Day: January 14, 2024

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

This is, we are told, the “beginning of signs which Jesus did and manifested forth his glory.” Yet “this beginning of signs” is also the ending of signs, meaning the end or purpose of the signs. Signs here means miracles, the things of wonder which illuminate and transform our lives. But in what kinds of ways? Is it by the things of God being reduced to us and our inclinations and concerns, our obsessions and agendas? Or is it by our being shown the things of God which dignify and ennoble our humanity and raise us up into the things of God in which we participate and find our good? There is all the difference in the world between those two perspectives and tendencies. This story counters and corrects the first by showing us the wonder and mystery of the second and does so in a way which moves our hearts and minds. We are “transformed by the renewing of our minds” upon the things of God revealed to us in which we find our highest good. It is about neither God nor ourselves being conformed to the world in its divisions, confusions, and conflicting agendas.

The story of the wedding feast in Cana of Galilee shows us the radical meaning of miracles or signs. They teach us about God in himself and about what God seeks for us, namely, the good of our humanity. Only John gives us this story. Most of the miracles of the Gospels are about the healing and restoration of our wounded and broken humanity such as we saw in Advent about the purpose of Christ’s coming: “the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the Gospel preached to them,” Jesus himself tells us. And even more, he adds, “and blessed is he whosoever shall not be offended in me.” All this is wonderful and true and belongs to the vision of our humanity as redeemed from sin and its consequences, a wonderful reminder of the wholeness and completeness of our humanity as found in communion with God.

What that really means, however, is seen in this Gospel story. For what end are we restored to wholeness? It is, I think, captured in the Westminster Shorter Catechism composed in 1647 by a synod of English and Scottish theologians of a decidedly Calvinist bent, but then our Anglican sacramental thinking follows Calvin and Thomas more than Luther. “What is the chief end of man?” it asks and answers, “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and enjoy him forever.” “O what their joy and their glory must be, those endless sabbaths the blessed ones see,” as the medieval theologian Peter Abelard says in his lovely 10th century hymn, O Quanta Qualia, where “God shall be all and in all ever blessed,” in John Mason Neale’s translation. God is the beginning and end of all created beings, especially rational beings, as Aquinas teaches. This Gospel shows us that God seeks our social joys which have their meaning in our communion with God through Christ’s sacrifice.

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