Water into Wine, Epiphany 3

Water into Wine - Epiphany 3

“You have kept the good wine until now.” (Jn 2.10)

I was down at my sister’s in rural Sussex for a new year party. I helped myself to an open bottle of red wine in the kitchen, only to find after the first memorable mouthful, that it was her neighbour’s pea-pod wine. As I smiled beneficently to the neighbour, I was thinking, ‘what a waste of good pea-pods’. The only advantage of this early petard to the palate was that everything tasted wonderful thereafter.

Professor Eric Mascall, of blessed memory to many of you, preached on this miracle some years ago at St Mary’s. He berated the heretics of the temperance movement for maintaining that there was no real transformation of the water into wine; rather the pure and noble water appeared like best claret when contrasted with the vinegary libation that was being served up towards the end of what may have been a weeklong wedding feast.

This attitude was summed up by one of our evangelical radicals, Gerald Coates: “Jesus’s first miracle was to turn 200 gallons of water into wine and the church has been trying to turn it back into water ever since!”

So what is this rather strange miracle all about? Why does our Lord choose a party where the wine’s run out to reveal his Godship? Well in a way he doesn’t choose to do it. His mother pushes him, all unknowingly, into this first miracle. I’m sure Mary never thought for one moment that he would solve the wine shortage by a dramatic intervention in the space-time continuum.

And there’s another problem with this story. Did it actually happen like this? Barnabas Lindars and others think that it probably didn’t. Many scholars suppose that the story is built around what was originally a parable of Jesus, about the new wine of the kingdom. Water into wine stories abound in Greek mythology and Pliny tells us of a spring that turned to wine on the nones of January, that is, Epiphany time. So perhaps the early church was doing another one of its Christianising pagan festivals routines.

Many other scholars, and I, think it was a miraculous incident. I have never quite seen the point of trying to explain away miracles, unless you want to explain the entire life of Christ in naturalistic terms. If you believe in the miracle of the incarnation, and the resurrection of a dead Christ, then a handful of other miracles hardly produces a stumbling block to faith. When you’ve bought your airline ticket, it seems futile to debate at length whether flight is possible or not. Well, miracle or not, what is John trying to say to us?

We have seen before how the synoptic evangelists Matthew, Mark and Luke use words to describe the miracles of our Lord in terms of portentous acts of power - miracles; while in the Fourth Gospel, John refers to them as ‘signs’. He is not concerned so much with the inbreaking of the kingdom of God; he is more concerned with what these miracles signify about the Son of God. He is not so much concerned with the coming kingdom and the return of Christ; he is more concerned with the mystery of this God made Man.

In theological terms, while the other Gospels connect miracles with eschatology, the last things; John connects miracles with Christology, the nature of Christ himself.

In this first of the seven signs around which John builds his Gospel, the evangelist is already posing the great question of his treatise: “Who is this Jesus of Nazareth?” Is he God or Man? Is he the Messiah?

Clearly this nature miracle of water-into-wine points to a Godlike control of the natural world. Archbishop William Temple puts it with poetic conciseness: “The modest water saw its God and blushed. ”

Now remember that John is writing some years after the Gospel events. He has seen what happened to the hoards who believed because they saw the miracles, and who quickly disappeared when the miracles stopped. John emphasises that Jesus is wary of those whose faith just rests on miracles. So later in this chapter in verse 23 we read: “When he was in Jerusalem during the Passover festival, many believed in his name because they saw the miracles that he was doing. But Jesus on his part would not entrust himself to them, because he knew all people.”

The firmer footing for faith is seen in the symbolism of the water into wine, which contrasted the contemporary practice of religion, with the Christian faith that Christ had come to proclaim. So let’s look at those contrasts that John alludes to.

The stone water jars were used for the many ritual handwashings which accompanied a Jewish feast. (Stone was easier to keep clean than earthenware.) John will be showing in his Gospel how these constant ritual purifications were to be replaced by the one sacrifice of Jesus, which was to cleanse permanently from sin.

Secondly, the law of Moses had power to convict of sin, but little power to free from the grip of sin. Even the prophets looked forward to the time when the law would be written on our hearts; when believers would want to follow the law of love, because of the indwelling Spirit. There are echos here of John the Baptist’s words at our Lord’s baptism – I baptize with water, but he who comes after me will baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. This was the rich wine of the Kingdom.

And thirdly, the water represented the insipid nature of a fear based religion - keep the law or else! Christ’s new wine was to build a community based on responsive love. When we have grasped that Christ has loved us and given himself for us, then we will want to show our love by obedience to his teaching.

In John’s account, Mary sets the pattern of Christian response for us. Perhaps she was part of the catering team for what must have been a family wedding. Joseph seems not to be around at this stage, and the guests have drunk more than is polite – we have all hosted those sort of parties. It’s when that waggish definition of hospitality springs to mind:

Hospitality - the art of making people feel at home when you wish they were.

So Mary looks in loving dependency to her son. The Hebrew idiom with which he responds “Woman, what have I to do with you?” is both affectionate – ‘Dear Mother’ - and yet also an indication of Christ’s changing role with respect to his family.

Mary gives him one of those knowing motherly looks and turns to the servants and says - “do whatever he says”. Mary has long followed the path of love and obedience to Jesus.

We are sometimes so used to our Christian faith that we forget how staggering it is. We forget the wonder of being alive, conscious humans in a remarkable world; we forget the mystery that, despite all our weaknesses and disappointments, God has drawn near to us in Jesus.

Epiphany is the season of revelation and in today’s Gospel, John invites us to ponder the amazing Christ – God made man for love of us; the bread of life, come down from heaven; ready to take the water of our lives which we offer, and to turn them into the rich wine of life with him.

In a moment we will echo those words read earlier from the book of Revelation. “Blessed are those who are called to the wedding feast of the Lamb.”

And as we come and receive, may we realise afresh the Gospel truth of grace and love; and respond, like Mary, in trust and joyful obedience.

Then, day after day, as we deepen our spiritual life, we will be able to pray in gratefulness to God:

“You have kept the good wine until now.” (Jn 2.10)

Epiphany, death

Epiphany - death

I suppose I always get a bit maudlin at Christmas and New Year - another birthday, another year, another wrinkle, a stronger pair of reading glasses. And even bishops begin to look young.

The Feast of the Epiphany can help us to look more joyfully at our own mortality.

The Epiphany - the Manifestation - the Showing; or the Theophania as it was also called - the showing of God - it's been celebrated since the early 3rd Century. By the 4th Century, in the Western Church, its focus became the Revelation of God to the Gentiles - personified in those three Wise Men from the East, or were they Kings, or Astrologers? We don't know what they were, or for that matter how many of them there were.

What were they expecting as they followed the star? They had riches and wisdom, and yet left the security of their homes to follow a hunch. Maybe they were going through a mid-life crisis and needed some adventure in their lives? I think there is some truth in that. Men and women, often at the height of their powers, secure with family and jobs, sometimes question what life is all about. Some change jobs; some climb mountains; some have affairs; others hit the bottle, and some look for the meaning of life. These wise men, from outside of the Jewish tradition, came looking for the one who was to unlock the key to life.

In the paradox of Christian faith, and of this Mass, they found the answer to life in death.
This is a theme in TS Eliot’s famous Journey of the Magi, written nearly 80 years ago. The poem ends:

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth
and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

The gifts the Magi bear to the infant Christ, although never mentioned in the poem, fit well into this theme of death and life. They symbolise Three Deaths.

1. Gold represents the Death of Self. Christ was born to be King, symbolised in this king of metals - gold.

"Born a king on Bethlehem plain, Gold I bring to crown him again..."

In his earthly ministry Jesus was to demand total allegiance from his followers, promising them that only by death to self, would they ever find their true selves.

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it." (Lk 9.24)

Jesus is encapsulating the heart of the Gospel: it is in loving abandonment to Christ that we become fully human, and learn how to love ourselves.

The little boy is standing up in the back seat of the car (this is before seatbelts) and his father keeps telling him to sit down. At last the father stops the car and forcibly sits the boy down. As they continue the journey, the sulking boy in the back shouts: “I may be sitting down on the outside, but I’m standing up on the inside!”

This is the individual, assertive self that wreaks such havoc in our lives and in our world; the Naked Self, the Selfish Gene. It does not deserve our loyalty. We only need to look at the world around us to see how love of this self leads to destruction and death. Fealty to Jesus is the only way to life; and to bring life to others.

But we are western liberal thinkers, and all this loyalty to Christ alone sounds a little too exclusive. Let’s look at the second death.

2. Frankincense represents the Death of the gods. We live in a pluralist society. And rightly, there must be acceptance and dialogue with those of other faiths and no faith. The Queen's Christmas Speech reflected that again this year. While affirming her own Christian faith, she was careful to flag up respect for those of other faiths, and for atheists – or as Woody Allen prefers to call them, God's loyal opposition.

But true as this is, there has also been much twaddle about all faiths being basically the same. They are not. Look for similarities between Mormonism and Melanesian Frog Worship and you will look in vain. I will respect and defend the rights of others to practise their faith, but I must also proclaim as a follower of Christ that I believe him to be a unique revelation of God to all nations and cultures.

There is no contradiction in thinking in this, and indeed the Incarnation leaves us no choice - 'Incense owns a deity nigh'. We do not believe that Jesus was just a good and holy man, or a prophet. We worship him, with all around the crib, as God. There is no God other than the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Now this is not to say that he does not reveal himself to others outside of the Christian faith. Or to put it another way: a good Muslim may be much nearer to God than a bad Christian. But I must not let my acceptance of others and their ways of believing, paralyse me from holding on to my own Christian faith; albeit with due humility.

"There's a wideness in God's mercy, like the wideness of the sea" as Faber put it. But if we believe that Jesus is Very God and Very Man, there can be no other gods.

3. And that brings us to the central mystery of our faith, and the 3rd Death: The Death of God.

CS Lewis puts it this way:

"The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact." Mythology is full of dying and rising gods. But in Christianity, "we pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to an historical Person crucified under Pontius Pilate…" We are indeed people of the Empty Tomb, and yet we must not rob the Death, Resurrection and Ascension of Christ, of the mystery and potency of myth. "We must not be ashamed of the mythical radiance resting on our theology." ('Myth Became Fact' is in Undeception and also in God in the Dock.)

Myrrh represents the Death of Death in the Death of Christ (the wonderful title of John Owen's book).

Mary must have felt one of the first pains of the sword piercing her heart as she was presented with myrrh - used for embalming the dead. This tiny, mystical life was directed from its first human moments towards a terrible death. But in this death he was to rob death of its finality and darkness. Death is a part of the human condition - it is not simply its conclusion. Death is present with us throughout our life.

This is why at times we long for death - moments of despair, moments of ecstasy ('les petits morts'), moments of loneliness, moments of deep faith, moments of deep doubt. At the heart of our faith, at the centre of this Mass, is a Death which brings Life.

I spoke to an elderly lady who had just come out of hospital in my home town, Shoreham-by-Sea: Southlands Hospital, a dilapidated, run-down old 30’s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war.

She had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?

“I ask you Father” Elsie told me, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and they ask me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”

This is the faith of the saints.

As we journey with the Magi, may we not so much “be glad of another death” as embrace the bubbling life of the Christ-child that will invigorate our living, now, through death, and forever.