1 Corinthians 1.18-31; John 2.1-11
God’s concern with every detail of our lives
Catherine Gibson
Earlier this week I went to see the play, If Prison Walls Could Speak, at Ilkley Baptist Church. It was a very powerful and inspiring performance, if fairly harrowing. It told the true story of Petr Jasek, a Czech Christian, who went to Khartoum for what was intended to be a four-day visit in 2015, in order to evaluate how The Voice of the Martyrs, the ministry he served, might help persecuted Sudanese Christians. As he was about to board the plane for his return flight, he was detained by security agents, and so began a further 445 days of imprisonment and torture. During this time his faith was tested to the utmost; but as the months went by, he began to discern the hand of God in some of the events that happened to him. At one stage, he spent an extended period of solitary confinement, when he had his Bible but little else, and therefore gave himself over to reading and studying the Bible more deeply than he had ever done before. After this he was transferred to a very large prison which contained a chapel. He now understood how God had been preparing him for this opportunity for ministry and evangelism, which had remarkable results. At the point where the interval came (which was before this ray of hope had emerged), we couldn’t applaud. Such a response felt too trivial for the events we’d been witnessing. And we left with a sense of both relief and discomfort at the safety of our own lives, and the depth of suffering and testing experienced by so many Christians for their faith. Their joy and sense of God’s presence in such situations chimes in with the paradoxical character of Christianity conveyed in our first reading.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus saves a wedding family from embarrassment; and we may feel a similar disconnect between the apparent triviality of the situation and the cost of Christianity. At one stage in my life, I wondered how Christians could ever be truly happy or at ease, if they were to take to heart the suffering in the world!
Actually, the consequences to the family of running out of wine would have been rather more serious than we might imagine. The whole village would have been invited, and hospitality was so important in that society, that to fail in it would have brought disgrace upon the hosts, and might have been seen as bringing bad luck on the marriage.
But of course the incident is one of John’s “Signs”: a sort of acted parable, significant at many levels. Cana of Galilee is near to Nazareth, and it’s often been suggested that Mary may have been related to the family of bride or groom, since she seems to have a hand in the organisation. She is keeping an eye on the supplies of food and drink, and has authority over the servants.
Jesus’ reply to her is not as brusque as it appears in English translations. The address, “Woman”, carries a sense of respect, more like saying, “Lady”. While “What concern is that to you and to me?” when uttered gently, means, “Don’t worry; you don’t quite understand what is going on; leave things to me, and I will settle them in my own way.”
The quantity of water which becomes wine is vast! – between 120 and 180 gallons! – far more than could possibly be needed to satisfy the thirst of the guests! And the quality is clearly superb! It speaks to us of God’s overflowing generosity. The fact that the water was intended for the Jewish rites of purification shows that God is doing something new from within the old Jewish system.
The setting of a wedding feast reminds us of the “celestial banquet”, the image sometimes used in the Old Testament to convey the kingdom of heaven, and looks forward to the wedding imagery used by Jesus in some of his parables. The best wine saved till last tells us that “The best is yet to be!”
Jesus’ compassion for the potential embarrassment of his hosts, and his use of these circumstances for such a revelation, speaks to us of God’s concern with every detail of our lives. There is nothing too trivial to bring before him. Certainly Christians are to share God’s compassion for the sufferings of others; but he also wants us to share his delight in all the good gifts he has given us.
One way to do this, bringing our joys and sorrows before him, is through the exercise known as the “Examen”, or prayerful review of the day each evening. I’ve recently been introduced to a very helpful app which takes one through this in a different way each day (with the option of quiet music or natural sounds). It’s called Re-Imagining the Examen by Mark Thibodeaux (https://reimaginingexamen.ignatianspirituality.com) and is also available in book form. I strongly recommend it.
I well remember a “Thought for the Day” on Radio 4, in which Rabbi Lionel Blue quoted one of the famous rabbis of the past who said that, when we meet God face to face, he will ask just one question of us: “Have you enjoyed my world?”