Three years ago I was away from the Cathedral for much of this Epiphany season, immersing myself in that fifth gospel that is a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I found myself renewing my baptismal vows in the Jordan on the very day that the Church recalled the Baptism of Christ, and just a couple of days later I stood beside one of the absolutely ENORMOUS water jars that are strategically placed around the possible site of today’s gospel story. Each one has the capacity of a wheelie bin -
We might think a bit more about those jars later, but in the meantime Id like you to join me in one of the countless shops selling olive wood statues, icons, rosaries...Do you want help in reflecting on Jesus and his mother? There’s a practically endless array of holy art designed to help you to so.
The Christmas-card images of a child snuggled safely in loving arms
The scenes of the crucifixion where that same mother, desperate and desolate, stands at the foot of the cross…
You’d imagine, looking at them, that Mary and Jesus were always bound together, that they remained as intimately connected throughout his earthly life as they were when she carried him in her womb.
And certainly, when I pray the rosary, when I consciously invite Mary to pray with me, inviting her intercession, that’s because she seems to have that intense connection that surely means she can speak directly into his ear…
But if we actually look at the gospels, we meet a rather different picture in the years between Bethlehem and Calvary.
Luke, whose text suggests that someone, somewhere had actually interviewed Mary, gives us not only the infancy narratives, all those extraordinary events which offered so much for her to ponder in her heart, but also that heart-stopping day when Jesus lingered in Jerusalem to “be about his Father’s business”…
Any parent who has mislaid a child will know how terrifying that experience can be.
And then, at the moment of reunion, instead of flinging himself into his parents’ arms, Jesus seems to push them away.
How would his words have sounded to Joseph? To me they seem full of teenage unkindess
Then, there’s that awful day when Mary and her other children turn up, concerned that Jesus seems intent on starving himself, and are rebuffed
“Who ARE my mother and brothers...”
Honestly, how COULD he?
Whatever the larger point, however pressing the claims of the kingdom, here is the woman who brought his divinely human body into the world, yet he turns away from all that family affection, relentlessly pursuing his vocation…
It must have felt like a slap to the face.
I’ve always imagined that Mary went home in tears…
It’s really not easy to mother the Son of God, and to hold on to the promise of heaven breaking in, if your child pushes you away and deliberately excludes you from his emerging ministry.
But in today’s gospel it sounds, at first, as if Jesus is actively trying to postpone that ministry
Listen…
Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come...
WOMAN - that’s hardly brimming over with filial affection. In fact, Mary is never named in John’s gospel…she is only, ever “the mother of Jesus”, her own identity utterly subsumed in her role.
Later, of course, when his hour HAS come he will speak to her as “Woman” again, but in kinder vein
“Woman, behold your son. Son, here is your mother”
John bookends Jesus’s ministry with these moments – spotlights mother and son not in the soft focus of a nativity scene but with the full glare of God’s glory to be revealed in and through him.
My hour is not yet come
I am not yet heading towards the cross
Just leave me be…I’m enjoying the party...
Yet, there is something too important going on for Mary to simply give up and sit back down among the women…
A wedding should be replete with joy, flowing over to include the whole community...yet shame and ignominy are about to descend upon the hapless couple and their families.
No wine.
Social disaster.
How did Mary find out?
Was it a family affair? A niece or nephew trembling on the edge of disgrace?
Was she someone who always paid attention to those in the background, the servants looking at one another with incredulous anxiety?
We can’t know – but for me it matters tremendously that she was there, at that wedding, that she noticed, that she alerted her son to the pressing need
“They have no wine”
Oh my goodness! How often as we read the room, read the world, might those words be ours.
WE are surrounded by so much screaming need
“They have no money.”
“She has no cure.”
“He has no justice”
They have no home
I have no strength.”
They have nothing.
I Have nothing
No way to help…
My faith seems simply a matter of empty words.
God is on a long lunch break.
They have no wine
And all I can do is tell God this truth that God already knows...and wait in hope...as Mary waited that day.
The hope might have felt forlorn, as Jesus pushed her away – and yet she is confident that she has told the right person, that despite his unpromising words, Jesus will act.Though John’s gospel gives us none of the back-story, the angelic annunciation, the babe in the manger, the prophetic words and portentous stars, nonetheless Mary KNOWS HER SON...and knows he can help.
She brings her distress for others to him then, as she does, as we all do, whenever we pray, confident that he can, that he WILL make a difference.
Do whatever he tells you
Even if it makes no sense
Even if it’s hard (filling a thirty gallon jar is no mean undertaking)
Even if you’re pretty sure you’ll end up looking utterly stupid.
Do whatever he tells you
Interestingly, these are the last words Mary speaks in John’s gospel…
Her intervention has been a catalyst.
She has propelled her son into action…
She has no idea how he might act to transform the situation, but believes that he will do so
And this is because she has been attentive…
Attentive to the needy world and attentive to her extraordinary, baffling, beloved son
Jesus.
In the face of his apparent refusal, she persists in faith, speaking to the servants on t he strength of her long-standing trust in Jesus’s loving, generous character. and invites the servants to practice that obedience which enables faith to become action. Her quiet conviction persuades them to follow her advice
They DO what he says
After all, they’re up against it
They need a miracle and as God says to Bruce, in the film Bruce Almighty
“If you want to make a miracle, BE ONE”
Their obedience, of course, unleashes God’s abundance
As our liturgy will remind us, in the Eucharistic preface for this season
In the water made wine the new creation was revealed at the wedding feast.Poverty was turned to riches, sorrow into joy.
The glory of God is revealed in the wine outpoured and the party continues unabated...and will continue into eternity.
But for now, too often it feels as if all that we have is water. We may TALK about God’s abundance, but we are surrounded by scarcity, loss and need...We face the reality of loss and grief, of financial trouble, political corruption, institutional injustice...We struggle to believe that there WILL be enough to go round, that God’s love and God’s grace will encompass all…
So, what can we do?
Me, I think I’ll try to pray with Mary, and model my prayer on hers.
I’ll be honest to God about what I see – the pain of a dear friend close to death, the heartbreak of exclusion, even from God’s Church, the terror that drives refugees to risk their lives in tiny boats on perilous seas – and I will keep on naming those needs in the face of my own helplessness and I’ll try not to be deflected.
And, if it seems that I have nothing to offer that might change the situation, I’ll ask to have the courage to offer it anyway Perhaps if I dare to pour out the pathetically inadequate resources I seem to have available, God’s grace will intervene so that I , even I, can be enough to answer my own prayers.
Our Collect puts is beautifully...as it outlines the possibility that we too can be part of the miracle,
Pray it with me once again
Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace,
and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory
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