Blog of Deacon Stephen O'Riordan

Monday, January 21, 2019

Hidden Within, 2nd Sunday Ordinary time.


What was Jesus thinking?

Perhaps, how happy the bride and groom looked or how lovely it was to sit next to his mother on such a day or how much he loved singing wedding songs with his friends. Maybe Jesus wasn’t thinking at all, but rather was lost in the sights and sounds, the smells and tastes of this festive day? Perhaps, Jesus was just daydreaming!

 It is important to take a moment to say something about Jesus’ hidden years before that wedding day. We know he was born in Bethlehem in less than perfect conditions. His family was forced to flee to Egypt returning home only when it was safe due to the death of Herod. Jesus and his family lived in Nazareth in Galilee. We know from scripture that Jesus grew (as any person would), became strong and was filled with wisdom for we are told he sat among the teachers listening and asking questions and those teachers were amazed at his understanding.

It is easy to imagine that Mary his mother taught him language, social skills, and the ins and outs of small town life. Joseph would have taught him about responsibility and obligation. He would have taught Jesus his own trade, carpentry.

 We know as a young man in his early thirties Jesus gathered the twelve around him.  Surely Jesus listened intently to his cousin John called the Baptist. For Jesus himself was compelled to begin his own public ministry with baptism, which seemed to others to be a sign of repentance, but was rather a sign of Jesus’ Sonship with the Father and his absolute solidarity with those who needed to repent. It was only then, after having received the Holy Spirit that Jesus stepped into the public eye.

There was a wedding at Cana in Galilee. Mary was there as was Jesus and his friends. This was a community affair.

We need to pause to remember that what we are told needs to be taken with a little Johannine theological (salt). For John the Evangelist it was a world of; the word made flesh, bread and life, now and coming, hidden and revealed, light and dark, signs and wonders, living water and new wine. It was a world where the dead could be raised!

 John begins with - the wedding was on the third day, but Jesus’ hour had not yet come (specific yet vague). Mary, who John simply calls the mother of Jesus, begins the event. At some crucial moment in the celebration there is a disturbance, a commotion among the waiters, the wine is running out. Mary, always observant, becomes aware of this and turns to her son saying “They have no wine”.

Now John has Jesus’ reply not with mother, but with woman - women how does your concern affect me?  There is a son’s amused resignation in Jesus’ response. Was John wishing to draw a sharper line between a mother’s concern and a son’s action or was Jesus simply caught unaware and answered hastily. Whatever the case Jesus now says something very mysterious indeed, “my hour has not yet come”.

This “hour that is to come” is full of promise and hidden potential. The hour of his Passion is still on the horizon. There has been no teaching no healing no raising the dead. All of what was to come remained hidden within Jesus who was simply a guest at a wedding.

Regardless of the tone of her son’s answer, Mary tells the servants “do whatever he tells you” Now, Mary does not know the hour or even what this hour might look like, but she knows and trusts her son and she trusts what the angel Gabriel had told her and which she still held deep in her heart. And so it is Mary who is the first person in the story to show the correct response to Jesus - trust him!

There were six empty stone jars. One short of the perfect number (someone might tell us). Perhaps, this is a sign of the “not yet” of the radical perfection present but hidden within.  Remember, these were large jars.   Each could hold up to 30 gallons.

Jesus tells them, “fill the jars with water”. That’s 180 gallons of water. No easy task. But, there is no argument, no grumbling, the waiters simply do as they are ask and in fact they fill them to the brim.

“Now” and only now something happens. Something unseen, unexpected and unbelievable. The narrator does not dare describe it. At that moment Jesus initiates (by word, action or simply by his presence) the breaking into the world-reality by the Kingdom of God.

For the Kingdom of God is not a place on a map. Rather, the Kingdom is a time and it comes in a moment; surprising and unreasonable, illogical and wondrously new. And it reveals the extraordinary hidden within ordinary, like wine hidden within the water or the Kingdom hidden (not asleep or rest, but a work) within the world.

The new wine is still hidden within the stone jars. Jesus gives a second instruction to the waiters “draw out some and take it to the steward.”  Again, without arguing the waiters do this. And not knowing what had occurred I am sure they expected to draw out water. Who wouldn’t?

But, to their surprise and the delight of a worried steward the water was now wine. And not ordinary table red, but 180 gallons the very best wine!

Water becoming wine, a social disaster becoming extravagant hospitality is a sign of God’s reign; always surprising and unreasonable, always gracious and abundant and above all always timely!

Of course, the steward does not know where the new wine comes from. He doesn’t know how water became wine, it doesn’t matter. Something “hidden within” has been revealed by drawing out and sharing. Something had come, but not that hour. That hour was still to come.

The steward tasting the splendid wine applauded the bride and groom for doing something bold and generous “everyone serves good wine first (he says) and when the people have drunk freely the inferior one, but you have kept the good wine until now” This was unexpected and unreasonable hospitality.

 Isaiah in the first reading points to new radical hospitality to the people of Israel. What had been desolate and forsaken (Isaiah says) will become espoused and crowned with joy and delight. This is God’s nuptial promise made like that of a bridegroom to bride.

And we cannot help (because of St Paul in the second reading) connecting this surprising extravagant new wine, abundant and freely given, to the Holy Spirt. The one gift (hidden within) poured out into the world (revealing and bringing) grace and joy to all who have drunk of it.

So perhaps the question after all is not what Jesus was thinking. We can never know this. But rather what was Jesus “revealing?

Jesus reveals that the Kingdom of God is not so much a place, or a reward, as it is a time that is always timely and unexpected, always beyond anything we can ever imagine.  And It is a time that calls us to respond.

And it is only through and with Jesus that the ordinary becomes extraordinary or the lacking (whatever form it takes) becomes complete.

And like that moment that day, at a wedding at Cana in Galilee, when the world was changed into the Kingdom we have only to trust Jesus and do as he says and we to will be changed.

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