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RCL Year C, Epiphany 2, January 14th, 2007
Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36: 5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; St. John 2:1-11
St. Edmund’s Episcopal Church
The Reverend George F. Woodward IIIOur Gospel lesson reminds me of the story of the Irish priest who was quite a tippler and who had the misfortune of being pulled over one day by the highway patrol for erratic driving. “Have you been drinking, Father?” asked the officer. “No sir, just on my way to Mass,” says the priest. “Well, then, would you mind telling me about that empty bottle on the passenger seat?” asks the officer politely. “Oh my, that’s just a bottle of Irish Evian sparkling water me boy,” says the priest. “Why then, Father, do I smell wine on your breath?” The priest looked startled and said: “Heavens to Betsy, as at Cana our dear Lord’s gone and done it again!”
The message the Gospeller has for us today is about the wildly extravagant generosity of God towards us. We are given a clue straight away when told that “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee,” an odd detail meant to evoke that other great third day event of Christ’s Resurrection. God’s redemption of humanity, the gift of eternal life, the marriage supper of the Lamb, all of this is implied and indicated in the very first of Jesus’ Signs; the turning of water to wine at a wedding feast in Cana.
I have presided at a great many weddings in my day, some elaborate and some simple, on beaches and meadows and in church, and each one of them was carefully prepared for.
In the Palestine of Jesus’ day weddings lasted a week and kin and tribe came from far away to the event, arriving with an expectation of hospitality. When we hear that the wine gave out, we may think of it as a minor inconvenience, but nothing was quite as important in Middle Eastern culture as hospitality, and disgrace is about to be visited upon the newly married couple and their parents. The wine is gone. There is no fruit punch waiting in the wings. Mary steps up to the plate. And Jesus, fully human and fully male, exhibits customary gender blindness when He fails to perceive the ramifications of a social disaster. He doesn’t at first see what all the fuss is about. “Woman,” He says to His mother, “What business is this of ours?”
I’m glad we’re given this account of Jesus saying what we often do. What business is it of mine if emergency rooms are closing all over Los Angeles County, if in many Southland schools kids aren’t much literate in science or the humanities, if we are contributors to global warming, or, pertinent today with José López visiting, if way down in a place called El Salvador, human rights aren’t observed with the rigor we might wish. “What business is this of ours?”
We are occupied and busy folk, every one of us. We have too many balls in the air already, and we’re on the lookout for some relief from duty and obligation. Jesus, too. He didn’t think it was His problem to rescue a wedding party from embarrassment. His time hadn’t come. We’re never told why Jesus changed His mind, but that He did offers hope that God might move us, too, beyond our first instincts to a more generous stance.
The author of the Gospel of John writes in metaphors, and we are supposed to notice that those six stone jars used to hold water for ritual purification are symbols of religious law. They are symbols of the ways in which we fulfill our duties to the letter, and imagine that is all life requires. John wants his readers to notice that these jars exemplify such an attitude.
Look, John says, water turns to wine. Life is about abundance and generosity, not about mere duty. Law gives way to grace as water gives way to wine. Not just a little wine, but one hundred eighty gallons of wine, and not just Manichevitz but Napa Valley’s best!
John wants us to understand that God’s hands are open in blessing towards us, and we are likewise to open ourselves in blessing to others.
In that context, let me tell you a bit about our visitor and guest, José López, whom I’ve wanted you all to meet for some while. You are a blessing to him, and he is a great blessing to others.
José was born in Zapotal Chalatenango in the North of El Salvador near the Honduran border, an area of fierce fighting during the Civil War of the 1970s and 1980s and the site of the Masacré del Rio Sumpul, the Massacre of the River Sumpul, when Salvadoran government troops massacred over 3,000 peasants. José’s family survived, though he lost many family members. José was six years old.
Like our Lord, José was born in simple circumstance. His father was a subsistence farmer and a road laborer, and lost his life on a road crew as José was about to enter his teens. After completing seventh grade, José left school to work and help support his family. When his mother lost one of her legs and was prevented from working, José moved her to the capital city of San Salvador, where in 1991 just before the signing of the peace accords, at age nineteen, he found work as a driver and body-guard for the Episcopal Bishop of El Salvador.
With the bishop’s encouragement, José began studying for his High School Equivalency in 1993, continuing on to University and then on to Law School while working full time for the Diocese, and let me tell you, driving for Bishop Barahona is a twenty-four hour a day occupation…that is one busy and demanding bishop!
José became a committed Christian during this time, and was received into the Anglican (or Episcopal) Church of El Salvador. He considered taking Holy Orders but decided on Law School, and developed a vision, together with the bishop, of an office of Human Rights advocating for the many that need such advocacy in El Salvador.
That office opened three years ago. Our Mission and Outreach Committee has made a five year commitment to fund that office at $4,000 annually for five years, and an anonymous parish family supplement that gift with $1,000 annually, also for five years.
José works on immigration issues, assisting the 70 to 140 returning Salvadorans deported each week from the United States, and also with refugees from South America and particularly Columbia who have fled to El Salvador (it is interesting to note that El Salvador is considered for many a place of refuge!). He works on gang and prison issues, in the area of women’s rights and domestic violence, and offers pro-bono legal assistance to Church and non-Church members alike. He is involved in educational efforts to expand understanding of Constitutional Rights and Human Rights, and serves as the Diocesan Lawyer, regularizing the property deeds of our churches, over half of which were in danger of having their land confiscated by the government just a few years ago. He administers the Diocesan scholarship program for young people, and, this year, when the United Nations entered into partnership with the Anglican Church, became the supervisor for the UN Officer for Refugees in El Salvador. In his spare time, he works with the young people of his parish church, San Juan Evangelista.
José came from nowhere, received God’s blessings, and has made himself a great blessing to many others, and now you understand that you are a part of his story, making his work, in part, possible. Two other Anglican parishes, one in Canada and one in New Jersey, share with us in the support of his fine ministry.
In El Salvador, and here in L.A., among the poor and among the rich, I often see people in circumstances that send me straight to prayer, “These folk need more of the good wine of life, dear Lord.” And you yourself pray that prayer. Part of the role of the Church is to pray that prayer for others. When we see neglected children and the homeless, “Lord, we have no wine, and we turn to You.” When we see people struggling with substance abuse, or in bondage to materialism, as we understand the pressures faced by the uninsured, and those without adequate health care, “Lord, we have no wine, and we turn to You.” As we become aware of El Salvador and so much of the world where basic needs go unmet and human rights are not much respected, “Lord, we have no wine.” That was Mary’s prayer and we pray it after her. We pray it that we might wake ourselves from our own instinctual desire to say “What business is that of mine?”
And as we pray that prayer, with any luck we will remember the meaning of this Epiphany Season, that we are called to manifest Christ in the world. Wherever Jesus went, He turned water into wine. Whenever He bound up the broken hearted or healed the sick, He turned water into wine. That is what the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good is for, and why we are told today in Corinthians that we have each been given gifts, and that our gifts will be very different one from another. The purpose of those who belong to the ecclesia, the Church, is to turn the thin water of ordinary life into the enlivened wine of grace and goodness. The Spirit speaks to the Corinthians, and to us, and reminds us we’ve not been given our gifts for our own good, but for the well-being of others.
God has declared a banquet in our midst. God would pour into our hearts the wine of His grace, turning our tears to gladness, and stirring our gifts that we might be a glad blessing to others. José reminds us that God is making us a blessing to others, some of them very far away, and some near at hand. We are to be people of the Perpetual Feast, sharing the abundance with which we are blessed, rejoicing and receiving and giving and rejoicing, as at the wedding in Cana of Galilee. Amen. GFW+
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