Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany

admin | 19 January 2014

“O woman, what is that to thee and to me? Mine hour has not yet come.”

Another snowstorm! Another sermon! Another Epiphany story! Something about God is made manifest in Jesus Christ. John tells us that “this beginning of signs did Jesus in Cana of Galilee and manifested forth his glory and his disciples believed on him.” It captures in a way the purpose of the Epiphany season. Something about the truth and glory of God is made manifest and known through the humanity of Jesus and we are being challenged about how we respond. What is made manifest about the glory of Christ?

A miracle? To be sure, the Epiphany season is the season of miracles that show us two things: first, the power of God which cannot be constrained to the physical world simply; and, secondly, the truth and perfection of our humanity which God seeks for us. “This beginning of signs,” as John puts it, is especially significant because it shows us something of the deeper purpose of God’s will for our humanity; something more beyond the truth and wonder of the healing miracles that point to restoration and wholeness. Here water is turned into wine signifying a greater good, our social joys, we might say.

Yet beyond miracles themselves there is something else that stands out in the Gospel story. It has to do with the dialogue between Jesus and Mary. That itself is outstanding. There are really only two dialogues between Jesus and Mary in the Gospels. We heard last week about the encounter in the temple at Jerusalem. There Mary interrogates Jesus, “Son why hast thou thus dealt with us? Behold, thy father and I have sought thee sorrowing.” It provides the occasion for him to make manifest the higher purpose of his coming and his being with us. “Did you not know that I must be about my father’s business?” he says, pointing Mary and us to the deeper reason and purpose of the Incarnation. Something of God’s will for our humanity is made known in the incarnate life of Christ. It is a wonderful exchange.

The words of Mary in the Gospels are few and far between but they are all significant. There is her question and response to the Angel at the Annunciation and there are these two exchanges: first, in the temple at Jerusalem; and, here, at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee. This one is most intriguing. Here Mary makes two profound statements. “They have no wine,” she says about the wine running out at the marriage feast. It is the occasion for Jesus’ rather intriguing remark, a kind of gentle rebuke, it might seem, and yet one which, like last Sunday, signals something of the divine will and purpose for our humanity. After his remark she bids the servants (and us, it seems to me), “whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” bidding us in a way to be and do what she said in response to the Angel, “be it unto me according to thy word.”

Jesus’ seeming rebuke perplexes and challenges us most perhaps. “O woman, what is that to thee and to me? Mine hour has not yet come,” he says. What does he mean? Looking beyond this dialogue there is the encounter between Jesus and his mother at the Cross in John’s Gospel where he speaks and she is silent. “Woman, behold thy son,” Jesus says to her about John, and to that disciple, he says, “Behold thy mother.” His hour is the deep purpose of his coming. It has to do with his death and resurrection on the Cross which restores and redeems our humanity to God and to one another. That is what is being suggested here by his hour.

Mary has wonderfully named the human predicament. We lack the wine of divinity without which we have no joy, without which our humanity is radically incomplete. The Epiphany gospels all point us to God’s being with us teaching us in and through the humanity of Jesus and all in accord with God’s will and not simply our demands. “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it,” is the truest response to what is being shown.

Directions are given, water is drawn from the six water-pots of stone and behold it is wine, indeed, the best wine. Nothing could symbolize better, it seems to me, the deeper purpose of God’s redemption of our humanity. Nothing could signal better the deeper meaning of the healing miracles of the Gospel. We are healed and restored for the purpose of enjoying fellowship with God and with one another. God seeks our social good. We are made for communion with God and with one another. Such is the significance of the sacraments. God uses the ordinary things of the world to effect his being with us. But only through dialogue, only through the exchange between Mary and Jesus which brings out so wonderfully what God ultimately seeks for us.

That it happens at a wedding feast signals, too, the union of opposites belonging to the nature of our fellowship: God and man; man and woman. Through the simple things of the world, like bread and wine, God makes the sacrament of his union with us; body broken and blood outpoured. For such is the radical nature of his hour. It is at his bidding and command; not ours, not even Mary’s. “Mine hour has not yet come,” he says, and yet, already, we are drawn into the radical meaning of God being with us in Jesus Christ. Our response must be, as Mary tells us, “whatsoever he saith unto you, do it.” Only then will we be like the disciples, too, who “believed on him” who “manifested forth his glory.”