Second Sunday after the Epiphany Sermon

Our scripture readings began this morning with a passage from Isaiah, where the land of Israel itself is described as a desolate woman (perhaps as a widow) whose fortune is about to change: God himself is coming. And God will come as a bridegroom – one who is absolutely smitten with her – and will make her his bride.

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 [shall be called], “Married.”

…As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

It’s a beautiful passage – certainly – a hopeful passage, especially for those who first heard it, those Israelites so long ago who’d been exiled to Babylon. They absolutely knew what it meant to be desolate: refugees deprived of their land, deprived of all security and stability and identity, wondering (as they surely did), “Where is God? Have we been rejected forever? Will we die in this God-forsaken place?” “No!” says Isaiah. “No. Your vindication will shine out like the dawn!”

What hope must this have been. And surely, in the centuries since, countless people of faith have found in these words deep pools of faith and hope – hope for their own barren lives, hope for their nation, hope for the world.

And certainly, this vision of restoration matches my deep theology – that God’s ultimate intention is for peace and peace universal. But, if we are honest, living now so many centuries later, knowing how ceaselessly the land of Israel has known violence upon violence, there is a sense in which the hope has become tarnished. Or, perhaps for others: that the hope seem more mirage than reality, like so much shimmering water on the desert horizon. No matter how much you chase it, it is remains beyond touch.

Even now the world waits: Will the cease-fire hold in Gaza? Will it lead to peace? And even if some temporary truce is accomplished, clearly there’s no broad spirit in the region to make real peace.

The Land of Israel – the “Holy Land” as we ironically call it – has long stood at the cross-roads of the ancient world: that little strip of land that connects Asia to the east with Africa to the south and Europe and the Mediterranean to the west. And so that little strip of land became the crossroads for merchant caravans. And where the money flows, so follows the armies. For the one who controls this land, controls the trade routes and access to the world. And so there follows violence upon violence. And with each invader, comes also their culture, their values, their gods.

And as I think on these things, there is a sense in which this blood-soaked land now stands as the crossroads for every human story – where all our human strivings and hopes and bullheadedness and greed and presumptions and fears and aspirations and inspirations and virtuous impulses all collide. For so it is with our complex human condition.

And into this land of violence, into this crossroads of the world, comes God in Christ, now making it a crossroads – not only between continents – but between heaven and earth and earth and heaven. God chooses this “holy land” of ceaseless violence to be the place – the locus – of union between divinity and humanity. And in choosing such a union in such a place, this land becomes the place of God’s own crucifixion.

Perhaps it was inevitable that, in donning flesh, that flesh must also know the nails and crown of thorns. For how can one be truly human without truly knowing the pathos and violence of human nature?

The painting behind the altar was installed yesterday for Tracy Panttaja’s funeral. She’d given it to the church several years ago, having received it herself as a gift from a priest she once knew while living in San Francisco.

It’s an uncomfortable painting, really, one we don’t often display. “Madonna of the Cross.” She holds the toddler Christ, not as a mother would – tenderly or protectively. She holds him in an impossible, unnatural pose: arms outstretched, suspended, anticipating the cross whose arms will receive him. Her girdle, too, is cruciform – his suffering now her suffering as well, as any mother would tell you who has watched her child die.

And, in its way, the painting becomes an appropriate image for us to consider today as we consider the implicit violence of the human condition which Christ entered, as well as the pain that love must endure in the suffering of another. Christ’s death. Mary’s death. Tracy’s death. Our deaths.

But it is also an uncomfortably appropriate image for us to consider in light of the gospel story we just heard read – also a story of Jesus and his mother. It is the story of Jesus’ first miracle, when he changed water into wine at a wedding in Cana.

And I must say, I’ve got a weird relationship (if that’s the right way to describe it) with this story.

I’ve been trained to read it with a theological lens. And there’s a lot of good, theological stuff in there to read. We see Jesus’ ministry beginning with the making of wine as a foretaste of his Last Supper and the institution of the Eucharist – where his gift of wine becomes his own life-blood poured out – his life-blood given.

Likewise, we see in it a foretaste of that heavenly banquet of endless celebration where Christ is the bridegroom and we are the bride. Surely that’s why the lectionary pairs this Wedding at Cana story with Isaiah’s promise of God, the Bridegroom, being wedded to the Desolate Land of Israel.

And I’ve been trained to see in this story the party that it is: How does Jesus begin his ministry? By making 150 gallons of wine for a crowd of revelers who are already drunk! There’s a lavishness and earthiness in Christ that stands in the face of moral prudes and legalists. The Kingdom of God that Christ is ushering in is alive and vital and enjoyable and maybe even a little dangerous and out of control.

So those are all the ways I’ve been trained to read this story – and how you’ve heard me preach it in the past. But do you know what always stands out most to me when I read this story? It’s the nature of that interchange between Jesus and Mary. I can’t say I really get it, other than to say how familiar it looks to me. I know just what it’s like to be an adult son going home and having a loving mother presume to tell me what to do and then for her to disregard what I say, and me to get a little pissy about it all. I mean, really, isn’t that exactly what it feels like?

“Jesus,” she tells him, “fix this problem.”

“No, mom, I don’t want to.”

And then she totally blows him off and starts directing the servants to do whatever he tells him to do, fully expecting him to do something, just like she told him to. And then he does! He does solve the problem. Spectacularly, in fact.

And I can’t help but wonder: maybe that’s exactly how we’re supposed to read it. This cosmic story of redemption does, in fact, get kicked off amidst the most familiar human relationships: a bossy Jewish mother who, in fact, does know best, who does need to push her thirteen-year-son onto the dance floor because it’s time to learn to dance with a girl…This bossy Jewish mother who knows, “It’s time, son, to begin” – to begin this work which will drive him to core of human depravity, and become the cross she, too, must bear.

And then there’s third way I relate to this story. In fact, it’s always the first thing I think of whenever this story is referenced. Stanley Spencer was an English artist who painted in the 1920s – 50s. His work often referred to Biblical themes, but always with imagery from his own experience and context. And so his painting, “Marriage at Cana, Bride & Groom” simply depicts a modern bride and groom taking their seats at wedding banquet, with a big tiered cake before them. In fact, there’s not any wine in his painting at all – nothing apart from the title to connect it with Jesus’ ministry. Spencer’s groom is young and awkward. In fact, he looks like he was half-way through taking his own seat before remembering he was a husband now, a gentleman, who should be helping his wife into hers. But what makes this painting so memorable to me is the fact that the bride and groom in Spencer’s painting are depictions of himself and his wife Hilda, from whom he was divorced. His whole life he hoped for a reconciliation and re-marriage with her. But it never came. Who knows? Maybe he was a mess of a man and a lousy husband and Hilda was quite right not to return to him. But clearly for Spencer, when he read the story of the Marriage at Cana, when he read the story of the Son of God inaugurating his redemptive work of humanity’s broken condition, what he read in this story was his hope that this God, loving this world, would be loving him in all the ways (as he wrote) that he was “unable or incapable of fulfilling his desires in life itself.”[1]

This cosmic story of our hope in God’s redemption of all humanity’s despair and brokenness, is nevertheless, God’s story of meeting each of us, in each of our pains and sorrows – as a bridegroom, who is smitten with us.

And so may it be that this wedding has begun – that each of our private failures and desolations may be gathered up in God’s redeeming work. So may it be that at every crossroads of humanity, where our dreams and fears collide, that God’s redeeming work will be proven. So may it be, that – having turned that water to wine – God in Christ would see that every guest is cared for and every desolation is turned to mirth.

[1] Stanley Spencer, quoted in the Glynn Vivian website: www.glynnvivian.co.uk / Collections / Collection highlights / Sir Stanley Spencer R.A. (1891-1959)