Posts Tagged ‘disruption’

Water into wine – what does it really tell us?

January 20, 2025

Epiphany 2 – 2025

John 2:1-11

Marian Free

In the name of God, who is not limited or constrained by human doctrine and regulation. Amen.

As I have said many times, the gospels have lost their capacity to shock and to unsettle. Over the past two thousand years we have interpreted and reinterpreted the gospels such that most of us have completely lost touch with the original context. We have developed generalisations to help us to make sense of God’s action in Jesus, simplified his message to statements such as “Jesus is our Saviour” and then have understood the broader story in relation to this.  (Jesus as Saviour may conveniently allow us to overlook Jesus as judge which is another lens through which to interpret the gospel). Instead of seeing the gospels as pointing to a deeper meaning we have turned them into stories about God or Jesus (God is generous, loving, forgiving) or we have made them into moral guidelines insisting that Christianity’s primary purpose is to make us into “good” people (even people who conform to the norms of the society in which they find themselves).  

Seeing Jesus as moral exemplar or benign holy man has blinded us to the absolutely radical, rule-breaking, and shocking teaching and behaviour of Jesus, the Jesus who upset the religious authorities, disregarded the Jewish law and disrupted the norms of the society in which he found himself, the Jesus who caused offense to all respectable, law-abiding people of faith. 

Take for example today’s gospel. We know the story so well. Jesus is at a wedding; the wine runs out and his mother alerts him to the fact. Having initially ignored his mother’s concern Jesus then asks the servants to draw from the jars in which the water for purification was stored. Amazingly, not only has the water become wine, but it was wine of the finest quality and there were litres of it! How extraordinary! What an example of God’s boundless generosity and of Jesus’ concern for those around him!  Who is this Jesus that he can perform such a miracle?  

All of these are valid interpretations of the story, but they fail to take into account the underlying message of the gospel writer – that Jesus has come to disrupt and overturn and even replace the rituals and practices of the faith into which he was born. 

There are a number of unanswered questions in the account of the wedding.  We are not told whose wedding it is or why Jesus, his mother and his disciples have been invited[1]. Nor is there any explanation as to why, when the guests are already drunk (2:10) they need 600 litres of the highest quality wine. It is not clear why Mary thinks it is her business to worry about the wine or lack thereof or why, when this is Mary’s first appearance in the story, that she is in a position to think that Jesus can do something to rectify the situation.  What authority does Mary have that she can tell someone else’s servants what to do? And why does Jesus tell his mother that the wine is not their business and that his time has not yet come AND then solve the problem anyway[2].

All these are imponderables, because they do not contribute to the point that John is making in telling the story and that is that Jesus is the fulfillment and therefore replacement of Jewish practices and rituals[3]. Throughout the gospel we will see this theme repeated. In John’s account of the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus declares himself to be the Bread of Life, implying that in him the Passover is fulfilled. The Baptist has already identified Jesus as the Lamb of God (the Passover Lamb). Water and light are key parts of the Festival of Booths – Jesus claims to be “living water” and “light of the world” thus making that Festival redundant. Shortly after the wedding at Cana Jesus declares himself to be the Temple suggesting that the Temple and its practices are no longer necessary (2:21). Through these and other images, the author of John is telling us that the old feasts and rituals have been superseded by God’s action in Jesus.

So back to the wedding. What is interesting and scandalous is not so much the wine and the quantity of it, but what Jesus is saying and doing in his choice of the jars intended to hold the water for purification. If the wine has run out, then why not use the empty wine jars or failing that the jars in which water was stored for drinking and cooking? That would have been the obvious solution. By using the jars of purification, Jesus is insinuating that their usefulness has come to an end, that he is ushering in a new era, an era in which the old codes of purity no longer apply.

To get to the heart of this story then, we have to pay attention to the scandalous nature of Jesus’ act. His utter disregard for the religious symbolism of the jars, reveals their irrelevance.  That the new wine is superior to the old implies that so too is the new revelation of God through Jesus.  

Here at the very beginning John sets out his agenda – that in his person and teaching Jesus replaces the Temple, its leadership and practices. We have to understand that faith in Jesus does not require adherence to the old ways of relating to God and that through Jesus all people of faith see and know God. There is no longer any need for intermediaries – priests, rituals and observances – through Jesus each person of faith can be in direct relationship with God.

[1] Some scholars have speculated that it is Jesus’ own wedding.

[2] This is typical of Jesus in John’s gospel – to say he won’t’ do something and then to do it. The theme of the hour is an important theme for another time.

[3] For more on this https://www.scholarscorner.com/review-jewish-feasts-johns-gospel/

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Change and disruption

November 13, 2021

 

Pentecost 25 – 2021

Mark 13:1-11

Marian Free

 

In the name of the God of our past, present and future. Amen.

Given that that the Bible was written by men in a patriarchal world, a world in which men and women had clearly defined roles and in which pregnancy and childbirth would have been entirely the province of women, it is extraordinary that there are more than a few occasions on which images of pregnancy, childbirth and mothering are used for God and for the journey of faith. Sometimes they are used to describe God’s intimate love and care. They evoke God’s promises – the barren woman will bear seven-fold (Is 54), God’s love – I took them up in my arms (Hos 11), God’s comfort – as a mother comforts her child, God’s compassion – can a mother forget her nursing child and God’s protection – I will be as a bear robbed of her cubs (2 Sam 17).

 

At other times, as today, the pain and the violence of childbirth is used to bring to mind the trauma and disruption that can precede change. This is exemplified in the Song of Hannah (echoed in the Song of Mary) that speaks of upheaval – the bows of the mighty are broken, the powerful are brought down, the poor are raised from the dust and the lowly are lifted up.

 

In our scene from this morning’s gospel the disciples were no doubt expecting Jesus to join them in their admiration of the Temple – after all it was the centre of their faith, the place in which sacrifices were offered to God and to which faithful Jews came for the major festivals of their faith. They must have been completely taken aback by Jesus’ response that not one stone would remain upon another. It would have been completely impossible for them to imagine that within decades of Jesus’ death a new expression of their ancient faith would have been brought to birth and that many of the things that they now considered sacred would not only have been destroyed but would have lost their meaning. How could they conceive that the anointed one, the one for whom they had waited for so long would be the cause of a deep rupture between all that they had known and the future that he was initiating?

 

 

Many of us like the disciples resist change. When everything is going smoothly it is difficult to imagine that there can be any benefit in letting of of the comfortable and familiar. Worse, as our reading suggests, change can be violent and destructive and there are times when the old must be destroyed to allow room for the new to emerge. It can be difficult to see new possibilities while the old structures and the old ways of doing things remain in place and it is often only with hindsight that we can see the benefits that accrued from what had appeared to be a catastrophic event. (Who, for example, would have imagined that a rag-tag bunch of foolish and non-comprehending disciples would have transformed not only their faith, but the whole world along with it? Who could have predicted that anything good could have come out of a pandemic? Yet a bunch of uneducated men and women spread the gospel to the world. And the pandemic has shown us how we can connect without being face-to-face.)

Today’s gospel is a timely reminder that nothing lasts for ever and that even the greatest of edifices can fall. It is also a caution against holding too tightly to the past and of failing to be open to the opportunities offered by the future. 

We are, all of us, on the threshold of change, myself to a future that is not yet fleshed out and you to the adventure of a new period of ministry. It will not be the sort of catastrophic change that our gospel refers to and it will be experienced differently by all of us. At the same time, the future is full of potential and I am confident that any trepidation that we might feel will be more than balanced by a sense of anticipation and excitement as to what that future might hold.

You will have forgotten the disruption that occurred when I (the first woman to have the cure of this Parish) burst on the scene and I am certain that you now take for granted the many changes that have occurred over the last 14 years. There will be a great many things that you will remember as always having been here, or always having been done in a particular way. That will not be true. This is not the Parish I came to 14 years ago. Stalwarts have gone to God and many new faces have joined us. New groups have formed and some have fallen by the wayside. There have been subtle changes to the way we do liturgy and there have been numerous physical changes to both the church and grounds and now we take it for granted that this is how it should be.

That doesn’t mean that this is how it should stay. In the past few weeks, I have become increasingly convinced that the Holy Spirit is present in the timing of this handover, that this is absolutely the right time for another person to take the Parish on the next stage of your journey and that God has wonderful things in store for all of us.

We, like the disciples, are on a journey of discovery, always on the move, always trying to be open to the Spirit and the will of God. No one knows where the road will take us, but we continually leave the past and present behind us to step out in faith, following Jesus, confident that we will  be asked to do more than we are capable of and that we will never be abandoned to face the journey alone.

 

May God bless us all in whatever lies ahead.

 

 

 

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