January 14, 2001
© 2001 Grant M. Gallup
Isaiah 62:1-5 Changing Names, Changing Games.
Psalm 96 Cantate Domino = a New Song
I Corinthians 12:1-11 Showings of the Spirit for the common good.
John 2:1-11 Dionysius Revividus
Ever since I can remember, when the story of the wedding at Cana is read in church, or talked about in Bible class, or when it is dragged into the discussions on the role of women in church ("do whatever he tells you"!) the subject of Jesus' rudeness to his mother comes up. Low churchmen used to like to point to this story to help them "put Mary in her place." After all, she was only the mother of the earthly Jesus (low churchmen didn't much talk about Mary as Theotokos, as Mother of God) and besides that, she seemed to be a pushy Jewish mother.
John's gospel invites us to a wedding at Cana in Galilee--and the mother of Jesus is there. She loved a party. Weddings lasted seven days, and they were usually held in the harvest season so there would be plenty of food and wine to last for all the guests, with new ones arriving every day and all would plan to stay a few days. This helps to explain the piggish quantities that the evangelist John remembers them swilling on the occasion--a Dionysian banquet. Poor Nicaraguans, too, know how to party and it's hard to slow them down once they get going. They party "like there's no tomorrow." Of course they run short of rum, doesn't everyone? This isn't a Baptist Sunday school picnic, fevven's sake. The story is told in the second chapter of John, immediately after Jesus had made a visit to Galilee with the new disciples whom he had decided upon: only a few just yet--Andrew, who had got his brother Simon to come along and get him a new name, and there was probably John, the one to whom the gospel is attributed, and there were Philip and Nathanael. Jesus has just been recruited himself into the Kingdom movement by his cousin, and had now chosen some students, from among those who had been the Baptist's coterie. So Jesus at this point has a half-strength cadre with him; the full number of the Twelve has not been fleshed out. And John begins the episode by saying that "and the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee." The third day after what? The third day after the appointment of Nathanael, and about six days after Jesus'own baptism, according to John's chronology. But John is not so interested in the historical facts as he is in the mysterious and mystic meaning of these events. His whole evangel is a carefully designed recasting of the Jesus Christ phenomena, and their theological meaning. There is always more than meets the eye or reaches the ear in John's telling of the tale.
So let's take our invitations and go to the wedding ourselves and see this thing which has come to pass. The Catholic religion has always celebrated this story as an Epiphany--indeed, in places it was THE Epiphany story par excellence, the special revelation of God, of the celebratory Dionysian diety who hosts the universal banquet of wine bibbers and sinners called the Kingdom of Heaven. Even Mahomet would have wine in abundance on the menu of Paradise, 'though along with Baptists disallowing it in the present dispensation. Sneak previews, John loves to give them to us--sneak previews, which show us how the play will all turn out in the end if we stay long enough. The wedding at Cana is a kind of sneak preview on the Film and Arts Channel of all that will be coming to pass this season in the gospel --of God's plot outline for the smash hit of all time, the story of the rescue of the universe, and the everlasting rave that is the unending celebration of Life.
All that is in there? in the gospel for today?
The mother of Jesus only said, "they have no wine." If she said that as I arrived, I'd have excused myself.
The whole history of the human race is spoken in that rubric. It is not just Mary of Nazareth, but everyone standing behind her all the way back to feckless Eva, our first mother, and her spouse in his fig leaf drawers, not knowing how to make hard cider just yet, from the fruit of the tree in the garden east of Eden.
The nation, its heritage of Torah, of the Law and the prophets, of the codes of right conduct and right cult: and all religion of every nation and every land without celebration and sacrament and joy: "They have no wine." You've arrived at a kool-aid party, and there is nothing here in the way of refreshment for all those who have turned to the Law and the Prophets for help, or the philosopher's stone, or the analects of Confucius or the koans of Buddha, or the Kabbalah, and found them without a psaltery, organ, or shawm--without a vintage wine, without a party, without a song. The capacity of a religion based on our human efforts to be good, and to do good, runs out and the guests need something more. "Roll out the barrel," Jesus mother says: "Let's have a barrel of fun."
The mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."
The point that is missed so frequently here, when Jesus' apparent rudeness is mentioned, is Mary's real pushiness in this request. Mary is provoking Jesus to ministry--he already has a few disciples, and she knows this. He is, after all, 30 years old and she's saying here, "Son, get a life. Be a party animal." She's been waiting these 30 years treasuring in her heart the hopes and fears of all the years that met in her infant one starry night, and she treasures the old gold, the sweet old frank incense, the mystic ancient myrrh--gifts she had stashed away somewhere under the tool chests in the carpenter shop, in a half finished cabinet, maybe with a few bottles of Mogen David. Building chairs is a nice job for a son, but for someone whose son has been knelt to by Persian wizards? Sought for by philosophers from afar?
Mary knew that Jesus was destined for greater things than artesania, making "chunches" from scrap lumber on a side street in Nazareth. John Chrysostom writes that "she had heard that (his cousin) John had given testimony of him, and that he had begun to have his own disciples. She began from then to have confidence."
One of the Nicaraguan peasants in "The Gospel in Solentiname" (by Ernesto Cardenal) says that Mary is a revolutionary mother. She urges her son to take part in the revolution. She wants him to get on with his commitment to change the water of the world of want into the wine of the revolution of abundance for all. Capitalism's antigospel is that there isn't enough to go around and that the poor should be sterilized--they have too many kids, so that the rich can have "the wealth of nations." Mary wants to kick them downstairs, to put down the mighty out of their seats, and invite in the poor. Every stumble-bum in town will be let in to the party, every young girl with a hungry baby dandling on her hip. There's plenty to go round.
Jesus knows what she wants, and it may be that she has been urging him for along time to "go for it." "Oh, woman," he moans: "What have you to do with me? My hour hasn't yet come." Now the phrase "my hour" in John's gospel refers to the hour of Christ's glory--it is his hour on the cross that Jesus must hang into, and that is his "hour" in John's story. It is the hour of confrontation with all the force and power of stinginess and evil, not only with all that has gone wrong with the struggle in Galilee but in all the wrestling with the world of selfishness and greed, to wheel it around to eschaton. And Jesus says, "Mother, I am not ready to fight that battle here at this wedding party." "Do whatever he asks of you," his mother then says to the deacons. And there are there six stone jars, twenty or thirty gallons each, ordinarily used for washing up before meals, and so forth--splashing a rinse on the dishes, or on the kids, or washing the feet of guests. Jesus asks that they be filled up again--from the well? from the pila? We still do that in Managua, in case the city water suppply dries up: we keep the pila full, and great barrels of extra water on hand. Some of the old sermons from the ancient church say that these six water pots represented the six ages of humankind, and that all of them had run out, and were empty. The new dispensation was needed now, and so Jesus was to refresh the human race with a new vintage. He does not say, "Go down to the wine shop and buy more". He doesn't take up a collection and send out for make-do. He asks no one to look elsewhere for help. Right here is the solution--nearby. Fill up these same old waterpots that we are familiar with.
But not everyone is let in on the story of the New Wine. Only the deacons, the servants, who had poured in all the water of the old dispensation, only they are fully aware of what is happening when they are asked to draw out wine now, out of water bottles. The wine which will intoxicate the human family with joy, with a festival of abundance, is now on tap. The master of ceremonies, the toast-master, is now ready, and is delighted. He tastes the cup and says that it is better than the champagne they started out the week with: it is the best wine we've had at this party. "You have kept the good wine until last." No one does that! But it is what diaconal service can provide.
John tells us that this was "the first of the Signs" and that in it Jesus is epiphanized, manifested, shot through with glory and dignity and magic. This story is still happening, for this was a sneak preview of the life of Christ and his disciples dancing and drinking together until this day. Come to the cabaret, my friends, come to the cabaret! The preview has told us that what God has in store for us in Jesus-Doionysius is a party--a celebration of abundance. The present world domination system (i.e., the northamerican domination system) tells us that there is abundance only for a few and scarcity for the multitudes. The wedding at Cana of Galilee tells us that this is coming to an end. Someone's in the kitchen with Mary now.
The compassionate Mary, the compassionate disciples, the thirsty guests at the wedding--all are helpless without the New Wine that Jesus brings to mix swith the our watery humanity, our emptiness.
The Liberator himself is reluctant, for the change that must come is demanding, and taxing, and costly. The wine that is to fill the waterpots will be the blood of the martyrs of the Nuevo Pacto. "This cup is the New Alianza in my own blood," Jesus is to say. Our own service, our diaconal service, is called upon to fill the waterpots. We need to use all the available old institutions around us to bring about the miracle of change--fill them up with what is available--the mystic water of our own Baptism--and they will spill over with what God will work in us and in them. Look to God to be the Wedding Guest who will always change our water into wine.
St. Paul tells us in the epistle that there are all different kinds of gifts, which are all of them inspired by the One Spirit. The way in which this mission is to find its fulfillment, the strength to do the work that God is calling us to do, is to bless each of our various gifts and use them. We need to fill up our empty waterpots and bring them to the toastmaster of our party, Jesus, the head of our church, and find the first of miracles here in our own Galilees.
GRANT GALLUP
CASA AVE MARIA
MANAGUA, NICARAGUA C.A.
gallup@tmx.com.ni
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