Jesus our great high priest

 

Sunday 21^st March – The fifth Sunday of Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34. Jeremiah looks forward to a new covenant (an agreement between God and his people) that is better than the agreement that the Israelites broke. This law would be written on our hearts and all would know God. But in the cold light of day have we really been any better at following the law of love than the Israelites were? This is more like a precious hope that all mankind will love what God commands and desire what he promises, a state of union only really ever fulfilled in Jesus Christ himself

Hebrews 5: 5-10. Any high priest has to be chosen and anointed, be able to empathise with human weakness and represent humanity before God and his role is to offer sacrifice. This is all based on the original model of priesthood of Aaron. The once for all nature of a more perfect priesthood is derived from the example of Melchizadek, who is superior because he blesses Abraham the progenitor of all God’s people. Because he is chosen and anointed by God, fully identified with those he represents through suffering, He is able to offer the one perfect sacrifice for the salvation of all.

John 12:20-33. The hour of confrontation with the world has come. Only those who are willing to give everything up can see eternal life. Unselfish sacrificial living isn’t about denying or destroying yourself, it is about discovering your true self – the part that looks like God and living out of that consciousness. I take this to mean that people closest to the divine in this life see the truth much more clearly than others. This passage ends with Jesus proclaiming that when he rises from the dead he will draw “all people” to himself.

 

 What do we mean when we say, as Hebrews says, that Jesus is our great High Priest?

The high priest in Jewish religion is the man chosen and appointed by God to make sacrifices to God on behalf of the all the people to atone for their sins and make us "one with God".

Of course, there were many high priests and they had to make repeated sacrifices but in Jesus Christ we have one eternal high priest who made one once for all sacrifice and of course that one sacrifice was of himself.

So after Jesus Christ there is no more need for the Temple or the high priest or a sacrificial cult any more. Jesus is both the high priest and the sacrificial offering all in one. But Hebrews adds another ingredient to the mix to supplement the picture taken from the Jerusalem Temple

And so, we again see our old friend Melchizadek, priest king of Salem, from Genesis 14, given as an example of the mysterious eternal nature of Christ.

Melchizadek steps out of the pages of Genesis and disappears again just as suddenly with no genealogy or back story. From this the Jews considered him eternal. He is the King of Salem which means “peace”. The king of peace appears from no-where bearing gifts of bread and wine and blesses Abram.  

Abram in return gives him a tithe of all that he had. This is the first mention of tithes in the Bible and tithing is what you give to God.

Put all this together and you can see why the early church made such a big deal of Melchizadek, even though he only appears for four verses in Genesis.

Jesus can represent all humanity because he is human and his humanity was made perfect through suffering and he fulfils this role eternally.

This is what is meant by the verse that says that Jesus is a high priest according to the order of Melchizadek.

When we come to what our great high priest says in John’s gospel about loving and hating our life we have to be so careful that this is read and understood in the whole context of scripture that life is God given and human lives are very good.

The essential spiritual difference between, as Jesus says using typical Semitic hyperbole, is between complete self-centredness “loving your life” – believing that you are the crown and focus of all creation and everything and everyone only exists for our personal benefit and “losing your life” which is a lack of this egocentric worldview and seeing the truth of life which has God as the unifying source and centre of life and we learn a proper humility in the face of this truth.

This can be hard work. Of course, there has to be a reasonable amount of self-interest and natural ego to live at all.

But at the same time we all recognise people when it goes too far and they become unbearable.

The Love principle leads us to see the divine spark in all things and that self-centredness and self-sufficiency have very narrow limits. Love always draws us outward to embrace things and people outside our need for them on a purely utilitarian basis.

As we all know, love, in Christ’s own estimation is to embrace even our enemies which has to be the hardest commandment to follow or even think possible to follow. But that is the direction of travel. We see all people as part of the whole, as collaborators and teachers, not just as competitors or opponents.  

This is how we are to live our lives in the Christian tradition. But what about people who don’t do any of that or can’t see the point or never heard it in the first place. Well, it is hugely important that Jesus also says that “in the end I will draw all people to myself”.  

All People. Whenever that happens, presumably after death then the lessons of love will have to learned quickly by everybody but to participate in the life of Christ now while we are very much alive, we are bound to start embodying it now.

The church is the vehicle for exploring and encouraging that journey and we are all on a different point on that journey towards the truth. But this is a marathon, not a sprint and we are all just by being here showing that we are all off the blocks and wanting to walk in the same direction.

I want to encourage anything that helps in that journey and once the restrictions are hopefully behind us I fully intend starting and encouraging  sustainable spiritual practices and prayer as a way of life for all of us to help us on that journey.

 

 

 

Amazing Grace

 

Sunday 28^th February – Lent 2

Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16. To inaugurate a new status and new responsibility, the Bible assigns new names. Abram and Sarai, meaning “High Father” and “mockery” are now to be known as Abraham and Sarah meaning “Father of many” and “princess”. It is a story of God’s grace and faithfulness that his promises will be fulfilled that people of such a great age are to become parents against every natural expectation and biology.

Romans 4: 13-25. Abraham was righteous before God through Faith because he lived centuries before the law was introduced to Moses. Therefore, Paul returns to the very genesis of the people of Israel to argue that being declared righteousness before God through Faith is the original godly position and is true for all “his descendants”, that is us! The law was introduced to teach/guide an errant people, but it is faith in God that makes us right with God.

Mark 8: 31-38. Peter is told he is satanic for daring to suggest that Jesus not follow what has been discerned by Jesus to be the will of the Father. Jesus then goes on to say that anyone who tries to follow in his footsteps must do likewise. What this looks like in practice has been debated in the church for 2000 years. Courage to stand up and be counted? A devotion to speaking the truth despite where it might lead. A willingness to stand up to powerful interests if that is what is called for. A keenness to see people through impartial eyes. All said, it means discerning God’s will and having the strength to follow where that leads.

 

Salvation through faith in God’s grace has become a cornerstone of the Christian faith as though it was always self-evident but how did St. Paul arrive at that judgement?

Surely the Jewish faith was built on law and observing the law that was inaugurated through Moses receiving the ten commandments on Mount Sinai and all the subsequent revelations that governed every aspect of a person’s life?

Paul goes back far further than Moses – to the very Father and progenitor of the people of Israel, Abraham.

Everything flows from Abraham, He is the start of it all and today three faiths, Judaism, Christianity and Islam recognise Abraham as our spiritual Father. Those three religions are all cousins to each other.

What struck Paul like a sledgehammer was that when Abraham was declared righteous before God, it wasn’t through observance of any law because the law didn’t exist yet and wouldn’t do for another few hundred years.

No, Abraham was declared right with God because he believed God (Genesis 15:6) and as Abraham is the spiritual father of us all, we inherit that blessing.

Belief can be expressed as trust and trusting that God can achieve his promises despite all evidence to the contrary.

Trust existed alongside doubts in that original story. Both Abraham and Sarah famously doubted and laughed at God’s promise so if we are taking this story as our template for faith as Paul did, then we see for ourselves that trust and doubt do go together in human beings.

I wonder how many Christians have beaten themselves up because they feel guilty about having doubts. Trust is an act of will that transcends the doubts that are normal in all people.

We choose to trust despite our fears and doubts and in the case of Jesus despite where it could lead.

How much Jesus intuitively perceived what might happen when he went to Jerusalem I don’t know but he trusted his Father that it was the right and good thing to do.

So much so that when Peter suggested that he avoid the suffering that was God’s will he called Peter Satan which I think you’ll agree is pretty strong stuff.

It’s a commonplace that nowhere in the New testament does Jesus ever ask for anyone’s worship but he does ask or instructs us directly 13 times for people to follow him so imitating Christ is very important.

As Jesus says himself “I am the way, the truth and the life” The way or road that Jesus walked is our template for how we approach life.

He didn’t want to do it – think of the prayer in the garden of Gethsemene where he sweated blood and yet said “Not my will but your will”

He trusted that God would stay faithful to him despite anything and everything that would happen to him.

When Jesus died on the cross in agony, preaching forgiveness of his persecutors as he died – so continuing to trust God and his way of forgiveness and peace – everyone thought that he had been abandoned, friend and foe alike and the disciples scattered, but God remained faithful and raised Jesus victorious on the third day.

The faithfulness of God extends beyond this mortal life which leads me to remember the old maxim about finding belief in God difficult and fraught with doubt, that while you may have no belief in God, God believes in you.   

 

 

 

The discipline of Lent

 

Sunday 21^st February – 1^st of Lent.

Genesis 9: 8-17. What is significant to me is that the covenant, mentioned four times, is with all creation. God is not simply the God of human beings but the God of the entire created cosmos. This for theists, carries implications for how we treat both animals and the world around us. One way of dealing with human perversity is to try and destroy it (via the Flood) and the other is to wean the human race off of perversity towards a love of peace and justice- an example of God’s Grace, signified by the rainbow.

1 Peter 3: 18- 22. A common icon in Eastern Christianity, is of the risen Christ standing over the entrance to hell, using the cross to span the fissure and pulling up people either out of their graves or sometimes out of death itself into the light. This is a graphic illustration of this mysterious passage where Jesus reaches even down to the already dead (and presumably judged “in the time of Noah”) and pulling them to life and light. The forgiveness and Grace of God knows no bounds.

Mark 1: 9-15. The wilderness is a place of exile, distress and testing. The Jews wandered for forty years in the wilderness before alighting upon the promised land and Jesus was similarly tested for forty days before starting his ministry. A time of distillation of the essential message he carried for the world and a forging of his character and incorruptibility. A season of retreat, challenge, testing and growth remains with the church as a whole through the practice of “retreats” and the more widespread notion of an annual Lenten discipline.

 

Our Christian lives are shaped, if you belong to a traditional church like the CofE, Roman catholic or Orthodox churches by observing seasons that have their own internal logic and reason.

Every season concentrates on one aspect of our faith and concentrates on it.

So to use the most important season, Easter, as an example. For a Christian the resurrection informs our entire belief system 24/7 365 days of the year but we still reserve a special day – Easter Sunday and the weeks that follow it -to concentrate on the resurrection and what it means.

Similarly, with Lent. The practices we employ to come into a closer relationship with God is something we should also be engaged with 24/7 365 days a year but in the forty days before Easter we still have a special period where we concentrate on that particular job in hand.

And that is the job in hand. Fostering a closer relationship with God revealed in Christ.

The method you use to foster that relationship is not the important thing – the closer relationship is what counts and we are all different.

If fasting works for you do that. If intellectual stimulation works for you, read a spiritual book, engage with a course or Bible reading scheme.

Prayer and contemplation underpin whatever we employ to foster that relationship because in prayer we enter into that ongoing personal relationship with God. The form that prayer takes is not the important thing – it is the result of that way of prayer that is important.

As a part of that universal catholic church we encourage all forms of prayer but actively promote two main forms because they are tried and tested.

The cycle of liturgical morning or evening prayer recognises that people need rhythm, repetition and appreciate a tried and tested method that is given to them which takes away a lot of anxiety for many people. There is still space for your own prayers but there is a framework into which extempore prayer fits.  

Some respond better to complete silence and meditation is their thing.

Others find that too stark and prefer music, candles, icons or chant to concentrate your mind.

Others find that any set form puts them off and life is itself a prayer.

What works for you is what is important because the goal is the important thing and not the means of getting there.

Doing good works is what works for many and many people never feel closer to God than when they are helping someone less fortunate than themselves.

You don’t need to choose between all these different ways. You can and probably need to engage with a little bit of all of them in reality.

That’s why our weekly communion service is so important. There is a set framework – the liturgy, which changes with the seasons.

It has Bible readings, public intercession, reflections on God’s word, music, a time of confession and absolution, a demonstration of our peace with God and each other and the climax of each event is the taking of communion which is a public statement of fact and intent that we are in communion with God and each other through the body and blood of Christ

Our goal is communion with God and all things.

We do that every time we meet to worship but the season of Lent asks us to specifically think about that in a more structured and disciplined way.

There is a rich tradition spanning 2000 years, 5000 years with the Hebrew scriptures of different forms of trying to foster a close relationship with God in Christ so be curious and take time to explore them.

I hope and pray that the result of whatever you do and try will achieve the end it was meant to do and that its effect and practice will outlive the confines of this short season.  

I've seen the light!

 

Sunday 14^th February – Sunday before Lent

2 Kings 2: 1-12. The “double portion” of Elijah’s Spirit asked for by Elisha isn’t a selfish request. A double portion usually in Hebrew means the two thirds of the estate inherited by the elder son so Elisha is actually asking to be Elijah’s heir or successor. The only two people in the Bible not to die are Enoch (Gen. 5.24) and Elijah, which obviously fed the belief that Elijah would return to make a straight path for the messiah.

2 Corinthians 4: 3-6. Light is a natural symbol of revelation but for many people they can’t see that light and the truth remains veiled. Before we get too judgemental here we need to remember that Paul himself knew enough about Jesus to attack his followers originally. He too was veiled, and it took a massive mysterious vision to shake him out of his original assessment and cause the scales to fall from his eyes.

Mark 9: 2-9. The transfiguration of Jesus is an event without parallel in the gospels and reveals to James and John that Jesus is not one of three people – Moses and Elijah being the other two, but he is above them and exceeds them in every way. In this revelation of God, the Father speaks out of the cloud (denoting the divine presence) and repeats the words heard at his baptism “This is my son, the beloved” and adds “Listen to him!”. Faith in Jesus exceeds all other kinds of faith.

 

 That people don’t respond positively to the gospel in our time is hardly new, although it’s tempting to think that.

Jesus after all, the personification of the gosepl was crucified by his opponents and all the saints and apostles encountered major opposition usually resulting in their torture and death as well.

Indeed, perhaps our greatest evangelist, St. Paul started out as a persecutor of the followers of the good news.

To Saul, using the idiom he himself uses in his letter to the Corinthians, the gospel was veiled from his eyes, until he was jolted out of that state by the spiritual equivalent of a massive kick up the backside – his conversion experience on the road to Damascus.

To say that all those who don’t see the gospel as “good news” have their eyes veiled from seeing the truth is a more poetic way of expressing it.

What is needed is light. The thicker the veil, the brighter the light has to be to penetrate and get through the veil.

Peter, James and John were having trouble appreciating just who Jesus was and what he represents and the transfiguration of Jesus where his clothes became dazzling white, Moses and Elijah appeared and the voice of God boomed out proclaiming Jesus as his beloved Son was supposed to be that literal dazzling shining light to bring them to their senses.

But even this display didn’t work initially – with them offering to build three dwellings for them. Only in hindsight did this vision of the uncreated light of God shining through Jesus have the desired effect.

Peter had already made his confession “You are the Christ” in the last chapter but what this revelation meant had yet to really sink in.

What all this tells me is that getting people to accept the possibility of God, then accepting that he is present and was specially present in Jesus, that he is love and wills are health and happiness is a hard job at every step in the process. And that even mature followers of Jesus always have much more to learn, which usually comes in step changes.

So the whole church is a learning and developing school of thinking, prayer and contemplation that has to start from scratch in each generation.

My message today then is simply to be kind to yourselves.

We spend far too much time fretting and becoming angst ridden at the state of the church, our personal faith, the ambivalence of most of the population to the gospel, and while this anxiety is natural it is also counterproductive.

We only have direct control over what we ourselves do and believe, so we need to discipline ourselves and as long as we are attending communal worship, praying, reading the Bible and other spiritual works, and trying to act out the gospel principles that is all we can do.

Otherwise, we can become trapped by our own fears and pre-occupations. To shake us out of that that state we need to do what Jesus did often. Retreat to a quiet place and for prayer and contemplation.

Contemplation is seeing through God’s eyes and knowing the oneness of all creation, seeing love light and God’s hand in and through all things. What is required for contemplation is stillness, calm, quiet and communion with God.

To go forward Jesus first took a step back. The church would do well to follow our Lord as he asked us to.

Instead of jumping on every trendy bandwagon, or making political gestures, we need to retreat and gel together in a calm unified whole, centred on the gospel of healing, peace and truth. And rest there a while.

Spiritually refreshed and in God’s renewed strength we can move forward, knowing full well that the road is long, difficult and stony but being fazed by that. Not being surprised by people not understanding or even deriding us. Jesus went before us and we are in communion with him who experienced all this before us.

That sense of peace and joy that pervades both good and bad times is the ultimate mark of a Christian that we can all aspire to but it doesn’t happen by chance. It takes, time, discipline, stillness and contemplation.   

 

God's story - Our story

 

Sunday 7^th February – 2^nd before Lent (or Epiphany 8)

Proverbs 8:1,22-31. Wisdom has a divine quality in the Bible and is treated as a “person”. Wisdom was there at the very beginning of creation and was “rejoicing in creation and delighting in the human race.” The quality of reason and wisdom also has another way of being expressed in the Bible as the “Logos” hence the reason we have John’s prologue today. Logos is usually translated as “word” in English Bibles and Jesus is the word made flesh but could be expressed as the “wisdom of God made flesh”

Colossians 1:15-20. Three mystical and mysterious readings today and this one from St. Paul is no exception. The universal Christ is the “image of the invisible God” and in Him God was reconciling himself to all the world through Him. God in Christ is revealing that his ubiquitous presence is in all things and he cares and loves all that he has made and wills its salvation.

John 1: 1-14. This powerful piece of exalted theology that we last heard at Christmas caps off three mind expanding readings today and together they form the outer layer of the “cosmic egg” under which we live and move and have our being. God is the light that enlightens all things yet made especially visible in Jesus Christ. When we believe that God is in Christ (and everything else besides) we see that we are children of God.

 

In the comedy “The hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy” the answer to the question “what is the meaning of life?” – the answer was 42.

But how do we make sense of our lives, our relationships. History, good and evil, Life itself?

The answer is through stories

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about the three layers of meaning that shape our lives and identity starting with the personal one which is MY story, then the more corporate one including things like our church, race, nationality etc. which is OUR story bigger than just MY story but still limited and then went on to describe the story that both encompasses and transcends those two layers of meaning which is THE story or GOD’S story.

And all of today’s readings operate very much on that level of the overarching story of the whole of creation and how we fit within it.

“God’s story” which is the story of God’s relationship with the world and where we fit within that story broke through into human consciousness via the story of the people of Israel, and primarily through the law and the prophets but that story was fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ.

The Kingdom of God that Jesus preached and acted out is the overarching story of God’s love and care for all that he made. Through Jesus the Father came into communion with us

Through bread and wine we act out God’s story every time we partake in Holy Communion. We don’t need to fully understand it we just need to get on and do it. The Father came into communion with creation and we re-state that communion when we commune with the Father, through Jesus Christ in the power of the Holy Spirit.

In eating the bread, which we call the body of Christ, we proclaim our union with God and all creation. “Taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8)

When we drink the wine which we call the blood of Christ we bring ourselves into communion with all the unjust suffering and injustices in the world.

Coming into that intense personal relationship with the Father John’s gospel calls becoming a child of God.

This change of perception of who we are in relation to God – a change from thinking that God is distant, unapproachable, uncaring to being close, involved, loving and caring is an emotional one and can be sudden or something that evolves over a life-time.

This change of mindset is what Jesus calls for when he calls on us to “Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand”.

This is the good news that exploded in the world just over 2000 years ago and caused the greatest peaceful expansion of any religion ever seen before or since.

Trying to re-state and re-capture that excitement is the goal of the church in every generation.

That God created and Loves all things

That God is present and active within creation and can use all things – including pain death and suffering as well as Love beauty and creativity to speak to us.

That God is a living God and in Him we know eternal life.

However high and distant you imagine God to be to you, know when you take the bread of thanksgiving that God is here, active and present to you.

Using something as everyday as a piece of bread, God says to you “I’ll meet you there”.

Amen.

 

Follow Jesus by imitating Him

 

January 31^st – The presentation of Christ (Candlemas).

This festival, (transferred from the 2^nd February) marks the end of the whole Christmas and Epiphany season. After this Sunday it is “Sundays before Lent” until Ash Wednesday on the 17^th February.

Malachi 3: 1-5. Messenger and Angel are the same word in Hebrew and the message is that divine judgement will be painful for those who experience it. The judgement starts in the temple and its worship (v3) and then will pass into the social sphere. To all the Hebrew prophets a worthy temple cult went hand in hand with social justice. Chosen today to accompany the “presentation of Christ in the temple” gospel story, arguably it might be better suited to the cleansing of the temple story?  

Hebrews 2: 14-18. Jesus was like his brothers and sisters “in every respect” (v17) the writer of Hebrews attests. It is this total identification with humanity in our temptation and suffering that qualifies Jesus to act as the great high priest acting on behalf of all humanity.

Luke 2: 22-40.   The presentation of the first-born male carries no such sacrifice as described by Luke so what Luke is really describing here is the purification of Mary. But liturgical accuracy is not Luke’s aim here. This “new thing” is rooted in the story of old Israel and the scriptural allusions are rooted in very old Israel indeed. Simeon for example reminds us of Eli in relation to Samuel. As with the annunciation story and the shepherd’s vision, Jesus here is the object of faith and hope, yet the child’s purpose will only be carried out through suffering which Simeon also foresees.

 

There is intense debate over what Luke was actually describing here – as he appears to have confused two events – the presentation of the first-born male, which doesn’t require any sacrifice with the purification of Mary, which does.

But as I wrote in the pew sheet Liturgical accuracy is not Luke’s focus here, so we mustn’t be side-tracked down that blind alley.

Jesus is being presented as an object of faith and hope. He is recognised as such in the Temple – the very focus of Jewish religious life – by two people who represent the traditions and history of the Jewish people.

Simeon and Anna are pious, old and wise and represent all the traditions and beliefs of old Israel recognising that in this small child, all those traditions will find fulfilment in Him.

In this baby Simeon saw “the light for revelation to the gentiles” meaning that Israel’s divine mission to be a light to all the peoples of the world would be fulfilled in him, but he also saw that this new thing would cause some to fall and some to rise as they perceived and acted upon his message and in a prediction of that child’s grisly end he tells Mary “And a sword will pierce your own soul too”

Light of course illuminates all the dark corners of life, bringing to light all those things one tries to keep hidden. In his battles with the scribes, the pharisees, the Herodians, the Romans and in his healings of the souls that came to him looking for salvation, light, truth, and clarity was what he brought into every encounter.

And that same light is what illuminates the way we follow Jesus. We follow him by imitating him – choosing to see, think and act as He did.

Our character should bear the all the hallmarks that made Christ a light in the darkness like humility, truth, honesty and righteousness tempered by mercy. We like Him should treat everyone as a human being first before we label them anything else – rich, poor, black white or Asian, educated or not, Good or not, Christian or not.

We should try to bring healing and justice and wholeness to the people we have contact with and into the situations we find ourselves in.

This is how we follow Jesus. We follow him by imitating him and his way of being a human being.

And we mustn’t let ourselves be drawn into the argument that we can’t do any of that because Jesus was divine and we are not.

As the writer of Hebrews makes abundantly clear, Jesus was a human being in every fibre of his being just like us.

Indeed, if Jesus wasn’t a human being just like us he could not offer us salvation or it would be rendered meaningless because He was above us – not one of us.

Jesus was born, lived, suffered and died just like us. As a human being

But that divine light within Him shone so white hot it infused every atom of his humanity making him truly the light of the world.

In choosing to follow Jesus we fan the flames of that divine spark within us so we too shine with that same light – God’s light.

To try and illustrate what I mean by that I’ll use this encounter Jesus had with his opponents recounted in John 10: 30-39

Jesus was due to be stoned for the blasphemy of saying “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30) and he countered that charge by saying that their own law says that all people can “be as gods”.

Jesus was quoting a psalm – psalm 82 to be precise, which as Jesus said himself cannot be revoked so I’ll end this reflection with the quote from psalms which describes what we all become when we shine with the light of Christ and follow him in his way by righting wrongs and bring justice and healing to those who are weak and despondent. We become children of God. Psalm 82: 6 quoted by Jesus himself.

“I say, you are gods,

Children of the most high, all of you;

 

Water turned into wine - a description of Life in Christ

 

Sunday 24^th January – Epiphany 3

Genesis 14: 17-20. We have two of my favourite, most enigmatic Bible readings today. The first one centres on Melchizedek the priest-king of Salem (Jerusalem) the “priest of God most high” who brought Abram bread and wine and Abram pays him homage by tithing his possessions. Melchizedek has always been seen as a pre-figuring of Jesus Christ and the next time his name appears in in the new testament book of Hebrews where Jesus Christ’s priesthood is likened to that of Melchizedek

Revelation 19: 6-10. The church is the “bride of Christ” at the final consummation when all will be revealed. Another notable tenet here is the injunction to worship God alone which reinforces the original impulse of the first two of the ten commandments.

John 2: 1-11. My other favourite story today is the wedding feast at Cana. This acted parable is the entire gospel encapsulated into one beautiful story. It is the first and key-note sign to which all other signs in John’s gospel refer back to. Note that John never uses the term miracle but always calls them signs. John does that because they are signs that point to a greater truth rather than just a collection of spectacular happenings.

 

Turning water into wine is the first and key-note sign in John’s gospel and the sign that every other sign refers back to because it encapsulates everything that the gospel brings to a human life.

The water of your very existence will be transformed into rich intoxicating wine when Christ is fully engaged with your life.

And that this is a new thing – a fresh revelation – that builds on the legacy of Israel – Christ doesn’t ditch it but fulfils it.

When it happened. This wedding feast happens on the third day. Those are the opening words of this story. What else can you think of in Christianity that happened on the third day? The wedding feast at Cana is a picture of the new reality revealed by the resurrection of Jesus Christ

All the symbolism is there for those with eyes to see and perceive;

The wedding scene itself is a time-honoured way of symbolising the marriage of earth and heaven which is where this story points towards.

The six water jars for ritual washing share a two-fold symbolic function. They represent the imperfection of the old covenant and the Temple cult – the ritual washing – and the fact there were six of them is also symbolic because the number in Hebrew numerology that represents perfection is seven and the fact that there are six ritual washing jars tells us that the old covenant was imperfect.

Even the sharp way Jesus talks to his mother casts Mary in the role of representing old Israel and Jesus ushering in new perspective and appreciation of God life and the world.  “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” is a device meant to draw a distinction between what went before and the new thing that is going to happen when Jesus transforms Judaism by fulfilling its promises – setting some distance in the story between the old and the new.

The message is clear.

On the third day, rejoicing in the resurrection of Christ, the Spirit of resurrection life fills every aspect of our seeing and doing thus transforming every aspect of our lives.

On the third day the ritualism of the Temple – represented by the six water jars – is transformed into the Christ filled Eucharist. The imperfect Jewish temple cult is being fulfilled in Christ.

We need to inhabit that same spirit of Christ that transforms water into wine to help us to see this story in a fresh and life giving way.

It raises the story from being a prosaic neat trick at a family celebration to being a much larger symbol of the life transforming nature of the gospel itself.

That‘s the reason John’s gospel never calls any of these events miracles but signs. A miracle can be just a flashy surprising event that makes a big splash but has little lasting effect but a sign is a signpost pointing the way to something much more profound and life-changing.  

One of the things revealed is that Christ can be apprehended and experienced through and in the ordinary stuff of life, through beauty and art, through life and love, through pain and suffering, through water and oil through bread and wine.

This is a new way of perceiving everything in Christ that enigmatically and beautifully described here in this key-note sign of John’s gospel is the gospel in miniature. It holds the power of life for those with eyes to see and ears to hear.  

In John’s famous words in chapter one of his gospel he explains the universal and eternal nature of God made manifest in Jesus of Nazareth and that believing in him makes us “children of God”.

Chapter two seeks to tell us what that means – what effect that information has on our lives and outlook.

The Spirit of Christ transforms our lives which is exactly the point of the mission, ministry and teaching of Jesus of Nazareth. Jesus preached “Repent – change your whole being – because the kingdom of God is at hand.”