Going from Water to Wine

2^nd Sunday in Ordinary Time

Is 62, 1-5 / 1Cor 12, 4-11 / John 2, 1-11

If you heard me begin a story with “Once upon a time”, you’d know that what follows is a fairytale.  You’d know how to understand and interpret the following story.  You’d know that a “once upon a time”-story should not be heard or read as something you might come across in the Charlotte Observer – at least, we hope not!

John begins his story of the wedding feast at Cana with the words:  “On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee…”  It was on the third day that Jesus rose from the dead.  With these words John is sending us a signal.  He is telling us he wants the story of the wedding feast to help us to get to know Jesus, the Risen Lord.  After all, he is the only Jesus we have.  Jesus – the Risen Lord – is the only Jesus we can love and follow.

The action in the story centers around water becoming wine.  Somehow Jesus turns water into wine.  But Jesus works signs and miracles – not tricks – not magic.  What John wants us to understand is that somehow Jesus, our living Risen Lord, turns our water – our ordinary lives – into his wine – his abundant life and love.  We will come to know the Risen Lord as we come to know ourselves being transformed – being changed from our water to his wine.  We will come to have our own “third day” resurrection experience of Jesus when we begin to sense ourselves being called and empowered to a love that does not measure itself out but simply gives itself, pours itself out.

At the wedding feast the amount of water become wine is incredibly abundant – 125 gallons of wine.  That’s a lot of wine!  The point is that we come to know the Risen Lord in the generous, great-hearted love we grow into having for one another.  Our lives and our loves become un-measured – poured out for others – just as we will recall Jesus doing in this Eucharist:  the chalice of my blood… poured out for you and for many.

To be honest, I think that we as individuals and as a church find Jesus’ extravagance difficult to take – even embarrassing.  We prefer to do the sensible thing.  We prefer to measure life and love very neatly.  I think we measure our lives, our loves, ourselves much too much.  And when you think about it, people who treat life like accountants aren’t exactly the kind of people you want to have at your wedding feast.  As you’re eating the wedding cake, the question: “How much did it cost?” just does not fit.

Let us learn to stop counting and calculating our own love and the love others have.  If we don’t, we only shrivel ourselves and stifle God’s Spirit within us.  Let’s join the wedding feast.  Let’s learn to marvel at – not measure – our love.  It’s the Lord’s swelling presence within us and among us.  Then we will recognize the signs and miracles Jesus continues to work among us – signs of his real, risen presence.  Then we will see his glory and we will begin to grow in faith.

Fr. Pat Earl, SJ

The Baptism of the Lord 2013

Is 42, 1-4, 5-7 / Acts 10, 34-38 / Lk 3, 15-16, 21-22

With this feast of the Baptism of the Lord we conclude our celebration of the Christmas season.  We say good-bye to the babe in the manger and we say hello to the adult Jesus – now baptized and about to begin his ministry among us.  But this adult Jesus brings with him the ongoing gift of the Christmas season.  I think it absolutely crucial we understand what Jesus brings to his ministry.

The feast of the Epiphany is the real high point of the Christmas season.  And what the Epiphany makes clear is that the human has become the vehicle through which God expresses himself.  The permanent gift of the Christmas season – what Jesus brings to his ministry – is the ongoing awareness that God chooses to express his life and love – through us.  God now lives and loves through you and me.

With this feast of the Baptism of the Lord we are entering upon a new season.  Jesus is beginning his ministry among us.  And that ministry will be to make us clear, recognizably clear to ourselves.  We could say Jesus’ ministry to us every single day is to have us join him in his own baptism – to have the heavens open up for us – and for us to experience what he experienced: “You are my beloved child; with you I am well pleased.”

But one thing we know – from the gospels and from our own experience – is that we will resist his ministry.  Every day we will resist our baptism bath.  We will resist Jesus washing away all the false names we gives ourselves – all the superficial descriptions we make of ourselves – all the simplistic boxes we put ourselves into.  Beloved child of God?  We much prefer to be only our profession or work – only our race or gender – only our age, our status, our body.

If we look to the gospels, we will see Jesus always resisting living up to the simplistic expectations of others – especially their simplistic religious expectations.  He refuses to be “the expected one” of religious routine.  Rather, his passion is to live out of his creative core where he is God’s beloved.  And that’s what we call in the Christian tradition “soul”.  “Soul” is our core loveliness, our core beauty.  Jesus lives out of his soul – out of his core loveliness.

His ministry to us is to recall us to our souls.  We have souls!  Each of us has a core loveliness – a core beauty.  God has given each of us unique gifts.  No one has ever lived with the particular constellation of gifts as each of us has.  God’s deepest, dearest desire is that we take these gifts and make them into verbs – that we act on our gifts and live out of them – that we give our souls – our core beauty – our deepest selves further – to others, to one another.  Then we will join Jesus in becoming light for our world.  By living out of our souls we will open the eyes of others to their own souls, to their own loveliness and bring them out of the hellish confinement they have given their lives.

Every day we need baptism.  Every day we must let Jesus baptize us.  We must let him wash away and, if need be, even scrub away what needs cleansing.  More than we can ever imagine, Jesus’ ministry among us is to make us “Good News” – “Good News” to ourselves, to one another and to our world.

Epiphany: The Meaning of Christmas

The Epiphany of The Lord

Isa 60, 1-6 / Eph 3, 2-3a, 5-6 / Mt 2, 1-12

It may come as a surprise to you – but it is with the feast of the Epiphany that we come to the heart of the Christmas season.  Not December 25^th but today, this feast, gives us the reason for the season.  Epiphany explains Christmas.

Let me explain a little bit the way the Church understands this season and this feast.  The word “Epiphany” means “to shine upon”.  It means bringing light to what has been hidden.  On Christmas there’s an explosion of light.  The Eternal Word of God appears in the flesh – in a babe found in a feeding trough.  The “Epiphany” tells us what this explosion of light shines upon – what it reveals and makes clear.  The Magi represent genuine seekers – seekers for the truth from every age and culture.  So the question is:  what does the Christmas light shine upon so that these seekers can see the truth?  What basic truth or better, what basic reality becomes clear and plain to them, as they see the babe in the feeding trough?

An early church father, Peter Chrysologus, answers: “…the Magi gaze in deep wonder at what they see:  heaven on earth, earth in heaven… man in God and God in man.”  The Magi see “man in God and God in man.”  The bright light of Christmas shines on human flesh – on the babe’s in the manger, and also on our own human flesh.  What the Christmas light makes clear is that the human – people – people like you and me – people are the means and medium through which God makes himself present.  To accept the babe – to accept Jesus – is also to accept that the human has become holy home for our God.  All of us – people of faith and people full of doubts and unbelief – good people and bad people – friend and foe – all of us are God’s holy home.  We bear within us God’s ever greater, ever deeper presence.

Our vocation – our Christian responsibility and duty as a parish – is to bring forth that deeper presence – for others.  Like a living Christ, we are to bring to bear God’s presence, God’s gracious life into every aspect and circumstance of life.  In how we live and work together as a parish we become “Church”; we become “Body of Christ”; we become “Living Christ”.  Here – among us – people will actually see the life they see in Jesus.

The Epiphany that we celebrate today – the climax of the whole Advent and Christmas season – is that God chose to express himself in Jesus and now, in the very same way, continues to express his life and his love through us.  It is the human that makes God present – people, just people.  We are God’s holy home.  We can look at one another and there truly see the living Christ. 

As we prayed in our opening prayer for this feast: “may (we) be brought to behold the beauty of God’s sublime glory” in the living Body of Christ – in the Church – in people – just people.

They Are Us; We Are Them

The Holy Family

Sir 3, 2-7, 12-14 / Col 3, 12-21 / Lk 2, 41-52

Today’s story about Jesus getting lost is found only in the gospel of Luke.  And, outside of the account of the birth of Jesus, it’s the only time in all the gospels when we see the whole family all together.  Jesus, Mary and Joseph are all there.  But notice this:  the scene Luke chooses to show us is not particularly uplifting.  We don’t see Jesus being a good little boy helping Joseph in the carpenter shop.  Nor do we see him helping Mary in the kitchen.  And we don’t see them all sitting at table sharing a meal together – after having said grace, of course.

So, what do we see?  What does Luke show us?  We see confusion and misunderstanding.  We are shown hurt feelings and tension.  What we experience here are the families many of us grew up in or are now raising.  Jesus, being a little kid, wanders off and gets lost.  Mary and Joseph, typical parents, worry.  And they assume the kid got lost on purpose.  “Why have you done this to us?”, they ask him.  And Jesus, being that little kid, answers back with a tone that assumes – of course his parents not only can read his mind but should read his mind.  He says to them:  “Didn’t you know where I’d be?”  Hear that tone in what he says.

So, what we see – what we got is an altogether familiar, human scene.  We’ve all been there.  And that’s the point!  The ordinary tensions and trials of family life – you can also throw in there the ordinary tensions and trials of married life – these are not obstacles to being “a holy family”.  They are our normal ways of becoming and being holy.  With all their confusion, misunderstandings and hurt feelings – Jesus, Mary and Joseph still remain “the holy family”.

They are going to work things out – back home in Nazareth.  And their trying to work things out will be the way they really love one another.  And their trying to love one another as a family will be God’s love becoming real, seeable, touchable to them and to others.  In this typical family spat we are seeing “sacred history” being made.

The feast of Christmas is the feast of “Incarnation”.  It tells us that God’s life and God’s love take on real presence and power through us.  They have their affect through what we do with our lives – through how we live our lives, especially with one another.  God’s tenderness becomes touchable through us.

This Christmas season – and this feast of the Holy Family – want to teach us to have reverence – learn to have reverence for ourselves – for our families.  These are where God chooses to do well and show himself.  We are how God lets himself get known.  That is real joy for our world.