Epiphany 2C, 16 January 2022. The Rev. Pamela L. Werntz
Isaiah 62:1-5 . For the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married….So shall your God rejoice in you.
1 Corinthians 12:1-11. Now there are varieties of gifts…of services…of activities…for the common good.
John 2:1-11. The first of his signs…revealed his glory…his disciples believed in him.
O God of Justice, grant us the strength, the wisdom and the courage to seek always and everywhere after truth, come when it may, and cost what it will.
The readings appointed for the second Sunday after the Epiphany in the third year of our lectionary cycle always provoke a rant inside my head that threatens to come out in the pulpit in an Andy Rooney style of commentary (for those of you of a certain age). But it’s not a rant about the lectionary (this time). This time it’s a rant about biblical marriage. Now if I asked random people walking up Newbury Street what the definition of biblical marriage is, I feel confident that, no matter what their religious background, most would respond with some version of one man and one woman. They probably wouldn’t know that marriage descriptions in biblical times, which span more than 1,000 years, differ widely (and even wildly) in terms of expectations: of polygamy or monogamy; parent-arranged or husband-initiated; endogamy or exogamy (that is, within one’s clan or outside of it); the obligation for a man to marry his brother’s widow; not to mention the estimations of perceived time until the end of the world. There are also major considerations and differences in the Bible when it comes to property, procreation, strategic political alliance, and divorce. A man “taking” a wife literally means procuring, buying, and the acquisition is called betrothal. And Paul writes to the church in Corinth, “Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried.”
Part of what fuels my rant, of course, is the real and ongoing harm done by the Church to LGBT people all around the world who want to embrace marriage and care for children in the knowledge and love of God. I’m also angry about how the Church treats those whose marriages have ended in divorce. (And by the way, as an Episcopalian from the Anglican Tradition, it always strikes me as a little funny that we have been arguing fiercely about marriage since King Henry VIII fell off his horse and hit his head.) Another part of my rant is about how the story of the wedding at Cana gets held up as an adornment of marriage by Jesus. I don’t think this story is about adorning marriage any more than it is about endorsing drunkenness. Okay, rant finished.
Our Hebrew scripture passage this morning lies at the very heart of the part of Isaiah that gets called Third Isaiah, who writes: “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married, for the Lord delights in you and your land shall be married. Your land shall be called Beulah – the Hebrew word for married to literally is valued and cared about (here is a biblical definition of marriage: valued and cared about!). What follows is often cited as prescriptive rather than descriptive: “For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you.” I’ve never once heard, however, an argument that an older man and an older woman must not marry, just because this verse says young. I’ve never once heard an argument that an older man and older woman must not marry because they cannot procreate. (Maybe I wasn’t quite finished with my rant.)
Beulah Land is the subject of many songs about the sweet by-and-by in the sky. But this passage is about something much more immediate than what God might do for God’s faithful people after death. Isaiah is writing about life before death! This passage is about people returning to rebuild what had been devastated – in this case, the devastated city of Jerusalem. It’s about rebuilding hope, about creating a sign of hope for others. It lies at the very heart of scripture that contains radical proposals for an inclusive community; it’s a treatise written to defend an inclusive and expansive group against the actions of those who wanted to limit the access and benefits of the community.
Only the Gospel of John tells this story of Jesus and his family and friends at a marriage feast that had run out of one of the principal ingredients of a celebration! Running out of wine was not just a social embarrassment; it was an excruciating reminder of the perilous economic circumstances in which the wedding guests lived.[1] Wine was also a ritual sign of covenant with the Holy One. (It’s a sign we still employ.) Many know this story as Jesus’ first of many miracles – and it is that according to John (but not in Matthew, Mark or Luke). I always want to call out this story as the first of the many encounters of Jesus with women who challenged him to expand the effectiveness and the reach of his ministry.
Notice the mother of Jesus in her first act recorded in the Gospel of John. She’s the one who calls Jesus’ attention to the shortage, to the insufficiency: “They do not have what they need, Jesus, and you need to act.” She blows right by Jesus’ response that it’s not her problem or his and that, furthermore, it’s not really a good time for him just yet. John doesn’t ever name her, but we know her as Mary. Mary speaks; Mary takes charge; Mary tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. Mary decides that the precarious situation of the hosts is indeed her concern, and that it must be Jesus’ concern as well (whether he wants it to be or not, whether he is ready or not). It’s such a nice touch that when pressed, Jesus uses the stone jars, which were for the rite of purification, a rite of handwashing before meals. Six stone jars, ritually pure, each able to hold 20-30 gallons, making an incredible abundance of really good wine. For me this is a sign of Jesus’ ability to make something sacred of our lack, or of our precarious situation when we give him what we have and ask for his help.
Some interpret this mention of the Jewish rites of purification as an indication that those rites have been supplanted by the Jesus Way, but I think that is a mistaken and dangerous reading of this text. There is no negative connotation to the stone jars here. Furthermore, in the negativity the Gospel of John with regard to faithful, Jewish religious practices, the writer betrays his own deep desire to not be excluded. John the Evangelist says that this was the first of Jesus’ signs. Signs of what? Signs of God’s in-breaking, signs of hope, signs of the inversion of the power structure. So this morning I want to say some things to you about rebuilding hope and creating signs of hope for others, using our gifts for the common good. To employ the metaphor of the stone jars as vessels for grace: we are called to be filled up, changed, and drawn out. To employ the metaphor of water changed to wine: resurrected life is to life as we know it, as fine wine is to inferior wine. (Thanks to blogger Mark Davis for that idea.)
John the Evangelist concludes this scene with: “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” (Remember, in the Bible believe means belove.) The meaning of the word glory is sometimes obscured by our churchy use of it. Glory means stunning beauty, splendor, magnificence. That is what this first sign revealed about Jesus, his stunning beauty. And his students, his disciples, loved him for it, and they began to trust in him.
Here are some things that I wonder about us as a parish, as The Episcopal Church, or as a nation. What do we know from our experience of devastation and the need to rebuild? What do we know from experience of lack, of insufficiency in the world around us? Lack of sufficient food or clean water, lack of the essential ingredients for celebrating community: of health or shelter, of energy and vision, of courage and generosity? Where, by God’s grace, is the power structure of this world being turned upside down? Who is speaking out, unwilling to be silenced, challenging, annoying, agitating for action, hopeful, although it might not be a convenient time?
I have a few more questions for you. I don’t imagine that any of us can answer all of them, but perhaps one or two will stick with you to challenge and inspire you. What do we know from our experience about recommitting to dissent against injustice wherever we find it? Of getting our hands dirty, in order to participate in spreading the abundance of God’s realm? What do we know of risking contamination for the love of God? What do we know of being pressed to action, of being vessels of God’s grace, in areas that, at first glance, do not seem like our concern or for which we are not ready? What do we know about using our anger and courage to demonstrate vision and compassion? What gifts have we used, and what gifts can we test for their God-given ability to improve the world around us? What testament of generosity and hope will we make? How might we be filled, changed, and drawn out in abundance by the grace of God!
You know, in addition to two readings referring to marriage, we have before us Saint Paul’s reminder to the Corinthians, who had been arguing about who had real spiritual gifts and who didn’t, that everybody’s different: that everyone has gifts, and the real test of gifts from God is whether they are used for the common good. According to Paul, you know a gift is from God not by its beauty or its extravagance or even its timing; you know not by whether it is given to slave or free, Jew or Greek, male or female (because in Christ such differences do not matter, Paul says). You know not by individual benefit, but by whether gifts are used for the common good, the commonwealth. Those are gifts are from God (also known as Love). We have them. Let’s share them for the stunning beauty, the glory of God, of Love in Jesus Christ.
[1] Elizabeth Johnson, Truly Our Sister: A Theology of Mary in the Communion of Saints (NY: Continuum International Publishing, 2003): pp. 289-293.