One
day a couple came to the rectory door.
They were an older, interracial couple that was very poor. The man had come sometimes for food; she
rarely came with him, because she was almost blind. This day, she asked the priest to say a blessing
over them as a couple. Whatever vows
they had, were made a long time ago, and seemingly were working. So the priest invited them in and sat down in
the rectory chapel and proceeded to say that he would like to read the story of
the Marriage Feast of Cana from the bible.
She piped up immediately and said, “I heard it before, years ago, in a
church in Camden,” but did not object to hearing it again. After reading the priest attempted to say a
few words about it, including his favorite comment on it: “The wonderful thing
about the story is this: there was no miracle until they got to the bottom of
the barrel.” He thought he was doing
quite well when she piped up again and said, “Can we have some food … some
canned goods?” They seemed to feel blessed
as they left, with flowers in her hands and food in his, and one pair of
working eyes between them. Poor as their
situation was, it seemed in that moment, water was wine in their world.
John
would know very well that the themes of married love were constant in the
Hebrew Scriptures, as God spoke in wedding-words that were very understandable
to his people. God wants to proclaim the
tender, faithful love of his heart for His people. From the ache of creation and the short
honeymoon in Eden, to the sweet sounds of the Song of Songs, God often spoke in
lover’s language across the scrolls of salvation. So it seems fitting that John, the disciple
of love, would set the event of a Wedding in Cana as the inaugurating moment of
the public life of Jesus.
Othmar
Carli created a mural of the four evangelists for Sacred Heart Church in
Camden, NJ. In the mural, the image
shows John’s right hand with the first and fourth finger raised in the sign
language for “I love you.” I am sure
John rejoiced at Isaiah’s words that were proclaimed in our first reading and
we should rejoice too! “For Jerusalem’s
sake I will not be quiet, until her vindication shines forth, like the
dawn. For the Lord delights in you and
makes your land His spouse. As a young
man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom
rejoices in his bride, so shall your God rejoice in you.” (Is 62:1-5) And “you,” of course, is us. God rejoices in us.
Can
you feel the love?! Yet love, only
expressed in a painted mural, sign language, or spoken words can often feel somewhat
incomplete. We are baptized and called
into a covenant of active Christian love of God and neighbor. The poor, whom Jesus told us would always be
with us, (Jn 12:8)
are a God-given yardstick to measure our love.
Sometimes
our lives don’t measure up and our presence in this world is like water at a
wedding feast. No lift in it, no zip to
it, it’s flat, drooping and spirit-less.
“I came that you may have life and have it more abundantly.” (Jn
10:10)
God invented “need” to be a divine dynamic, and in this story, it was
Mary, the Holy Mother, who saw the embarrassment of the scene; and she did
something about it. So, Jesus changed
the water into wine, feet washing water if you don’t mind. The English poet Richard Crashaw celebrates
the Miracle of Cana with these memorable words: “The conscious water saw its
God and blushed.” Yet, it was surely
more than a blush, which may be only skin deep, it was a total transformation.[1]
As
the priest quipped, during his encounter with the poor couple, “There was no
miracle until they got to the bottom of the barrel”. There is always a cry from the bottom of the
barrel, the bottom of the bare cupboard, the bottom of our hearts, or the
bottom of the world, there’s a cry for transformation. We must do our part, “fill the water jars
with water,” for the maker of miracles.
The
poor woman pipes up and said, “Can we have some food?” We may want to save our words and, like Mary,
do something about it so that the bare rock might be struck for clear,
unpolluted water. That the earth be
changed from uncontaminated soil to wheat and abounding fruits and vegetables
to feed the hungry. That the drab
monotony of self-indulgent lives would be changed into a wine of pure gladness,
gratitude and generosity.
"In
other words, to see Jesus’ baptismal water flowing in a wedding scene, calls us
to perceive it flowing through us.
Water/Wine makes no difference; God is with us!"[2] How do you, how do we as a community, measure
up on God’s yardstick of love?
[1] Hungry,
and You Fed Me, Edited by Deacon Jim Knipper © 2012. “You have kept the
good wine until now.” by Michael Doyle.
[2] Wrestling
Year C, Connecting Sunday Readings with Lived Experience, by Wesley White ©
2015.
