John 2:1-11

Epiphany 2 - Year C

Jesus meets his disciples as one follower brings another to experience what they have witnessed. A short while after (a proverbial three days) this new band is invited to a wedding and Mary has her last recorded words, “Do whatever he tells you.”

What Jesus says is, “Belovedness is everywhere.” Water was turned to Baptism; Water is now turned into Wine. Just so suddenly are two primary sacraments presented in John.

In the beginning was belovedness.
All things are made through belovedness.
Light and John and Baptism and Disciples and Wine, all belovedly made.

These matters are revealed to servants, not stewards/masters. This is not a miraculous sign or wonder. It is a simple picture of how the world can work when our desire is for experiences of shared belovedness. Who needs hope, identity, meaning, community, resources in this day? Someone in your family, neighborhood, political boundary, elsewhere on this beautiful blue dot in an immense universe, or yourself?

Good wine is for now. Cheers!

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2013/01/john-21-11.html

 

 

Appended is a posting to the Wisconsin United Methodist Federation for Social Action dialogue website.

In light of this text the posting raises a question of whether Jesus would turn water into wine if the relationship being blessed was not heterosexual. Can you imagine that a part of Jesus' hesitation about blessing this marriage was the limiting factor it plays in being able to bless a variety of relationships. Might Jesus have known how overly concrete we can get when dealing with holy texts and thus lose the larger issue of blessing relationships in the specifics of the particular relationship once blessed?

I suspect that Jesus' hesitation was overcome because he simply couldn't keep himself from blessing, willy-nilly, life, because that was why he came (John 10:10) I believe Jesus would have us be more prodigal in our blessing.

- - - - - - -

Here is a letter I wrote to the La Crosse Tribune in response to several articles about same-sex unions. ~ Deborah Buffton

To the Editor:

Britney Spears casually marries a man on a whim and requests an annulment the next day. And yet, I am expected to believe that a committed, loving, and long-term relationship between two women or two men somehow "violates the sanctity of marriage." What is wrong with this picture?

Caring and committed relationships are a social good and a moral good and our society needs more, not fewer, of them. Such relationships strengthen the social fabric of our world whether they are between a man and a woman, between two women or between two men.

In a society where the number of failed heterosexual marriages is frighteningly high and continually increasing, what is the point of standing in the way of committed relationships simply because the two people involved happen to be of the same gender?

Society needs to encourage us all to care for each other. In a world filled with war, violence, and hatred, to create artificial legal or social barriers to caring and loving relationships is counterproductive and, ultimately, immoral.

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html

 

 

The following is excerpted from Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary: Understanding the Bible Anew Through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard. [MISSING URL] They regularly have some interesting material. You may find it helpful.

The six stone jars used for the Jewish rites of purification are of a size more suitable to the temple than for a home in Cana. In any event, they refer to a very prominent part of Jewish life in the first century. They were pre-occupied with the problem of impurity.

This story, then, is really about the collision between the ministry of Jesus and the conventional religion of his time. We could say, lest we think this has something to do with the Jewishness of this religion, that there is always a collision between the ministry of Jesus, or the spirit of the Paraclete that Jesus left us, and the conventional religions of the time. This is paradigmatic collision.

The stone jars are not for wine, but for ritual washing. And note they need filling; they are depleted. Jesus is not rejecting the jars and what they stood for; he is filling them. You could say that he is filling the rituals with meaning and then transforming them.

Three notes in passing: (1) the gentleness of this transition from one dispensation to another. Not a rejection, but filling it and transforming it. A continuity and a discontinuity at the same time. (2) The devout Jews of the time were habituated to these rituals and clung to them, not only because they order life but also because it gave them an identity. So when Jesus begins to offer an alternative, he runs into the fundamental human phenomenon of our clinging to such rituals....

http://www.kairoscomotion.org/lectionary/2004/january2004.html

 

 

What to do while waiting for our time to come? Doze? Run in circles? Take a class?

There is such a focus on completedness that we sometimes forget the journey.

Mother's know mothering is never done. The kid will always be in process. So idealized mothers attend to the moment. What does it mean for G*D to be with us in the manger? What about when in Egypt? How about as a runaway? At a wedding?

When we begin to ask what it means to evidence G*D in the particular setting in which we find ourselves it becomes more possible to just go ahead and find ambrosia and amrita in honey, nectar of the gods, and plain old water (divided by the firmament, but still water on both sides of the sky). Having found the moment of G*D present is now, not an hour away, allows a savoring of the simple and finding it simply divine.

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy by Barbara Ehrenreich may be another way of coming at this story. An excerpt: "We do not yet understand the neuronal basis of . . . pleasure, but an interesting line of speculation has opened up only recently. Humans are highly imitative creatures, more so even than monkeys and others of our primate cousins. As all parents learn, to their amazement, an infant can respond to a smile with a smile, or stick out its tongue when a parent does. How does an infant transform the visual image of a protruding tongue into the muscular actions required to make its own tongue stick out? The answer may lie in the discovery of mirror neurons, nerve cells that fire both when an action is perceived -- when the parent sticks out his tongue, for example -- and when it is performed by the perceiver. In other words, the perception of an action is closely tied to the execution of the same action by the beholder. We cannot see a dancer, for example, without unconsciously starting up the neural processes that are the basis of our own participation in the dance."

In other words, to see Jesus' baptismal water flowing in a wedding scene calls us to perceive it flowing through us. Water/Wine makes no difference, G*D is with us!

- - -

O little cana, how still we see thee lie
on the back of your "Welcome to Cana" sign
it reads, "Welcome to Cana"
your still had run dry
you had the makings
but not the time
for fine wine

look again
you've got the time
you still have the makings
for still water to become living water
to welcome the world
to welcome the universe
still no longer, still right now

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2007_01_01_archive.html

 

 

Ahh, the magic three-day time-frame. What can't happen on a third-day!

Immediately prior to this is a call to Philip and Nathanael. They are promised a variation of Jacob's ladder, with "the Son of Man" as a ladder upon which angels scamper to-and-fro. You can almost hear these newly-called talking after their initial experience, "All very exciting now, I think we need to see what happens on the the third day before we believe more deeply than exclaiming an honored title."

Turns out it was an experience that confirmed their call. Mary's angelic messenger was extra speedy running up and down that ladder. Water was turned to wine: Jesus' whine was turned to sign.

Well, by metaphoric definition, this is a third-day - as is any ordinary day. What can't happen on a third day! Are you still looking to find out? Let us know what you find.

[Note: Metaphoric definitions are the best kind. Go ahead, make some up.]

http://kcmlection.blogspot.com/2010_01_01_archive.html