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Believing In(to) Transformation - 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany

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Second Sunday After the Epiphany (C): Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10

1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

The Rev'd Cameron Partridge

January 19, 2025


O God, by the leading of a star, at the waters of the Jordan, and in the water made wine you revealed your glory in the face of Jesus, your Beloved Son. Grant that we who have been made your children through baptism may show forth your glory in our lives; through Jesus Christ our Savior.[1]


Good Morning, St. Aidan’s, and welcome to the Second Sunday after the Epiphany. Last Sunday we celebrated the Baptism of Jesus, first Sunday after the Feast that in the Western church celebrates the Magi’s visit to the Christ child. In the tradition of the Christian East, the Baptism of Jesus the adult is the Feast—it is the Theophany, the manifestation of God shining out in the Christ the Son, fully human and fully divine. And so now, standing fully in this season of radiance, we hear the third iconic story in its sacred sequence: Jesus’ changing of water into wine at the Wedding Feast at Cana (John 2:1-11). This particular story among a series of narratives working together, this flowing spirit of revelation, invite us, as the collect appointed for today suggests, to be illumined and to shine.[2] By taking those stories sacramentally into our selves, into our imaginations, into our very souls and bodies, we can be nourished by them in community. We can be illumined, transformed.  And as we are transformed, as we are illumined, we can join and help reveal a certain mystery: the radiant yet not always obvious process of God’s transforming work in the world.

The third story in the Epiphany seasonal sequence, the Wedding at Cana, dramatizes the transformative heart of this mystery. As I mentioned last week, while this story is the third iconic anchor point of this season, we only hear it once every three years, unlike the other two. The Wedding at Cana episode is also unique to the Gospel of John. The other gospels reference wedding banquets, transformation, and plenty of odd back-and-forths between Jesus and various interlocutors. None depict him as a wedding guest who changes water into wine. John’s Gospel has a particular theology of “signs,” stories in which Jesus’ action reveals or illumines the glory of God working through him in particular ways. This story is termed “the first of [Jesus’] signs.” It is the first of seven in this Gospel, in fact, though only this one and the second are labeled as such.[3] In the story, Jesus and his disciples, including Jesus’ mother, are attending a wedding. At a certain point the wine runs out, and this is noted by Jesus’ mother to him. Their back and forth has an odd ring in multiple ways, and we are missing the subtleties and tone of the interchanges. Was Jesus’ mother actually asking him to do something about the wine? Why does he call his own mother “woman”?[4] But the heart of the story is transformation. After asking for six very large stone jars – there for the Jewish rites of purification, 20-30 gallons worth, we are told – to be filled with water, Jesus instructs the servants to bring some to the chief steward. Tasting it, he acclaims the bridegroom for having saved the best wine for last.

What had happened to the water? The fifth century bishop and theologian Maximus of Turin has written, “suddenly in a marvelous way the water began to acquire potency, take on color, emit fragrance and gain flavor – all at once it changed its nature completely!”[5] I love the imaginative quality of this description. It is a kind of midrash, the wonderful Jewish practice of stitching in the gaps of scripture, casting our imagination into what seems missing from a text. As Maximus continued, “Only [the One] who had made it out of nothing could change water into something whose use was quite different. Dearly beloved, have no doubt that [the One] who changed water into wine is the same as [the One] who from the beginning has thickened it into snow and hardened it into ice.”[6] As much as I love this rendering, I find it equally fascinating that John’s text itself, specifically does not describe the transformation at its heart. I am reminded how John similarly refrains from elaborating the resurrection. The resurrected Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in the garden, the empty grave clothes having launched Peter and the Beloved Disciple into a running race (John 20:1-18). But the process through which a body that had been dead was now alive is bracketed, held in mystery. So too the changing of water into wine. Transformation is something we can sometimes observe moment by moment as it unfolds. We can describe it with great color and verve, as Maximus does. Yet so often we cannot see it as it unfolds. We cannot detect it. We have no notion that anything is afoot, and we may in fact be struggling as a result. We may feel desolation or despair in our assumption of its absence. Today’s story invites us to be illumined by the transformation at its heart. It calls us to in a sense see what cannot be seen – to see through believing, what John often conveys as “believing in”, or what can technically be translated believing into, as if we are diving into a mysterious pool that helps to progressively change our perception.[7] This story challenges us to share, to radiate what the growing process of believing allows us to see: the truth that God not only creates but also transforms. And we, illumined by this truth – including the reality that we cannot always see its processes – are called to be its agents. We are to be participants in, stokers of, God’s transformation.

But to what ends? The ends of justice, of peace, of hope. Tomorrow we celebrate the life and legacy of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Dr. King had something to say about the call to transformation. About the challenge of working for justice and peace. About hope. On March 31, 1968, the last time Dr. King preached on a Sunday morning before he was assassinated, he happened to preach at Washington National Cathedral.[8] As he approached the end of his sermon, he said, “let me close by saying that we have difficult days ahead in the struggle for justice and peace…” Reading those words, he could so clearly be speaking to this moment. This was a moment when he was struggling deeply, criticized for his opposition to the War in Vietnam. “But” he continued,


I will not yield to a politic of despair. I’m going to maintain hope as we come to Washington in this campaign [even as] the cards are stacked against us. This time we will really confront a Goliath. God grant that we will be that David of truth set out against the Goliath of injustice, the Goliath of neglect, the Goliath of refusing to deal with the problems, and go on with the determination to make America the truly great America that it is called to be.[9]


Several paragraphs later he shared his famous saying:


We shall overcome because the arc of a moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. We shall overcome because… no lie can live forever. We shall overcome because… truth crushed to earth will rise again…. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair the stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.”[10] 

 

Dr. King preached a clear-eyed proclamation of hope founded on transformation. This was and is a transformation that is far from pie-in-the-sky. It is concrete and deeply practical, impacting the lives of those working for, struggling for justice in all its forms. And this was a transformative process that was not always visible, that was often in fact invisible, leading to the despair out of whose rock hope needed to be carved. Dr. King was one whose life was truly illumined by the Good News, whose life shined out from and with that Good News.

Friends, tomorrow many of us will march to honor the life and legacy of Dr. King even as our nation enters a new chapter in its life. Coming into this new chapter, many of us are struggling. We carry real fear for our safety and security, and that of people we know and love, as well as people we don’t yet know. Some of us may be struggling with despair.  As we march – those of us who are able to – we will be lifting up the hope, the courage, the determination, and the vision for God’s Beloved Community, a community of justice and peace championed and led by Dr. King. We will walk together because we know that we can do so much more in community than we can do alone. We know that transformation is not always visible, that justice is often opposed, undermined, and thwarted and that it is still possible, step by step, dream by dream, person to person. Water can be changed into wine, and we who consume it in some sense become it. We become beacons of light, hope, and possibility to each other when we are pressed down, feeling low, and also to people around us. Today, this morning, and in the weeks and months to come, may we unabashedly respond to God’s call to become beacons of light, to illumine this creation with transformative possibility, indeed the dream, that God is calling this world to manifest, to become.


[1] Frank Griswold, Praying Our Days: A Guide and Companion (Harrisburg, PA: Morehouse Publishing, 2009), 13-14.

[3] Sandra M. Schneiders, Written That You May Believe: Encountering Jesus in the Fourth Gospel (New York: Crossroad, 1993, 2009), 50.

[4] Raymond E. Brown, The Gospel of John I-XII: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary. The Anchor Bible (New York, NY: Doubleday, 1966), 98-99.

[5] Maximus of Turin, Pagina Latinae 57.275-76 quoted in ed. Joel C. Elowsky, Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. New Testament IVa (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2006), 96.

[6] Maximus of Turin in Ancient Christian Commentary, 96

[7] Schneiders, 51-52

[8] The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution,” in ed. James M. Washington, A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings of Martin Luther King, Jr. (San Francisco, CA: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1986), 268-278.

[9] King, 277

[10] King, 277

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