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A Sense of Occasion! Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis April 6, 2008, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill I Samuel 9:27-10:8 John 2:1-11
An occasion, in the first place and by definition, is a particular time, especially a time when something happens. There are those occasions slipped into ordinary time that oblige friends and family to gather, require significant preparation and always include food, occasions that conjure memories and call forth stories: weddings and wakes, baptisms and birthdays, graduations, anniversaries, retirements to name a few. In anticipation of these occasions, we take charge. In fact, we knock ourselves out to make sure every detail is under our control: each person properly seated, maps carefully drawn between church and country club, food and wine thoughtfully matched, gifts recorded. But often within the planned occasion, the “something that happens” turns out not to be the main event. Instead we will later recall that that was the time Aunt Fannie fell and broke her arm after a few too many…or the time when Mary Elizabeth screamed the moment the water touched her little bald head and then she threw up on the minister…or the time Uncle William came out of the closet and, to everyone’s surprise, Uncle Joe received the news with grace and love. When a side event becomes the main event, a second definition of occasion comes into play: occasion as “a chance or opportunity to do something.” I would add “to do something brave.” There was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, John tells us, an occasion in the first sense of the word to which the mother of Jesus was invited as well as Jesus and his disciples. According to Johannine scholar Raymond Brown, “The usual festivities consisted of a procession in which the bridegroom’s friends brought the bride to the groom’s house, and then a wedding supper; seemingly the festivities lasted seven days” with the wedding taking place on Wednesday. Ka-ching, ka-ching, ka-ching! Yet the wedding at Cana turned out to be an occasion in the second sense of the word as well: a chance or opportunity to do something. Jesus likely arrived at the groom’s house on Tuesday evening or Wednesday morning, “on the third day” says John meaning, perhaps, the third day after Jesus had called his disciples. Though given the occasion the wedding is about to become in the second sense of the word, the mention of three days has about it a whiff of eternal time invading ordinary time. On the third day, John notes, and we think resurrection! But alas, because we are still creatures of sequential time, we are getting ahead of ourselves. No doubt Jesus and the disciples had already become the life of the party, a new experience for disciples who had previously followed a teetotaler and connoisseur of locusts and honey. Now they were free to fill their plates with lamb, veal, hummus, ripe olives, stuffed grape leaves, falafel and--more to the point--to fill their newly acquired wineskins with Cana Wine. In other words, the crisis of wine that became the occasion for Jesus’ first sign must not have happened immediately. Rather we can assume that the guests, including the disciples, were feeling no pain “when the wine gave out.” Jesus learns of the crisis from his mother who simply reports, “They have no wine.” This is the sort of observation one human being makes to another with an overtone of gossip or an undertone of grief or with no tone at all. “FYI,” says the mother of Jesus, “they are out of wine.” Moreover her simple statement of fact gives us no reason to think she is expecting a sign or a miracle: who knew Jesus was up to such things? Still interpreters have presumed a sense of expectation in her words given Jesus’ response. “Woman,” meaning no disrespect within the context of the culture “what concern is that to you and to me?” Literally the words translate “What to me and to you?” It is a Semitism meaning: “That is your business; how am I involved?” Yet what Jesus says next reveals the true occasion of this story and the reason John includes it at the beginning of his gospel. “My hour,” says Jesus “has not yet come.” Hour is a term used twelve times in John’s gospel to mean the hour of Jesus’ passion, death and resurrection. From the wedding at Cana until the triumphal entry into Jerusalem, it is said that Jesus’ hour has not come. Not until Jesus is brought before the Sanhedrin does he announce that “the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.” “My hour has not yet come” Jesus says. Nevertheless he seizes the occasion as a chance, an opportunity to do something. Considered from a merely human perspective, here was an opportunity to challenge the moribund institution of religion. Using stone jars set aside for the Jewish rites of purification--the ritual cleansing of diners before a meal or women after childbirth—he orders them filled with water. Stone jars that normally held water to purify the faithful suddenly are filled with wine in astounding abundance--new wine, the best wine—wine that calls to mind Jesus’ blood poured out to purify sinners once for all. This, says John, is the beginning of a story that can only end in Jesus’ death and resurrection. Though there is, I think, more to this occasion and the more has to do with the humanly unimaginable intersection of sequential time and eternal time. No doubt John has reported an occasion set in sequential time. A wedding is given. Guests arrive. The wine runs out before the party is over. One occasion has presented another sort of occasion in which something must be done. The crisis is a crisis of time and, subsequently, a crisis addressed in time: no one knew how but the steward begins pouring good wine. The party resumes. We are no strangers to such occasions. There have been crises in our lives when time has run out, occasions when human control no longer avails. We pray for a miracle and sometimes, for reasons we cannot imagine, the crisis is averted and we are returned to the occasion of our lives as those who have been saved from what seemed to us a disaster. This is not the case in Cana, for in Cana one of the invited guests turns out to be the Lord of Time. The Word that was in the beginning with God and was God, the eternal and so simultaneous Word that was and is and is to come entered successive time, mortal time, sequential time running toward the grave. Like all other mortals, Jesus is given the time he needs to be able to live a human life. Yet at Cana “his time acquires in relation to [our] time the character of God’s time, of eternity, in which present, past and future are simultaneous,” says Karl Barth. In other words, three days having passed, Easter time breaks in on our drear captivity to sin, to loss, to scarcity, to death. Our occasions, once circumscribed by the limits necessarily imposed upon those whose human existence is, save for a few occasions, one damn thing after another, now acquire a taste—in new wine--of God’s time. Again says Barth, “[Jesus] was the concrete demonstration of the God who has not only a different time from that of [mortals], but whose will and resolve it is to give [us] a share in this time of [God], in [God’s] eternity.” How is it that the seriously religious proclaim this time to be a time of narrow judgment, of a feast fenced to exclude, of privation and prohibition when it is in truth a party where all the stops have been pulled? The changing of water into wine—fine wine, astoundingly abundant wine—was the first sign in John’s gospel of the Eternal God entering the time we have been given to be human. Words cannot contain the kind of time this is: a time when, according to one ancient exegete, “the earth shall yield its fruit ten thousandfold; each vine shall have 1000 branches; each branch 1000 clusters; each cluster 1000 grapes; and each grape [shall yield] 120 gallons of wine!” Now the wedding takes on the dimensions of a Messianic banquet; the headwaiter’s announcement that the finest wine has been kept to the end becomes an announcement of Christ’s return amid a religious tradition [even ours] gone dry and barren; the occasion becomes nothing less than an occasion for the glory of God to be revealed to those whose pilgrimage with Jesus has just begun. I believe with all my heart and with as much of my mind as I can muster, that the One who was and is and is to come is both present and on his way to the time you and I have been given to be human. I believe that in his presence every moment, no matter how mundane, is an occasion for the fullness of time to be revealed, an occasion for us to live in relation to Him who was dead and is alive, a happening wherein we let go control and trust our life and our death into the hand of the God who is with us. I think of Mary at her brother’s grave and on the cusp of the coming of Jesus’ hour. Jesus asks if she believes in the resurrection. Yes, she says, on the last day. I am the resurrection and the life here and now, says Jesus! For those whose sequential time is open and vulnerable to such occasions, for those whose sense of occasion has been forever redeemed by the bright blows of God’s grace and glory, for those who have put all their trust in the promise that death no longer has dominion because Christ lives, then all of human existence becomes an occasion in the second sense of the word: a chance or an opportunity to do something brave. On the night before his murder forty years ago, Martin Luther King spoke of the occasion that was the time of his human existence transformed by a glimpse of God’s time, the time of God’s eternity: “Like anybody,” he confessed, “I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned with that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land. And I’m happy, tonight. I’m not worried about anything. I’m not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. Look! All is ready. The guest is become the host. The feast has begun. The wine awaits your tasting. The third day has dawned. The occasion that is your life has been redeemed for love’s sake. Let us rejoice with exceeding great joy. Thanks be to God! |