This morning, we refamiliarize ourselves with one of the most familiar stories in the New Testament most often categorized as a wedding story.
On the eve of the Martin Luther King holiday, however we might have hoped that the Lectionary would have given us a word from the beatitudes or a Jesus story where he proclaims his solidarity with those on the margins. Or, when grappling with the irony that the MLK holiday and the inauguration of the 49th president lay claim to the same day, we might have expected some Jesus commentary on giving to Ceasar what is Ceasar’s but to God what is God. But no, we get a wedding story.
A prophetic word about God rejoicing in Israel his Bride, a psalm that seems to emphasize the miraculous, and Paul at his most lyrical about spiritual gifts. So, what are we to make of these readings, his first announced Sunday in Ordinary time, as the unexpected encounter of a prophetic past with an uncertain future only a sunrise away confirm that we are in anything but ordinary time.
A number of years ago, I was giving a presentation here and when questioned about one apparently brilliant thing that I said I confessed that I had stolen the idea from OSP’s friend Jack Shea. Jack happened to be in the room at the time and shouted back “borrowed, not stolen” I agreed, though adding that I only try to borrow from the best. I am going to do that again this morning. Not from Jack but from a recently departed friend, preacher, and poet – Tom Troeger, who offered this mystical rumination[1] on what transpired after the wedding feast of Cana.
I would like to think that when the couple had left for their honeymoon and guests had departed, some friend bottled the remaining wine, and when the couple returned, presented them with several crates of it.
I picture the couple delighted, smiling to think that on the meager budget of newlyweds they can enjoy such a heavenly vintage with their low-cost suppers. In the way of eager young couples, they do not plan very well at first so that at the end of two or three years, they realize, extravagant as Jesus was, they will someday run out. So they begin to save the wine for special occasions: anniversaries, on the birth and dedication of a child, at family reunions, and on high holy days.
Every time they taste the wine, they relive their wedding day, and recall how at the first sip of Jesus’ wine they had looked at each other with eyes that shone with a love whose intensity still catches them by surprise.
The years pass until they are an old couple. Troeger pictures the old couple on a chilly night. She is in front of the fire, trying to warm her always cold feet and hands.
He pauses coming into the room and studies her in the light of the fire: the shape of her forehead, the deep creases of her face, and the lips he has kissed ten thousand times.
With a prompting he cannot explain, he suggests, “Honey, what if we finish the Rabbi’s wine tonight. There’s just one little bottle left. It might warm you up some.”
She smiles and nods, so he fetches the final bottle and brings it back to the fire with the only clean cup he can find. As he uncorks it, he wonders aloud if it will still be good, after all these years… He pours the first serving and hands his wife the cup. She sips and hands it back. They look at each other and nod their agreement: as rich as the day they were married.
They drink very slowly … start to tell stories. She says: “I remember when Sarah was born. You would have thought nobody had ever been a father before, the way you carried on. You and the neighbors consumed an entire crate of wine that night.”“Well, you did just about the same, when Benjamin and Rebecca brought home our first grandchild,” he said. She laughs heartily, “Those were such good times, good enough to want them never to stop.”
He pours some more wine, and as they each take a sip, she notices he is trying to hold back tears. She knows what he is thinking: remembering when the third child died. Terribly sick. Tried everything. But Micah died anyway. All she could pray for weeks on end was “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” Weeks later he came home to supper, and they set the table without saying a word, going through the motions that had become rituals of habit, the only thing holding them together day by day now. When they sat down, they realized she had no water from the well and he brought no wine from the market. So, he got up and found one of the bottles of wine from their wedding. Might as well open it now. No sense saving it for special occasions anymore. So, he opened it and when the wine touched their lips they tasted grace in their hearts, and they broke down and sobbed together. The grief of their loss never went away – how could it? – but the strength to carry the grief together that was what the wine of Jesus gave them.
Now sitting in front of the fire, they look at each other, and she takes his hand saying “Yes, Honey, I know, I know.” He is silent, then holds the bottle upside down over the chalice. There are a few last drops.
He hands the chalice to her: “Here, you finish it.”
She takes the smallest sip and hands it back to him, pointing out there is still the tiniest bit at the bottom. He puts the brim to his lips and throws back his head holding the cup straight over him, then slowly brings it down and holds it between them.
“That’s it,” he says with a voice that sounds both satisfied and sad. “All gone. None to pass on to the children or the grandchildren now. Just the story of our wedding at Cana, and the rabbi who blessed us with wine. Just the story. But no wine.”
“Not to worry” responds his wife. “Not to worry. As long as people come to his table, there will always be more.”
What profoundly touches me about this reflection is that in the process of consuming their wedding gift the couple are renewed as disciples of the wine in all of its intoxication and pain. And so, the poet unmasks the story, not simply a miracle tale of hospitality or grace, but more a miracle of commitment even when the cup is empty and the storehouse barren.
Some of us might feel as though we are still in the first blush of the wedding feast of our lives with stores of wine and grace that will last forever. And some may feel that the cup is already empty The vat of wine or grace or love has run dry.
On this MLK eve I wonder if this civil rights martyr would think that in this age, in this world, in this country, in this city the good wine is gone. Would he wonder whether the treasury of his intoxicating rhetoric and the spilling of his own blood had moved us any further than where we were on that Thursday evening in April of 1968 when the dream seemed to die on a balcony in Memphis?
Yet maybe today’s plunge into ordinary time is yet an invitation to hope as Isaiah assures us that we shall not be called forsaken But rather God’s delight, the Espoused of Christ, but only if we are willing to drink of the cup a gospel metaphor for pouring ourselves out in service to those whose personal, spiritual, emotional, and physical vats have gone dry, and cupboards are barren.
In his book God in the Dock, C.S. Lewis wrote:
“God creates the vine and teaches it to draw up water by its roots and, with the aid of the sun, to turn that water into a juice which will ferment and take on certain qualities. Thus, every year, from Noah’s time till ours, God turns water into wine.”[2]
In a similar way that baptismal font that graced us with living waters is also a kind of spiritual wine vat, a chalice of blessing and suffering the Gethsemane cup – writ large of which Jesus drank deeply, and then handed it on to us – his espoused, his beloved. To take up the mission of the rabbi, to become disciples of the wine, guardians of the memory of those like Martin, who poured out their blood in the service of humanity.
And so, with the poet we pray:
[keyboard, “We Shall Overcome”]
This ordinary Sunday, here once more,
we ponder gospel tales, when love did soar.
A wedding feast, where joy and wine unite,
portending both life’s sorrows and delights.
In quiet nights, two souls reflect on years,
With laughter, love, and sometimes silent tears.
The wine they share recalls their wedding day,
In every sip, both joy and grief portray.
For when the cup runs dry, we’re graced to find,
that even in our losses God is kind
Biding us to rise, though trials may numb
Yet with the Christ we too shall overcome.
This King’s Day vigils beg a holy word,
prophetic voices must again be heard.
That like the wine we too are changed to be
Committed to a world where all are free.
Through Christ our Lord.
[1] The full version of “The Rabbi’s Wine,” is in his book Ten Strategies for Preaching in a Multimedia Culture (Abington, 1996), 24-29.
[2] C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014 [1970]), p. 13.
This homily was written by Edward Foley, Capuchin.
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