by CCW | 20 January 2013 15:21
I love Epiphany, both the doctrine and the season, which are, of course, inseparable. Epiphany teaches us something which has been largely lost in contemporary culture and the contemporary Church, namely, the realization that religion is philosophy; not cult, not politics, not social activism. As important as those things are, they are secondary to the teaching of Epiphany. Religion is philosophy, the love of wisdom that guides and directs every other aspect of our being.
From Bethlehem to Jerusalem, from Kings to Kids – at least the Holy Kid – and now, wonderfully and profoundly, to signs and wonders, in short, miracles. Here is the first miracle, “this beginning of signs” as John styles it. The story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee is the beginning of signs, he says, the beginning of the outward deeds and actions of Christ. Behind such a beginning of signs lies the philosophical wonder of the Epiphany season, the wonder of God with us, the wonder of the divinity of Christ opened out to us through his humanity. It communicates and reveals the great and profound philosophical insight of the great religions of the world but especially in its Christian form. Our humanity is radically incomplete without God. We are, as Dante puts it, “soul[s] made apt for worshipping,” the very thing we see in the Magi-Kings. The first thing they do upon arriving at Bethlehem is to fall down and worship. Philosophy is worship, worship of the truth. In the Christian understanding, the truth is God Incarnate. He is in our midst making himself known to us in Word and Sacrament.
And here is the explicitly sacramental moment, signs which effect what they signify, to paraphrase the sophisticated and learned understanding of our own Anglican position on sacramental theology, so wonderfully articulated in the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion and so sadly neglected and ignored by the politicization of the sacraments in our social and political confusions – all because of a kind of neglect of the forms of our theological identity as part and parcel of the Church Universal.
This story challenges us. Epiphany is a movable season. That is to say, there are a greater or lesser number of Sundays after Epiphany according to the date of Easter. But there are always at least two Sundays after Epiphany and so this Gospel story is always read, year after year, and for good reason. Miracles are part and parcel of the Epiphany. Miracles are really part of the wonder of philosophy, the wonder of the divine engagement with our humanity and the signs of the divine reason and purpose for our humanity. The miracle story of the wedding feast at Cana of Galilee is “the beginning of signs,” the beginning of the pageant of miracles. Just as the gifts of the Magi-Kings are “sacred gifts of mystic meaning,” gifts that teach, so the miracles, too, teach us about the divine will for our humanity. Here is the ground, if you will, for the understanding of all the miracles.
Most of the miracles focus upon healing and restoration but for what end or purpose? This Gospel story answers that question. It is for our enjoyment of God in and through the holy forms of sanctified life. God seeks not merely our physical and psychological good but our social good as well. He seeks our joy. Joy can only be found in our being with God in his will and purpose for our humanity. Such is the profound message of the Epiphany.
Mary names the human predicament; that without God there is no wine, no joy, no blessedness. Jesus responds by pointing us to his hour, the hour of redemption, the moments of his death and crucifixion, as it were. He is pointing to the purpose of his coming: to do the Father’s will that we might have life and have it more abundantly. Through the sacraments of the Church we participate in that more abundant life; the good wine, indeed, the very best. This beginning of signs signals our participation in the life of God sacramentally.
Bread and wine, themselves the fruits of nature and human labour, become the instruments of divine life, the very means of our participation in the life of God. And for what end? That we might “taste and see how gracious the Lord is.” That we might know the things that he has purposed for us. We have an end in God and we share in that now through the Word proclaimed and the Sacraments celebrated.
If we do what he says. It seems so unphilosophical, so authoritarian, and yet Mary’s direction arises from the mystery of Christ’s word to her and to us. “Mine hour has not yet come,” he says. There is something more at work in the realization of our own limitations. There is the divine provision for our good and blessedness. By definition it can only be according to the same reason as his being among us, a reason that is at once human and divine. There is the divine will and there is the ‘yes’ of Mary to the divine will. Christ is God with us because of her “fiat mihi,” her “be it unto me according to thy word.” What defines her – her free-willing ‘yes’ to God – is now given to define us. “Whatsoever he says to you, do it.” It is the same logic, the reason by which we take a hold of the truth of God which has come to us in the wonder and mystery of the Incarnate Christ. Our task and challenge is to say ‘yes’, like Mary, to the divine commandment.
It is what we hear at every celebration of the Holy Eucharist: “Do this in remembrance of me.” Only so shall we enjoy the good wine, the wine of abundance and joy which is about nothing less than our being with God in Jesus Christ.
Such is the mystery of the Church, the mystery of the sacraments, the mystery of the Epiphany unfolded before us in the wonder of this Gospel. Here is the divine hospitality which impels our ministry and life, our fellowship and mission. If we will indeed take hold of the divine word and let it shape our lives.
Fr. David Curry
Epiphany II, 2013
January 20th, 2013
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