Second Sunday in Ordinary Time C
It
startles many people who read through the Scriptures
just how many racy parts there are.
just how many racy parts there are.
(I
sense a lot of dusty Bibles being taken off their shelves very soon…)
Now,
I’m not talking about long lists of rules on the subject;
I’m
talking about lots of stories of love and romance,
including
the greatest love story of them all:
God’s
passionate love affair with his people.
As we
read again and again in the prophets,
so
we hear in our first reading this Sunday:
As a young man marries a virgin,
your
Builder shall marry you;
and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride
so
shall your God rejoice in you.
Those
are strong words!
God’s
love for the human race is that deep!
And
God desires a relationship with us that’s that
intimate!
we
shouldn’t be at all surprised
that
Jesus’ first public miracle
takes place at a wedding.
takes place at a wedding.
What
we have here is more
than an act of sympathetic charity
than an act of sympathetic charity
for
a couple of newlyweds whose party plans
have
grown beyond their means—
a
story with which many couples today can easily relate.
No—this
is clearly a case of “more than meets the eye.”
That’s
why John, in writing his gospel,
calls
this the first of Jesus’ signs,
and not the first of his miracles:
and not the first of his miracles:
it
points to something else, to something more.
(That’s
also why the Church
has such strong opinions about marriage:
has such strong opinions about marriage:
by God’s design, every wedding
is meant to point well beyond itself—
is meant to point well beyond itself—
to
point all the way to heaven.)
All
those huge, stone jars which just happen to be there in Cana:
what
are they intended for?
For
Jewish ceremonial washing.
These
big, old vessels already had a purpose
before
Jesus asked that they be filled—
and
that purpose was a thoroughly religious one.
So
could it be more than mere coincidence
that
this is the water Jesus turns into
wine?
Jesus,
of course, has nothing against ritual purification.
Just
last Sunday,
we
heard of how he submitted himself to John’s baptism.
But
Jesus’ repeated concern
is
with cleansing the inside of a person, and not just the surface.
And
maybe that’s why this is the water he’s chosen to change.
Jesus
has come to establish a new way of relating with God—
to
establish a new covenant.
As
the surrounding wedding reception makes clear,
it
has exactly the same goal as the old one:
God
passionately loves his people,
and
God wants a personal, intimate relationship with them.
But
in order to accomplish this,
some
things need to change—and not only in outward appearance.
Like
water into wine,
Jesus
has come to transform religion from within.
I
heard an interview the other day
with
several Americans in their 20’s and 30’s
on
the topic of religion and its practice.
The
general feeling among them
was
that they’re interested in God and faith and prayer,
but
not committed to any specific path—
“spiritual,
but not religious,” as the saying goes.
Many,
in fact, admitted to shopping around
for
a religion that seems to fit:
one
which best agrees with what they already
think
and feel and believe.
They’ve
got it entirely backwards!
British
author T. S. Eliot captured this conundrum well
in
a poem he wrote back in the 1930’s:
Why should men love the Church?
Why should they love her laws?
Why should they love her laws?
She tells them of Life and
Death,
and of all that they would forget.
and of all that they would forget.
She is tender where they
would be hard,
and hard where they like to be soft.
and hard where they like to be soft.
She tells them of Evil and
Sin,
and other unpleasant facts.
and other unpleasant facts.
from Choruses
from "The Rock" (1934)
Generally,
when people make
loud,
public complaints about the Church—
about
her disciplines and her teachings—
it’s
usually because they want the Catholic religion to change.
It’s
perfectly true:
the
Church as an institution is in constant need of renewal and reform.
She
should always be seeking ways to be
better and to do better.
But
at her heart, the Church simply cannot
change.
The
Church, as Christ’s faithful Bride and as Christ’s living Body,
is
Christ’s enduring presence here on earth.
The
Church was established by Christ
not to be continually transformed by the tastes of the day
not to be continually transformed by the tastes of the day
(and
when she’s tried that she’s gotten into heaps of trouble),
but
that we—her members—might continually be transformed
according to God’s master plan.
according to God’s master plan.
If
we want to talk about making changes in the Church,
we
must remember it’s not
about
remaking the Church in our own image;
it’s
about the Church helping us to be remade
in
the image and likeness of God.
When
I counsel couples before marriage,
one
thing I always try to mention:
Don’t think you’re going to
change him—or her.
Maybe
someone should have told that to God before he proposed!
And
yet God persists, and God pursues us,
showering
his beloved with a wide array of spiritual gifts.
God’s
love for his Church is relentless:
he
keeps taking her water and making it wine—
wine
both abundant and good.
In
May of 1962, American writer Flannery O’Connor
gave
a talk on a southern college campus.
A
student who heard her was too shy to address her in person,
but
wrote a series of letters concerning his crisis of faith.
In
one of her replies, O’Connor said:
then the security and sense
of purpose it gives you
are of no value and you are
right to reject it.
One of the effects of
liberal Protestantism
has been gradually to turn
religion into poetry and therapy,
to make truth vaguer and
more and more relative,
to banish intellectual
distinctions,
to depend on feeling instead
of thought,
and gradually to come to believe
that God has no power,
that he cannot communicate
with us,
cannot reveal himself to us,
indeed has not done so,
and that religion is our own
sweet invention.
This seems to be about where
you find yourself now.
Of course, I am a Catholic
and I believe the opposite of all this.
I believe what the Church
teaches—
that God has given us reason
to use
and that it can lead toward
a knowledge of him, through analogy:
a knowledge of him, through analogy:
that he has revealed himself
to us in history
and continues to do so
through the Church,
and that he is present (not
just symbolically)
in the Eucharist on our
altars.
To believe all this I don’t
take any leap into the absurd.
I find it reasonable to
believe,
even though these beliefs
are beyond reason.
from a letter
to Alfred Corn
(June 16, 1962)
The mother of Jesus said to
the servers,
“Do whatever he tells you.”
How
often in prayer we try to tell the
Lord
just
how things ought to be done!
Mary
advises us to do just the opposite.
And
Mary’s advice goes beyond reason:
to honor and obey the wishes of another
(as
some old wedding vows put it)
results
not from well-reasoned arguments,
but
can only be the result of love:
of
being intensely, passionately, even eternally loved—
and
then choosing to love in return.
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