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John 6

 Jesus walking on water

When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Jesus Walks on the Water

16 When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, 17 got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 19 When they had rowed about three or four miles,[d] and coming near the boat, and they were terrified. 20 But he said to them, “It is I;[e] do not be afraid.” 21 Then they wanted to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat reached the land toward which they were going.

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It is very good to be here this evening and to have the challenge of preaching upon this extraordinary text from John’s Gospel, Jesus’ walking on water The event is recorded in Mtt  and Mark and here it is in John’s gospel : after feeding of the 5,000: Jesus had withdrawn from the crowds attention to pray and the disciples were dispatched back across the lake where they proceeded with great difficulty until Jesus came to them walking on water.

  Just the idea of walking on water catches the imagination  – who has not nursed some desire to do the same? Wouldn’t it be so amazing?  And with the floods you have experienced here in Oxford, how useful would it have been?  But I must say when Jonathan told me the text for this evening I took a deep breath.

Jesus the great teacher, yes! Jesus the compassionate one who heals, yes! And who feeds the hungry, yes! But Jesus the man who walks on water who walks on water?? Really? You can just imagine a credulous theology student being torn to shreds about this one, a sceptic laughing all the way to the library. Surely, if you will excuse the pun, this is one step too far.

 Indeed some scholars have argued that the disciples must have been mistaken: they were really near the shore all along and when they saw Jesus walking on the sea, this might also be translated by the sea . But this does not fit so well with the use of this particular phrase elsewhere in the NT nor with the narrative details:  – the fear of the disciples, recorded in more detail in Matthew and Mark, and the fact that these fishermen would have  been working the lake since childhood and would be well used to its geography would also need to be explained away.  The simple fact is that each of the 3 Gospel accounts record it as a miracle, an example of Jesus authority over natural forces that shook the disciples to the core.

 So what is the purpose of this miracle in John’s gospel?

 It is about revelation:   a revelation that both proclaims Jesus’ identity and provokes response , a recognition of God’s presence on earth. For John, Jesus’ walking on water was one of the seven signs   They were written, as he says in chapter 20,  that we may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ,  have life in his name” (John 20:30-31). Tucked in between the feeding of the 5,000 and Jesus’ consequent conference with the crowds who had flocked to him back in Capernaum the other side of the lake (v. 22-25), and then his discourse with his disciples, the miracle that unfolds acts as a prism which refracts the great themes of the chapter and of his whole Gospel.   John intends that this miracle should help us in turn recognize who Jesus is, and move us from ignorance and unbelief to faith

He notes, vs17 and it is never just by the by with John, that as the disciples embarked It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The event takes us from absence to presence, from darkness, when the disciples set off, to light the next morning and like each of the seven signs, the miracle is a foretaste of the resurrection, of the new spiritual reality of the Kingdom which is shaped by faith.

I want to draw out both the proclamatory and provocative and nature of this sign.

 Unlike Matthew’s Gospel which includes Peters tentative steps to meet Jesus,  John’s focus is primarily on the identity of Jesus.  When they saw Jesus coming towards them the disciples were frightened but  he said,  It is I, or literally in the Greek, I am: do not be afraid.

 It is these two words that ring out across the dark sea of uncertainty and fear.

This phrase I am was none other than the name of God, Jahweh, revealed to Moses

I am had seen the affliction of his people and sent Moses to lead them out to the promised land.  In this chapter, the season of Passover, the feeding of the 5000, the walking across the water , and the discourse about manna in the wilderness recall the Exodus and all point to one who was greater than Moses being amongst his people .  Jesus did not just part the waters but walked on them. This phrase I am echoes the other great I am statements of John’s Gospel but here it stands alone rather than predicating titles such as the bread of life, or the light of the world. It simply proclaims  Jesus as none other than God himself;  the one who is present,  who truly is, and who will be,  who is lord of all creation, who is with us even before we recognize him.

 

But then, as now, the miracle both provokes and polarizes people’s response to Jesus. We get this from where it is paced in the unfolding sequence of Jesus encounters and the way it heightens the contrast between those who did and did not receive him, between worldly and spiritual vision, between temporal and eternal concerns. (The words eternal and life appear repeatedly in the chapter. This is what is at stake.)

 Much of the discourse is about the crowd misunderstanding Jesus.  After he had fed them, they had wanted to take Jesus by force and make him king and he had been obliged to withdraw.  The miracle offers a deliberate contrast between the revelation to the disciples in the boat and to the crowds baffled by Jesus sudden arrival back in Capernaum. Intrigued, the crowds requested yet another sign, but objected to Jesus claiming himself to be the bread of life, their eternal spiritual sustenance.

 

Jesus rebuked his would be followers for seeking him, not because they had seen the signs and wonders, but because they wanted more bread. They were laboring for perishable things rather than eternal life. As Augustine observed, Jesus is usually sought after for something else, not for his own sake. They were missing the big picture.  Margaret Thatcher once said,

If my critics saw me walking over the Thames they would say it was because I couldn’t swim.

If, like the crowd, we have our own agendas we can miss the point about Jesus.

 

Eventually, we read in vs 66 after considerable muttering, many of his followers drew back and wld not follow him. Jesus could hardly be accused of orchestrating a PR coup, of doing party tricks to win support.  

 And what about the disciples? What would they have been thinking out there on the water? –  5000 fed and now Jesus was not with them. As Corrie ten Boom, imprisoned a concentration camp in the war, in the  once said, that if this was how God treated his friends no wonder he had so few.

 

There are times when the Christian life is tough: the disciples caught in the storm for much of the night, had simply to keep on rowing , heading painfully,  as best they could in the right direction for, as  John puts it:  Jesus had not yet come to them. They were laboring hard in their own strength; they could not know that he was praying for them and how much they were on his heart.  But, as Archbishop Michael Ramsey once said, God wonderfully accepts the persevering  faith that knows God to be present yet feels him to be absent. The key thing was what would they do when they eventually saw Jesus coming towards them?  Would they recognize him and invite him into their boat or keep on rowing in fear, (listening to their own imaginings, that he could be a ghost as Matthew tells us). This is the provocation of the miracle.

 

 Do we recognize Jesus presence?

James Galway the brilliant flautist was due to play in a big concert in his native Belfast.  He decided to busk near the concert hall on the penny whistle on which he had learned to play as a boy. People hurried by to the box office to buy tickets and get their seats, recognizing  neither the man nor the consummate skill with which he was playing. How much of our life is spent hurrying past, ignoring the God is with us, because we are in pursuit of what we want him to give us?

 

 The disciples however were glad to take Jesus into their boat. I love that translation in the RSV – it sounds to me like a bit of an understatement. They wanted him with them.

 

That the disciples suddenly reached the shore seems to emphasize that they had found their spiritual destination. They were now with God. It was a foretaste of the abiding resurrection presence. The dwelling of god was with men and they beheld his glory. 

 

 So the purpose of this sign is to proclaim the presence of God in our midst and provoke faith and

(If you want an image that helps to expresses this Johannine mystery, think perhaps of

Piero Della Francesca’s Baptism of Christ: provoked by the gospel, some characters are scurrying away while others are preparing to be baptized for the message of John the Baptist had  polarized responses.  Christ, seemingly standing both in the Jordan and yet on solid ground, is still yet stepping forward to us. And if we could hear it, the voice proclaiming from heaven this is my beloved son listen to him.)

 

 At the end of the chapter Jesus asks his closest disciples: do you also wish to go away? Is it all just too much? Peter replies, Lord to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life and we have believed and come to know you are the holy one of God. Yes, that is it. That is the point of this miraculous sign; this is the knowledge to which we too are invited this evening.

 

 

 

 J Chaffey 23.2.14

 

THE FEEDING OF THE FIVE THOUSAND

Jeremiah 6.9-21   John 6.5-14

Every Monday Marlene works her miracle for the tired and hungry in our part of Hereford. With a team of dedicated volunteers she feeds 25-30 people who look to various churches for daily food. Many are far from their homes in Poland, Romania, Portugal or Latvia. Some sleep rough others sofa hop. Now, your chaplain has promised dinner to the preacher and Choral Evensong in Oxford may not seem an obvious place to find a crowd of hungry people but it is part of human nature to know an emptiness that craves to be satisfied. Indeed excessive consumption only seems to sharpen the hunger of the soul.

Mathew and Mark tell us that when Jesus saw the crowds ‘he had compassion on them’. We might recall the words of God to Moses: ‘I have seen the misery of my people in Egypt…I have heard their cry, I know their suffering (Exodus 2.7). Under God, Moses would lead his people from their captivity through the wilderness, where he gave them bread from heaven, on to the Promised Land. This divine rescue came to be celebrated at the Festival of the Passover.  St John says; ‘Now the Passover was near’, when Jesus asked Philip how another great crowd might be fed. John adds; ‘Jesus himself knew what he was going to do’, because there is one greater than Moses here! John then unfolds this fourth sign, given to us like the whole gospel so that we ‘might believe that Jesus is the Messiah the Son of God and…..through believing you may have life in his name’ (John 20.31).

Like all the works of Jesus, this sign points to something deeper than what he did to meet the immediate need of the crowd. It reveals God at work in the recreation of the world, ‘making all things new’ in Christ (Revelation 21.5). Each sign points us to the glory that will be proclaimed at the cross and sealed in his resurrection. For Christians, the first day of the week is the Day of Resurrection, marking the dawn of the new creation. The full rich human life, the fulfilment of God’s good purposes in creation, begins here. The Good News of Jesus Christ is about abundance and hope that overflows and, in being shared, brings new life. We are caught up in the boundless grace of God!

‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many?’

Inadequacy is a crippling experience and standing before Jesus it will grip us all! But Andrew’s timorous suggestion enabled Jesus to work his abundance. When we offer our gifts at a celebration of Holy Communion we often say; ‘all things come from you O Lord and of your own do we give you’. We offer the Lord’s gifts into the Lord’s hands. And he gives us of himself!  Our meagre gifts are charged with his glory!

Jesus accepted the offering of that small lad just as he welcomed the friendship and commitment of Andrew and Philip, James, John, Peter, and his other disciples who were all limited in their vision and unprepared for what lay ahead. That will be true of us all. Twice in my early life I had reason to be grateful to those who weighed me up, found me somewhat lacking and gave me the benefit of the doubt.  My wife fully understands the question asked of me by one of my teachers in 1965; ‘What are we going to do with you Reese?’ The important thing was that he kept persevering with me – as does my wife! The chairman of the Panel choosing candidates for training for ordination in 1972 took me to one side on the final day. He asked me a couple of questions because he said some doubt had been expressed about my suitability or readiness. When I next met him in 1993 I expressed my gratitude for his faith in me! God is always patient and merciful, seeing the abundance and richness of what can be.

We are here this evening because those inadequate disciples responded to the call of Jesus – and by the power of God who raised him from the dead, the few became many! And so it has been in every generation, when Christians have been trusting and faithful to Jesus. And yet, as I look back to the 1970’s when I was training for ordination up the road at Cuddesdon, it seems to me that the Church in the Western world had largely lost sight of this truth. Faith in the living God was hardly on fire when my generation were training for ordination. The theological air was filled with talk of ‘The Myth of God Incarnate’ and whatever the nuances of the book of that title and the theological liberalism of that time, there was a poverty of faith in Christ that was matched by a rich investment in human wisdom. So it was very good to receive the Ripon College Cuddesdon newsletter a couple of weeks ago and to read these comments by the Principal: ‘It is easy to get deflected from the main purpose of the Church…It exists to glorify God and to follow Jesus Christ. Martyn Percy goes on to quote Evelyn Underhill who, writing to the Archbishop of Canterbury in the 1930’s said: ‘I desire to humbly suggest that the interesting thing about religion is God; and the people are hungry for God’.  

St John tells us that, ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. All things came into being through him….What has come into being through him was life and the life was the light of all people’ (John 1.1-3). We are to trust in the sufficiency of Jesus! In a lonely spot the needs of a weary and hungry crowd were met by one whose understanding, compassion and power belong to another reality. Like Philip, it is easy for us to think only in terms of the immediate reality. But we are challenged by Jesus to meet the needs we see around us, and to strive for the justice that Jeremiah (in   our first reading) found lacking, while pointing beyond the immediate reality.

By feeding the hungry on a Monday in Hereford, by committing ourselves to those practical things, the bread and dried fish issues, we meet their immediate needs but we also point to the goodness and power of God. For example, Paul is a good listener. His years of experience as a parish priest and as a chaplain in a high security prison, have given him a warm heart for those with little or nothing. While Marlene works miracles with her kitchen team, Paul comes alongside the weary and the hungry. He shares the most precious things he can, his friendship and when it seems appropriate, his faith in Jesus. Paul knows from his own experience what it is to be empty with nowhere to go.

Perhaps you have been there too, at the end of the road with nowhere to go, or maybe you are there now? Well, go to St John chapter 6 verse 35. Jesus says; ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry’. Then in 6.51 we read; ‘whoever eats of this bread will live for ever and the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh’. God sees our emptiness and meets it with the fullness of his grace. This great truth is proclaimed at the heart of Christian worship, in the Breaking of Bread with thanksgiving.

 

St John says that the crowd ate the bread after the Lord had given thanks. In the Christian Eucharist or ‘Thanksgiving’ we come with hands outstretched, to him who gave himself for the whole world. Whoever we are, we come to him as beggars – but he accepts us just as we are and invites us to feast on him in broken bread – now charged with his glory and signifying his life given to save us all. This is no mere remembering but an encounter with Jesus the ‘bread of life’ (6.48). We come to him burdened, weary and with a hunger in our souls. The hymn writer William Bright offers us this prayer: ‘Look Father, look on his anointed face and only look on us as found in him……and by this food, so aweful and so sweet deliver us from every touch of ill; in thine own service make us glad and free, and grant us never more to part with thee’. In this meeting with Jesus, worship and life become a cycle of thanksgiving for there must always be consistency between our worship and our life, coherence between chapel or church and practical witness.

A small lad in a big crowd would never be forgotten because when Jesus saw the crowd he had compassion on them. He stirred Philip and Andrew to action and they drew the lad into the picture. Jesus knew what he was going to do. Jesus always sees the crowd and he sees the individual. He wants to feed you and to work his miracle of grace within you and through you. He wants to draw each one of us into the foreground, accepting us as we are. He will use what little you have, to his glory. We will soon run out of resources, but we can return to him again and again, trusting in his sufficiency. Along this path through the wilderness of our human searching, as manna falls he will lead us to the life that is eternal. He will bring us to the Promised Land and the celebration of our Passover.

Our need to trust in the sufficiency of Christ and to be fed by him is wonderfully summed up in one of our most beautiful and profound Anglican prayers when we pray: ‘in Christ you make all things new. Transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of or lives make known your heavenly glory’. Amen.

 

WORCHESTER COLLEGE, OXFORD

Sunday, 9^th February 2014

TEXT: ‘Jesus said, ‘’Do you want to be healed.’’

I vividly remember a cartoon in the New Yorker when I was living and working in America some years ago.

It showed a caterpillar crawling slowly along the ground, wistfully looking up and shouting to a passing butterfly. ‘’You’ll never catch me going up in one of those things.’’

But, back for a moment to the scene in tonight’s reading: the story of the healing of the paraplegic. I want to suggest tonight two totally unexpected turn-of events in that story. So first, that seemingly inappropriate question of Jesus: ‘’Do you want to be healed?’’ Inappropriate? You might even say that ‘cruel question’, seeing that in one way or another, we’re told Jesus actually knew that the man had been lying there a long time – thirty eight years apparently. And yet he still asks, “Do you want to be healed? WHY?

Well, did you notice the poor man’s reply? A bit like politicians, he doesn’t answer the question he’s asked, but simply repeats what he’s been saying – mainly to himself, probably – for thirty eight years: ‘’I’ve nobody to put me into the pool when there is moving of the waters for healing, and while I’m struggling to get myself into the pool, another steps down before me.’’

‘’I have nobody…’’ Surely you might think, in thirty-eight years there would have been somebody to help. Perhaps he had stopped looking for someone and so by way of a self-fulfilling prediction, there never was anyone. I wonder.

And then – ‘thirty-eight years?’ Yes, perhaps indeed there does come a point when, as Emily Dickinson – the America poet – says, – ‘’even prison can become a friend.’’ Yes, there comes a point when you don’t want, or even want to want to be healed, or take up a fresh start.

Elsewhere, in John’s Gospel, Jesus says, ‘’I have come that you might have life and have it in all its fullness.’’ (John 10:10) The good news of the gospel is that we don’t have to settle for life in the shadows. “With freedom has Christ set us free,” is the testimony of scripture. But then the responsible exercise of freedom requires maturity. Yet, the claim of the Bible, from cover to cover, is that most of us, most of the time are only half alive, like the title of the movie – ‘’Dead Men Walking.’’

‘’This is the judgement,” says Jesus in John’s Gospel, “that light has come into the world, and men and women prefer darkness.’’ Or at least the half-light. I think that’s what Eliot was on about when he said, ‘’Humankind cannot bear very much reality.’’

Yet, instinctively, most people know in their heart of hearts that we were made for something more than what even the best this world can give – call it transcendence, wonder, ecstasy (of the right kind); a life which insists on pushing back the boundaries both of knowledge and experience (that spark which motivates explorers and researchers at best). So little wonder that so many seek the short cuts and false promises of material wealth, stimulants, drugs, booze, erotamania or whatever. But at least, it’s a sign that there is still a spark of divine discontent in our hearts; at least we’re still seeking, still longing, still yearning…albeit after thirty eight years, or whatever, rather than throwing in the sponge and settling for second best.

In a word, I suppose, we’re talking about a quality of life and it’s this quality of life which the Bible calls eternal or better still, abundant or enriched – a life which is a life worth living or, if need be, worth dying for: a life lived in relation to the source of all life, as opposed to a kind of cut-flower existence.

The Bible speaks of this quality of life, as a life lived in relation to God, who in Jesus has come to draw us into a relationship with himself. “This is eternal life” – authentic, abundant, enriched life, says Jesus, ‘’to know (that is to be in relationship, connaitre knowledge), ‘’with the Father and him whom he sent.” Yes, indeed – true life, is life in relationship. Indeed I derive my identity from my relationship. Indeed I derive my identity from my network of relationships: the son of my father, the brother of my sister, the godfather of my godchildren and so it goes on.

Conversely, on the other hand, isolation or the much-trumpeted independence of individualism (‘doing my own thing’) is mere existence and not true life. Inter-dependence, not so much independence, is the name of the game.

But the second surprise in our story is somewhat more sinister. Surely to God, wouldn’t you expect that those observant, religious leaders (the Pharisees), would have rejoiced to see the dead raised, the lame walk, the blind see and the deaf hearing? But not a bit of it! The self-appointed religious police attack Jesus – notice on theological grounds, – theological knit-picking – namely, that he had broken Sabbath rules.

The new freedom of this formerly paralyzed man, infuriated those Pharisees, and the irony is, that they were totally blind to just how very paralyzed they were – they were in need of healing and liberation from the letter of the law and needing to recapture the spirit of the law-giver, standing right there in front of them!

You see, the perversion of religion is the most perverted power of all. We live in an age when religion – perverted religion in all the religions, including Christianity – is once again raising its ugly head. When religion goes wrong, it doesn’t go a little wrong – it becomes demonic. After all, as we say, the perversion of the best is the worst. Tillich said: ‘’Jesus came to save us from religion,’ and how very much all faiths need to hear those words in today’s world of religious fanaticism, control and power.

You see Christianity at its best is not a philosophy, an ideology or even a religion in the strict sense of the word. Christianity isn’t anything – it is essentially somebody : St. Paul summarizes the Christian experience as ‘Jesus and the Resurrection, – Jesus and the call to new and fuller life in him, which is what Jesus is offering that paralyzed man, in today’s story. And that is what he is offering everybody to this day, including that constrained caterpillar, rejecting the prospect of becoming a free-flying butterfly!

Christians believe, and not just because they’ve read it in the Bible, but better still from personal experience; Christians believe that this same Jesus, even today, is still seeking and searching for those whose lives, like that paralytic, are confined, for whatever reason to the shadows, – maimed, addicted or whatever; Christians believe, that this same Jesus, still meets each one of us at our particular point of need, like he met that paralyzed man, inviting us, challenging us or even sometimes commanding us in the name of love: “Take up your particular bed and walk; kick away the crutches; (whether it’s the bottle or the bed); open the eyes of your heart; (that ‘knowledge of the heart’ as Pascal calls its); ‘get a life’; walk free, leave the shadows; and drawn by Jesus, the Light of the world, who enlightens every man, woman and child – drawn by Jesus, the Light to the light, through the darkness, into that fullness of life, in the here and now – to that quality of life which is stronger than death and therefore incidentally eternal; seeking to respond freely to the perennial challenge from scripture in the words of Deuteronomy of old, ‘Thus says the Lord, “This day I put before you the way of life, and the way of death: Choose Life”

‘Jesus said.’ NO! ‘Jesus says’ and is still saying to each one of us, tonight: “Do YOU want to be healed?”

1309 words – 13minutes.

Worcester Coll. Evensong; 2.2.14; John 4;46-54 (Is 55;6-13) B228

Signs and wonders: what place do they have in the Gospels and indeed in the Christian faith? 

The question is asked in the context of this evening’s reading from John’s Gospel, where Jesus is dismissive of signs and wonders.  It is not meant to be a compliment when Jesus says ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe’.  But then comes the response from the official, which everyone who has a heart will understand: ‘Come down before my little boy dies’.  The fever leaves the boy and this is seen as a sign of Jesus’ significance and purpose.

            So you might try to sum up Jesus’ actions: suspicion of those who want spectacular interventions by God, yet at the same time bringing compassion and healing.  Usually the wise advice to a preacher is to avoid the subject of healing, as one would a field full of land-mines.  But it is important to ignore all that advice and tackle signs and wonders head on.  How does God act in the world and indeed make himself known?  Is it, for example when we miss the flight that subsequently crashes; when the rain holds off for our wedding; or indeed when I’m hard up and find a £10 note blowing in the wind? 

            What are the ways of God?  And add to that the question: if he acted there in Palestine, why does he not seem to act so wonderfully here and now?

            Of course, there are some who think God does act now in a spectacular manner, and they take it to extremes.  Morris Cerullo was preaching in Mexico City this week at what he calls a ‘Prophetic Healing Breakthrough Rally’.  It was he who once wrote to his British followers promising them supernatural deliverance from debt.  What they had to do was to send him £30 per month (instead of the usual £15) and they would experience an unprecedented thing called ‘a debt cancellation miracle’.  They were to pray over the paying-in slip while letting the anointing power flow into their lives.  God would do the rest and all would be well.  There would follow healing of their debt.  Well, I am told that we are more likely to be struck by lightning than to win a substantial amount on the National Lottery, but even the Lottery is a more practical approach to debt-cancellation than Morris Cerrullo and his magic.

            Yet it would be a mistake to go to the other extreme and say that God does not act and that there are no miracles. I once talked to someone just back from Zimbabwe.  He spoke movingly of his experience and of people’s faith in God.  We then talked about praying for rain.   I thought his answer was fascinating.  He said ‘Well, it certainly isn’t right to pray for rain in Zimbabwe between May and September, because it never rains there between May and September.’  So it would be foolish – mere belief in magic – to pray for rain at that time.  But at other times, it is natural to pray for something which is central to everyone’s survival: praying for rain, while at the same time conserving water by building dams and so on. 

            So perhaps we are to pray for God to work on what is possible within the world which is his creation.  Like a carpenter, working on wood, I believe God works with the grain of the world, encouraging, loving, prompting, inviting.  That way of thinking also applies to healing: God not so much cutting across the world and working against its ways, but rather working with the surgeon, the hospital, the prayers, the family – to bring healing and wholeness.  And when someone is happily and surprisingly healed, do you call it a miracle?  Yes, you do. 

            There is room/scope in the natural world and in us for change.  So the right language may be to says that God does not so much act on the world or indeed on us, but rather that he interacts with the world and with us – God not a conjuror or manipulator, for he leaves us, and the world we live in, with some freedom. 

     What then about the official’s son in John’s Gospel?   The healing showed what is possible and indeed desirable for us all to work towards.  After all, Jesus did not heal everyone he ever came across, and many of them no doubt got ill again and in the end they died.  So the healing was a sign of the way things can and should be.  A sign.  And as shown by the passionate plea of the official – the father –  ‘Come down before my little boy dies’, the sign, like the other signs, was not trivial.  It was a serious matter of life and death. 

            So I think we need to see that God is concerned with serious matters like peace and healing and justice and fullness of life, rather than being treated – as he sometimes is by Christians – as a kind of errand boy: topping up my bank-account, making sure that I don’t get wet, or of course, sorting out our parking…..in the immortal words of Wendy Cope’s poem: ‘When I went out shopping/ I said a little prayer:/ Jesus, help me park the car/ for you are everywhere./ Jesus, in his goodness and grace,/ Jesus found me a parking space/ In a very convenient place/ Sound the horn and praise Him!.’ That’s fun, and it admirably sends up the idea that I’m God’s favourite and he is going to look after me, probably at the expense of everyone else. 

            God is indeed infinitely loving and he invites us to new life in Christ, but he’s not a trivial God who runs petty errands for us and we have to be careful of how we interpret what happens to us.   Austin Farrer has a nice piece in his book ‘Faith and Speculation’ (1967 p 68) – a tale of piety improperly triumphing over reason:

‘Mr Jones’ rheumatism was a judgement, until his daughter swore to you on the bible that the tale of his secret drinking was a baseless slander. Her father was a saint.  His rheumatism was, therefore, a trial.  But then the bowling club went on a day’s outing and drove their charabanc into the sea; and Mr Jones’ rheumatism, since it kept him home on this occasion, proved a blessing in disguise, and a providence indeed.’

            Mr Jones’ rheumatism: judgement, trial, blessing?   Probably none of those.  For whatever reason, he just had rheumatism.

            God is with us, patiently working/interacting with us and with the world in which we live.  Sometimes a sign/ a miracle: more of them in New Testament times because that is how they saw the world, but that does not mean that there are none of them now.  Yet the sign will not be an empty parking space.  More likely to be a profound sign of the ways of God and of his creation, like the healing of a child with a fever or like peace brought to a place where it seemed impossible.

            At Candlemas and in every season, we can point to signs of the ways in which God reveals himself (and to the ways in which he does not).  There is an admirable middle path between what might be called the rationalist and the ridiculous.  I believe it is to see God interacting with us and with the natural creation – working patiently, subtly.  Inviting – longing for everyone and everything to realize its potential in him.

 

 

Believing in the glory

Jn 2.11: Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

‘Our Lord Jesus Christ was himself a guest at a wedding in Cana of Galilee’ – as a parish priest, I have said that so many times as part of the introduction to the marriage service in the Alternative Service Book – and longed secretly for the sonsorous cadences of the Book of Common Prayer: ‘which holy estate Christ adorned and beautified with his presence, and first miracle that he wrought, in Cana of Galilee’. Nowadays, Common Worship includes this sentence: ‘St John tells us how Jesus shared in such an occasion at Cana’. Any way, whatever words we use to describe it, is the point of this gospel passage really that Jesus was a wedding guest at Cana? And, let’s remember, not a very good guest – having. a very public domestic with his mum, taking control of the wine list, generally stealing the limelight of the bride’s big day.

But in fact the truth at the heart of this gospel passage is not that Jesus was at Cana to express his approval of the institution of marriage; a wedding does provide the context in which this, ‘the first of his signs’, is performed, but it is not the meaning to which the sign refers. For me, the point of this first sign, the transformation of water into wine, is the abundance, the super-abundance, even the excess of the provision which God offers to his people. Think of the figures involved. There are six stone jars, each of them holding 2 or 3 firkins, 20 or 30 gallons, and each filled up to the brim with water. Taking the lowest figure in the range that St John offers, we have 120 gallons, i.e. 545 litres, of wine. A standard bottle of wine today is 75 cl: Jesus has produced the equivalent of 727 bottles for a party which has already drunk its way through its host’s provision. If we take the upper figure, the stock taking rises to 1090 bottles, I think. Even by the standards of a clergy event in the Diocese of Southwark, that is prodigious; indeed, it is prodigal.

And this super-abundance, this exuberance undaunted by anxiety over wastefulness, is a theme which appears again and again in the New Testament. In the parable of the Sower, the grain is scattered everywhere; most of it is lost, but that which falls on good soil produces astonishing yields – thirty-, sixty-, a hundred-fold. In another parable, the workers who are recruited to labour in the vineyard late in the day are rewarded with the same generosity as the others, much to their bewilderment. St Paul writes  that the love of God is shed abroad by the Holy Spirit into the hearts of the ungodly, and it is in their justification that the justice of God bears the fruit of amazing grace. Christian faith speaks throughout of undeserved, unexpected, unscientific abundance; and this is the sign which Jesus sets before us at Cana of Galilee.

In enacting that sign, says St John, Jesus revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. This is a sign set in the most basic of human settings, that of a wedding; it is performed through ordinary human actions, the drawing of water from a well; it uses the everyday stuff of human consumption, wine; it is described in markedly understated human language, a simple past participle form ‘water become wine’. Yet we know that we are being pointed beyond the boundaries of normal human experience, to the burgeoning abundance which is the sign of God’s presence – a reality which cannot be adequately described, but for which John uses the word ‘glory’.

Of course, ‘glory’ is not a word coined by the New Testament writers; the divine glory repeatedly breaks into the narrative of the Hebrew scriptures too. In our first reading, Isaiah speaks of the glory of the Lord that will arise upon Jerusalem and draw the nations to his light. The gospel message is, that in Jesus that attracting, dazzling light is embodied in a human being: ‘we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth’. How is such an economy of divine prodigality received in our world. What difference might it make to the way we live, if we are among those who have seen his glory?

Well, let’s go back to what John says at the end of his story of Cana – Jesus ‘revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. Think about each of those three words in turn: ‘revealed’, ‘glory’, and ‘believed’.

In the first place, as always in the gospels, this revelation of God’s glory takes place in a particular place – at Cana of Galilee – at a particular time – during a marriage feast – and through a particular person – Jesus of Nazareth. It is in these specific interactions that ultimate meaning is disclosed, and it is through telling and re-telling this specific narrative that that meaning is brought to others. And that means that Christians should always be wary of any general theories which try to predict what is going to happen; always approach with a hermeneutic of suspicion any reporting that generalises how groups of people are going to act or think; because if God’s glory was revealed in a Galilean wedding feast, we never know what might happen anywhere, or who might do what when. It is in the telling of particular stories of particular people at particular times and in particular places that revelation happens, and one of the great strengths of the Church of England is that through our presence in parishes, schools and chaplaincies across the land we are daily hearing thousands and thousands of such stories. As a bishop in South East London, I never cease to be struck by how very much more interesting, more compelling and more meaningful are the real human stories that I hear, compared to the opinionated stereotypes that I read in newspapers or see on TV. It is in the particular that God reveals his glory.

And, second, what he reveals is just that, glory: an overwhelming, life-giving grace which cannot be reduced to our limits, which infinitely exceeds our expectations. No doubt the chief steward at Cana had estimated how much wine should be bought; no doubt the guests felt he had underestimated; but all calculations are as nothing before the enormous quantities God’s glory dispenses. Whether 727 bottles or 1060, the numbers are vast beyond measure: glory cannot be measured.

To set something immeasurable and unimaginable as that which we value most is to be profoundly subversive in today’s world. We live in a society which is obsessed with measuring targets, with paying by results, with putting a numerical figure on every value, with looking for a financial analysis of any transaction. But the economy of God’s glory does not work in this way: knowing that we always fall short of any target that his infinite holiness may set us, we rely on his illimitable grace; it is that grace alone that gives us true value, and it is that standard that sets us a new way of relating to one another. It is not easy to learn to relate to one another according to the economy of glory, because we are very suspicious of this way of thinking. Like labourers in the vineyard, we grumble at God, envious because he is kind.

But then, thirdly, becoming kind as God is kind is what we have to learn to do if – like the disciples – we believe in Jesus, the one who has revealed his glory. Believing in Jesus means staking our lives on the hunch that the divine glory he reveals is the most important reality we can know, and then living our staked lives according to the economy of that glory in the world. That in turn means, taking the risk to give of ourselves to others generously, prodigally, to forgive as we have been forgiven, to believe in others as God believes in them, to expect great things from the God whose grace is at work in them as it is in us. That is a challenging way to live, and it’s much easier to slip back into suspicion of others, into defensiveness, cynicism, criticism.

I see all those attitudes in my own church much of the time; I see them in myself nearly all the time. But two days ago I was in Lewisham at a memorial event for a great little girl of Nigerian heritage, Ella Kissi-Debrah. Ella was a devout server at her parish church, St Swithun’s, Lewisham. Last year, she suddenly died, aged 9, from the severe asthma that had been with her through much of her short life. A few weeks before her death, Ella said this to her mum: ‘Mum, life is too short to use it being horrid to people’.

‘Life is too short to use it being horrid to people’ – simple words, but out of Ella’s short life they speak to me powerfully of what it means to believe in the Jesus who reveals his glory among us. In Cana, in Lewisham, in Oxford, he gives us gallons of the new wine of his glory so that we can love one another as he loves us – or at least not be horrid to one another.