KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 26 January
Be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind.
There is the greatest difference between wanting to control the world and seeking to understand it. The love of learning which we talked about last week is about seeking to understand rather than presuming to control. Epiphany is the making known of things but that can only happen in part because of the desire to learn on our part. It has very much to do with a respect for learning and for the quest to know. Only so is it transformative.
This week the readings were the story of the “beginning of signs” at the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee, and the “conversion” of Paul on the proverbial road to Damascus. Both are Epiphanies, as it were, and both challenge us about what we claim to know and seek to know. We might like the idea of having a kind of control over nature that allows us to change water into wine. Such is one of the illusions and fantasies of our technocratic world. But the point of the story is not about human manipulation of nature for so-called human ends but about what God seeks for our humanity in all of the ‘miracles’. He seeks the ultimate good for our humanity which is, perhaps not surprisingly, found in social joys. Most of the miracle stories are about healings but what are we healed for? For what end? Our good as found in God, in our delight in the goodness, the beauty and the truth of God which does not negate our humanity by turning us into machines, into automatons and bots, but perfects our humanity.
The story reveals at once the human predicament as named by Mary, “they have no wine.” We lack the means of our own sufficiency and joy. Jesus’ response is intriguing. “What is that to thee and to me? Mine hour has not yet come.” This may puzzle us but Mary gets it. “Whatever he tells you to do, do it,” she says, an echo of her own fiat mihi, “be it unto me according to thy word.” God seeks what is good for us according to his word and will, not according to human dictates and desires in all of their confusion and incompleteness. His hour refers to his passion, death and resurrection; in short, to the purpose of his Incarnation, his coming in the flesh of our humanity to recall us to our truth in God. There is perhaps no greater lesson than learning how to take delight in one another rather than using and manipulating one another in the illusions of control.
