known as “the one who ran out of wine at his wedding,”(1) and his whole family would have shared in the humiliation. Certainly, this would not have been a good start to married life for the bride and bridegroom. Is there anything to which we could compare this situation to today? Perhaps we might imagine that a wedding reception or party only served half of the people dinner, or had no working bathrooms for a hundred people? Even so, it is hard to replicate for us now the urgency that would have been felt by the original hearers of the story. Jesus saved the wedding party from acute and lasting embarrassment, and the guests from potentially dangerous dehydration. It is a story of abundance and grace urgently needed but where it was least expected. However, and I thank a couple of my former seminary classmates for bringing this to my attention, water being changed into wine is not good news for all people. Those who are challenged by alcohol addiction will hear this story very differently than those who are not. Likewise for all the many references to wine in the gospels, including how it is a foundation of communion theology. We’ve already mentioned why wine was so prevalent a drink in ancient times; Jesus simply used the forms of his day, and our relationship to those forms has changed somewhat according to our new modern context. This is one reason why it is important to recognize the metaphorical nature of what Jesus is doing here. This is not a miracle about wine in and of itself, but about what the wine represents: the potential for transformation. In this story, it is the wine that holds the space for this idea, but such divine gifts are written into the fabric of reality and can be seen in so many things. We might think of raw ingredients being made into a cooked meal, we might think of the journey of caterpillar to butterfly, a diamond being converted from a lump of carbon, or the transformation of blossom to fruit. When we interpret this story through a Swedenborgian lens, which takes elements of the story and asks what they represent within ourselves, we can see in a larger sense that we are exploring how it is that people can grow and change. The waterpots represent our normal way of doing things, filled with water that represents our normal way of thinking. We might have inherited these forms or perspectives, or we might have accepted them due to their prevalence in the world around us. They might even seem to serve us, and society, in certain ways. But they are not expressing the fullness of God’s intention for us, not expressing the reality of God’s love as fully as possible. For in a Swedenborgian worldview, wine always represents truth that comes from goodness (AR 316), truth that has gained its soul, its reality, from love. Our life, and all its manifestations, both boring and sublime, need to be filled with a rationale that serves love, so that our presence in the world likewise serves love, and this is what is represented by Jesus turning water into wine. I’m sure we can think of many examples in our own lives when our old ways of being became transformed into something more loving, when old habits gave way to a new awareness. Perhaps we relinquished control and gifted someone space, or conversely perhaps we relinquished self-centeredness and gifted someone true attention. Perhaps we stopped going through the motions and came to understand the gift of the present moment, or the power of showing up. Perhaps we have come to recognize our privilege, or our responsibility, or our belovedness, and now act differently. These are the gifts and goals of the spiritual life, what we call in our tradition, the process of regeneration. However, when these transformations occur, when water is transformed into wine on personal and societal levels, there is often push back. There are always parts of ourselves and parts of our society who are invested in the status quo and don’t want it to change because it serves them as it is. I’m not saying it is wrong to be skeptical of change. Clearly, not all change is good in every circumstance, not all progress is positive. Technology, for example, while it has done so much good in the world, has also initiated climate change, increased income inequality and consumerism, and made war incomprehensibly more deadly, among other things. Which is why it is so important to keep in mind the context of the gospel story for today: a wedding, a community event. This miracle of transformation occurred within a community, in order to serve that community. It was a miracle that worked to draw people deeper into community with each other, that allowed a host to continue to attend to his guests and provide for their needs. Swedenborg writes that a marriage represents the love that God has for us and that we have for God, a desire for union between God and people(2). When we evaluate some change that we see around us, when we observe a transformation in ourselves, or in our world, and we wonder if we are seeing the wedding at Cana writ large, seeing water become wine, we should also wonder, what is this change looking toward? Greater community or greater separation? This is where we can learn much from the preaching of Martin Luther King Jr, whose life we will commemorate as a country tomorrow. One of the bedrocks of his philosophy, was The Beloved Community, which was not a utopian vision of something far away but a practical earthly vision where (in his words) “love and trust will triumph over fear and hatred” because a “critical mass of people [are] committed to and trained in the philosophy and methods of nonviolence.” (3) He writes in a sermon: “In a real sense, all life is interrelated. All [people] are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. I can never be what I ought to be until you are what you ought to be, and you can never be what you ought to be until I am what I ought to be. This is the interrelated structure of reality.” (4) Rev. Dr. King understood that God pushes us forward into change, but only for the purpose of greater connection, with ourselves, with God, with others. When speaking of the Montgomery bus boycotts, he said “the end is reconciliation; the end is redemption; the end is the creation of the Beloved Community. It is this type of spirit and this type of love that can transform opponents into friends. It is this type of understanding goodwill that will transform the deep gloom of the old age into the exuberant gladness of the new age. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of men.” (5) The story of the wedding at Cana, and the words Martin Luther King, call us to believe in miracles in the hearts of people. Miracles of abundance that, in the words of Karoline Lewis, “lead to or restore relationship.”(6) And in that community with each other, we find, as the steward in the story said, the best is saved for last. As we allow the transformation of water into wine, as we must do in this life in order to spiritually progress, we will find an abundance and a quality and a grace that we could not have foretold. God’s love and providence are always working towards union, always working towards the beloved community. In these years before us, I hope we will continue to have the courage to believe in that. Amen.
Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5 1 For Zion’s sake, I will not be silent; for the sake of Jerusalem, I will not rest—not until her integrity shines like the dawn, her deliverance like a flaming torch. 2 The nations will see your vindication, and the rulers your splendor; you will have a new name that YHWH’s mouth will bestow. 3 You will be a garland of beauty in YHWH’s hands, a solemn crown worn by your God. 4 Never again will you be called Forsaken. Never again will your land be called Desolate. But you will be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land will be called Married. For YHWH will take delight in you and your land will be joined with God in wedlock. 5 For just as a young couple marry, you will be forever married to this land; as a newly married couple rejoice over each other, so will YHWH rejoice over you. John 2:1-11 1 On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.” 4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.” 11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. True Christianity 249 …in the individual details in the Word there is a marriage between the Lord and the church and therefore a marriage between goodness and truth, because wherever there is a marriage between the Lord and the church a marriage between goodness and truth is also present, since the latter marriage comes from the former one. When a whole church, or just an individual within a church, has truths, the Lord flows into these truths with goodness and brings them to life. To put it another way, when people who are part of a church understand something true, the Lord flows into their intellect and enlivens it by bringing goodwill into it. We all have two faculties of life called the intellect and the will. Our intellect is a vessel for truth and therefore for wisdom; our will is a vessel for goodness and therefore for goodwill. For us to become part of the [universal] church, these two parts of us have to become one. The two parts do in fact become one when we build our intellect with genuine truths and our will is filled with goodness and love. Then the life of truth and the life of goodness are in us - the life of truth in our intellect and the life of goodness in our will. When these two lives are united, they become one life, not two. This is the marriage between the Lord and the church; it is also the marriage between goodness and truth in us.
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