Second Sunday of Epiphany 2022

 

The Gospel set for this Second Sunday of Epiphany is John 2:1-11, the account of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana in Galilee.

 

The water in question is contained in stone water-jars used for Jewish rites of purification. Broadly speaking there are two kinds of purification rite involving water. Some involve submerging the whole body in ‘living’ water, that is, in a public pool or a stone bath fed by a stream (cf. the baptism of Jesus in the river Jordan). For example, pilgrims would undertake such a rite in public pools before entering the Temple, and this is how and where 3,000 people were baptised at the first Pentecost festival after Jesus had been raised from the dead.

 

The other kind of purification rite involved pouring water from a cup dipped into a larger vessel, and it is these vessels that play a role in the Gospel story today. As it happens, in this home the jars were made of (non-porous) stone, which, according to ritual practice—and unlike more readily available (porous) clay jars—is not contaminated by contact with ritual impurity. These large stone jars were an expensive outlay, the choice of a family to whom purity observance was not only desirable but essential, and it is likely that this was a priestly home, possibly even relatives of Jesus on his mother’s side.

 

These rites are not about washing for hygiene purposes, and, crucially, neither are they about making us (or an attempt to make us) acceptable before God: that is the error of legalism, which Jesus confronted; not the failure of Law, which Jesus came to fulfil not abolish. These rites are gifts given by God to God’s ancient chosen people, gifts for enabling life to be experienced fully, in all its fullness. Indeed, they are life-giving. They are given as moments of pausing, within the course of the natural rhythms of life, to rediscover that, “Huh, I have a body!” This is incredibly important for those of us shaped by the so-called ‘Enlightenment’ and the Cartesian idea, “I think, therefore I am.”

 

There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to the menstrual cycle, not because women are a contaminating presence but because they have a body that experiences cycles to be attended to, not only on a practical level; cycles that connect them deeply to all creation. There are Jewish water-purification rites relating to eating bread, inviting us to pause and wonder at our hand, and the intimate connection between labour and food. There are rites of cleansing when laying out the dead, to remind us of the gift of a living, breathing body, for we bring nothing into the world and will take nothing with us when we leave it; and rites of cleansing before a priest declares a blessing, to remind us that a blessing is not merely words but a physical thing, a hand stretched out, air passing through a voice-box, matter connecting with matter in ways that matter.

 

It is this water in these stone jars that Jesus transforms into wine. The jars and the water and the wine are all gifts. Every part of this episode is gift. It isn’t that the wine is better than the water (though it is better than the wine already consumed). It isn’t that Jesus is superseding anything here.

 

This episode ties in with the collect for this Sunday, that declares:

Almighty God,
in Christ you make all things new:
transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace
and in the renewal of our lives
make known your heavenly glory ...

 

The phrase ‘the poverty of our nature’ is a recognition that we do not make ourselves—do not summon ourselves into being by our own power and authority—but receive our life as a contingent gift, wondrous, deeply connected to others. Yet, as if this were not wondrous enough, what is already gift is transformed into another—a different—gift ‘by the riches of [God’s] grace’—that is, through the act of another gift-giving. This is grace upon grace.

 

You are a gift, and that gift is embodied. That body will age, and experience limitations, and is intended to become thoroughly inter-dependent with others, who are themselves also gifts who enjoy the gift of life. The gift you are is a gift that will undergo transformation, many times over, as your personal story is woven into the big story God is co-authoring with humanity. Like the servants and the steward, we will both know and not know what it is that has happened, for it is a mystery, not to be explained but to be entered. Like the disciples, we will be given a glimpse of Jesus’ glory, and are encouraged to respond by affirming our belief in him. The occasion of our transformation may be a running out of some resource, as the wine ran out; or the abundance of a resource, as the water filled the jars to the brim. The ebb and flow of our lives is full of endings and beginnings. In all things, may Jesus be glorified.

 

We need regular, recurring moments that bring us back to this truth, to the gifted nature of life, not as an intellectual idea but as a lived experience. Today, we hold the One whose presence graces us in our outstretched palm; we place him on our tongue; and as we go from here our bodies—our stomachs and our bloodstream—assimilate him in us, as we are in him. We come, in these Covid times, receiving the body and blood of Christ in one kind, the bread; looking for the day when we shall drink the new wine of the kingdom together again; and the day when we shall eat and drink at the heavenly banquet, the marriage feast of the Lamb and the Bride, the consummated union of Christ and the Church. And today, as every time we participate in this moment, in the Dismissal our transformed lives are drawn out and carried and served to the world, to be found good, declared good, revealing Jesus. Amen.