January 17 Epiphany II
There’s something special about the beginning of a new year. It’s exactly what Epiphany calls forth. With the coming of Light, the announcement of the coming of God’s vision, the baptism of the well-beloved Son, we enter into a new year and a new season of hope. We pray that this year will be better, and we enter each New Year with hope, hope that there is another, better way.
On this second Sunday of Epiphany, we take a detour from Luke, and hear John’s account of the wedding at Cana. John’s the only Gospel narrator that includes this story. According to John, this is the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry. John gives us a series of signs that Jesus demonstrates to his disciples so that they might come to understand who Jesus is and how his identity and character affects their own ministries.
John talks about signs rather than miracles. A sign for John is an extraordinary act performed for a purpose. It points beyond itself. It is a reality that reveals an absent reality. For John, the sign itself is not as important as the truth it reveals. I wonder why this event at the wedding in Cana would be, according to John, the “first sign.” It might not be the most theological “useful” sign that Jesus performed. No sight was restored: no four-day-old corpse was brought back to life; the lame did not walk. The Fourth Evangelist says that Jesus did the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee to reveal his glory. It is out of this manifestation of Jesus’ glory that the disciples came to believe. What is this “glory” that leads to belief?
Fred Buechner describes glory in his book Wishful Thinking: A Theological ABC:
Glory is to God what style is to an artist. A painting by Vermeer, a sonnet by Donne, a Mozart aria—each is so rich with the style of the one who made it that to the connoisseur, it couldn’t have been made by anybody else, and the effect is staggering. The style of an artist brings you as close to the sound of his voice and the light of his eye as it is possible to get– this side of actually shaking hands with him. In the words of the nineteenth Psalm, ‘The heavens are telling the glory of God.’ It is the same thing. To the connoisseur not just the sunsets and starry nights but dust storms, rain forests, garter snakes, the human face, are all unmistakably the work of a single hand. Glory is the outward manifestation of that hand in its handiwork just as holiness is the inward. To behold God’s glory, to sense his style, is the closest you can get to him this side of Paradise, just as to read King Lear is the closest you can get to Shakespeare. Glory, he concludes, is what God looks like when, for the time being, all you have to look at him with is a pair of eyes. (p. 30)
Jesus’ glory was that wherever he went, he turned water into wine. Wherever he went, he transforms the incomplete into the whole, makes the weak into the strong, changes the ordinary into the precious, turns the despised into the beloved, transforms the tasteless into that which gives joy to the heart, and moves us from what we are to what we can become.
So what does this have to do with our own ministries? How do we go about recognizing the light in those around us? How do we reflect God’s glory? How do we help others to risk transformation from the ordinary into the extraordinary? That’s where gifts and discernment come in.
Paul emphasizes the diversity of the gifts and the one source of those gifts. He reminds us that all the gifts we receive are to be used, not for our own gain, but for the common good, for the community. What gifts we have are to help us reveal to each other how God’s kingdom works, where there is enough for all and where the needs, hopes and concerns of the community are held above any individual’s needs or wants.
Martin Luther King says in “Strength to Love,” which he wrote in 1963, I am told that one tenth of one percent of the population controls more than 40% of the wealth. America has often taken necessities from the masses and given luxuries to the classes…But we can work with the framework of democracy to bring about a better distribution of wealth…God never intended one people to live in superfluous and inordinate wealth while others know only deadening poverty. God wants all of God’s children to have the basic necessities of life, and he has left in the universe “enough and to spare” for that purpose.
Jesus’ signs and life point to the need for his disciples to recognize our commonality and the wealth of our diversity. He encourages us to recognize the light, the divine spark, in those we encounter and to reflect his light, his hope, and his promises to all. One way we do that is by using our voices to point to injustices we find and to work as the body of Christ to right the wrongs in our world.
Dr. King shares that understanding of discipleship and the church. In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” King writes:
I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned about what happens in Birmingham. (This past week, we have said, “I cannot sit idly by in Little Rock and not be concerned about what happens in Haiti.) Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly…We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people…the time is always ripe to do right…There was a time when the church was very powerful…In those days the church was not merely a thermometer that recorded the ideas and principles of public opinion; it was a thermostat that transformed the mores of society. So often the contemporary church is a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. So often it is an archdefender of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church’s silent—and often even vocal—sanction of things as they are.
What difference are we at Christ Church making in our community? How is our reflection of Christ’s light offering hope to our brothers and sisters? Dr. King talks about looking at beautiful churches and wondering, “What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?” How do our brothers and sisters in Central Arkansas and in other parts of the world answer those questions about Christ Church? How will Haiti answer those questions about their neighbors?
Several years ago, someone broke into my house at night, intending to do me harm. I was able to get him out of my house, but I was afraid of the dark and afraid to stay alone. The process of moving back into my house was slow. When I did return, I had friends and family stay with me—and always with all the lights in the house on. The utility company loved me. I finally decided I was ready to stay in the house alone, as long as I could keep all the lights on.
At 3:15 in the morning, someone began ringing my doorbell. I was sure it was the intruder and hoped that he would go away. But the doorbell continued. I finally called 911 and told the operator the situation. I looked out the window but couldn’t see anyone. I opened the door just a crack and saw a person slumped on my front porch. Keeping the 911 operator on the phone, I opened the door a little more. The person looked up. It was a woman whose face was bruised and who was bleeding from several cuts. 911 called for help as I brought the woman into my house and tried to clean some of her wounds.
She told me that she had been picked up, then beaten, and finally pushed out of the car on a busy street about seven blocks from my house. “Do I know you?” I asked her. She shook her head. “Then why did you come all the way to this house?” She looked up at me and said, “I saw your light.”
May each of us continue to reflect Christ’s light wherever we go and with all we encounter. May Christ Church be a beacon of hope and justice in our community. May we be willing to be transformed from water into wine. May this Christian community be a place where all gifts are honored and shared for the common good. May we choose to be a source of life and healing in a broken world. Amen.