January 14th, 2007
So Christmas is really over, and indeed may even seem like a long time ago for some of us. Last Saturday, January sixth, the Epiphany, marks the formal end of the season of the Christmas season. Even those of us who like to have our Christmas trees up for the entire season have taken them down; those trees which are still up are no longer for religious reasons, but for not getting around to it yet reasons. So what’s next, liturgically speaking, spiritually speaking? Our church year dictates that next is where we are now – in the season of Epiphany, the season after the Epiphany. The word Epiphany means manifestation; revealing/revelation; to be made known; appearing; bringing light. All of these definitions and permutations of Epiphany leave us a lot of space for our spiritual selves to connect with. We are supposed to look for Jesus to be revealed to us in this season, and we are to look more than one place. In this place – the sanctuary of our church, where the Word is proclaimed and the bread and wine are shared – we are to look for Jesus to be revealed in the stories of this season, from our holy Scriptures. Outside of this place, we are to look for Jesus to be revealed to us in the everyday places of our lives. We are to pay attention for where Jesus might be trying to communicate his presence to us. We are to try and move away from Jesus as the baby in the manger, to be packed up with the Christmas decorations and put away, and instead think about him as a real person, involved in our lives, giving light to our way. Peter Gomes likens Epiphany to a stone that is dropped in water which sets off a series of concentric circles, ripples which emanate, getting larger and larger, until the entire surface is ripples, all witnessing to that stone. For us, that stone is the Incarnation – the presence of the Christ in human form. Christmas sets the stage, so to speak – first, the appearance of this child – and now, in Epiphany, that person of Jesus is here, revealing himself to us as so much more than a baby born to peasant parents under trying circumstances. Who is he? How do we know? Where do we find him? These are the questions of Epiphany.
The big question for us then, is what is being is being revealed in this season? The easy answer, skipping ahead, would be the true nature of Jesus. Not just Jesus of Nazareth, but his identity as Christ, that is what is being revealed in this time, this season. Christ as the light of the world, that is what is being revealed. And if we have the question, and we have the answer, what we need is the middle – how we get from here to there. That is what this season is about. How we get from here to there is first and foremost given us in three stories of this season, this morning’s gospel being the third. The three make up a trinity of events marking the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, and give us clues to his true identity, for us and for the world.
The first is the Epiphany itself – the star, which shows the magi the way to the Christ child, bringing their gifts to the baby. This is celebrated on January sixth; some Christians celebrate Christmas on this day. The magi bring three gifts – there is no mention of how many visitors – and the gifts themselves are highly symbolic. One is gold, which represents kingship, proclaiming Jesus as royalty, though as we know, if Jesus is king at all, that it will be in a new and different way. If we even want to call him king. . . but that’s another story. Next is frankincense, a type of incense, used at prayer, in worship. He is not just a baby to be adored, but he is the Christ, whom we are to worship. And finally myrrh, used to anoint the body of one who has died, in preparation for burial, pointing the way to Jesus’ death. Odd gifts for a child . . . but then these gifts are meant to be signs, pointing to something beyond themselves – pointing to a truth about who this child Jesus will become, for us and for the world.
The second story in our trinity is the one we heard last week, the baptism of Jesus. Luke tells us this: “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, "You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased." As we thought about last week, a baptism is several things, including a public naming, a welcoming into the family of God, a being marked as Christ’s own forever. Here, Jesus is publicly named as God’s beloved, and told that God is well pleased with him. And it is worth noting that at this point in Luke’s gospel, Jesus has done nothing to earn this status with God; his ministry has not yet started. So it was nothing Jesus had done which prompted God to proclaim him Beloved, or saying that God was well pleased. Instead, it was giving Jesus an identity: the Beloved of God, the one in whom God was pleased to dwell. Marking him as something special, someone important, a person to keep our eye on.
Which brings us to the third story of our trinity, the one we hear this morning from the gospel of John – Jesus, at a wedding in the village of Cana, turning water into wine. Of this event, John tells us that “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” In John’s gospel, this story is the first act of Jesus’ ministry, and that makes it the odd one out if we look at the opening stories about Jesus – his first real acts of ministry – in each of the four gospels. In the gospel of Mark, Jesus’ first act is an exorcism, an act of healing. He gets back from the desert, calls some disciples, teaches in the synagogue – and there, he drives an unclean spirit out of a man. In Matthew, Jesus also returns from the desert, calls disciples, teaches and cures the sick – and then his first distinctive act of ministry as described by Matthew is the sermon on the mount. Luke’s account of the first act of Jesus’ ministry is the gospel story we will hear next Sunday; that account describes Jesus in the synagogue, telling the congregation gathered that the words of the prophet Isaiah are fulfilled in their hearing – that he is the one described in Isaiah being "anointed to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free."
But in John’s gospel, this first act of ministry is turning water into wine, at a wedding. Very different from what the other gospels describe. Odd, even. Why this act, in that place, at that event? What is being revealed about Jesus in this story? Let’s think about it. The mother of Jesus – never named in John’s gospel – is at a wedding. Jesus and his disciples attend as well, at some point. Weddings were usually a seven-day festival, and the whole village would have been invited. The wine runs out; Jesus’ mother points this fact out to Jesus. He distances himself from the situation, responding that this has nothing to do with him, and by the way, his hour had not yet come. Yet, in the end, he does transform the water, into wine; the wedding festival goes on, the host is not shamed, the steward – think first-century wedding planner – doesn’t lose his job in disgrace. A simple enough story, on its face. But like everything that happens in the gospel of John, it is highly symbolic. John himself calls this act of Jesus a sign rather than a miracle, and this in itself we should take note of. Miracles are done openly; often, in the gospels, with an audience. Even though Jesus sometimes tells the recipient not to tell anyone, there are people observing the miracles. But signs are different. Signs are hidden from some. Not everyone gets their significance. In this story, the disciples get it; we’re told that after this, they believed in him. Jesus’ mother gets it; she was involved in the story. The servants probably got it; they’re the ones that brought the jugs of water to Jesus. But even the steward misses it; he has no idea where the wine came from, or the guests either. A sign is more than a demonstration of power. A sign reveals something – a sign points to something beyond itself. It reveals Jesus’ glory, is what John tells us. Because of it, his disciples believe in him. We could say that this story points to God’s abundance: the amount of water/wine was astounding; it was way more water than was needed for purification, and more wine that the crowd could drink. It may be then a sign pointing to the abundance of God’s grace, and God’s love.
I see it though as a reminder that God works through the ordinary - water and wine, bread and feet, leaven and lost coins. The everyday is revelatory, from the bodies we inhabit to the creation we see around us. In this case, a wedding – a happy occasion for those involved, but still, a more or less ordinary event – becomes more than just a wedding party, but an occasion of revelation.
And of course, that Jesus performs this miracle, or sign, at a wedding banquet is itself highly symbolic. Marcus Borg reminds us that “Wedding banquets were the most festive occasions in the world of first-century Palestine, especially in the peasant class (and Cana was a peasant village). Wedding banquets commonly lasted seven days. They featured dancing, wine, and vast quantities of food. The normal peasant diet was meager: grains, vegetables, fruit, olives, eggs, and an occasional fish. Meat and poultry were infrequently eaten, since people were reluctant to kill the few animals they had. But at a wedding banquet, there were copious amounts of food of all kinds. Given this, what is this text saying? What is Jesus about? What is the gospel--the good news--of Jesus about? John's answer: it is about a wedding banquet at which the wine never runs out and the best is saved for last.” That’s the good news: God is a God of abundance. The end time is a banquet to which all are invited and welcome. It is a meal at which there is enough for everyone, and a place at the table for all of us. And Jesus is there, and Jesus is here, revealing himself to us, sharing the good news, making God known in new and very tangible ways. This is what the season of Epiphany teaches us. And our job, then, in this season, may be to pay attention to how Jesus is being revealed to us, in the stories from our holy Scriptures, and also in our everyday routines, our everyday lives.
All three stories that start this season – the visit of the magi; the baptism of Jesus; the turning of water into wine at Cana- are Epiphany stories. Not just because they happen in our season of Epiphany, but because of what they reveal to us about Jesus. The Epiphany blessing from the Book of Occasional Services shows this very clearly, and seems an appropriate way to end: May Almighty God, who led the Wise Men by the shining of a star to find the Christ, the Light from Light, lead you also, in your pilgrimage, to find the Lord. May God, who sent the Holy Spirit to rest upon the Only-begotten at his baptism in the Jordan River, pour out that Spirit on you who have come to the waters of new birth. May God, by the power that turned water into wine at the wedding feast at Cana, transform your lives and make glad your hearts.
Amen.