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 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.
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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