THE WEDDING FEAST AT CANA: A WHOLE LOT OF PARTYING GOING ON…AND MARY’S COMMAND FOR THE AGES

11/27/12




Just about everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, is familiar with Jesus’ first miracle at Cana; i.e., His turning water into wine. (John 2, 1-12) The story certainly has its moments, especially when the none the wiser headwaiter is surprised by the quality of the newly created wine and says



“Everyone serves good wine first, and then when people have drunk freely an inferior one; but you have kept the good wine until now.”



Somehow, those of us who have been known in the past to enjoy an adult beverage or two can relate, only many of our stories do not deal so much with new wine as with, say, Budweiser and Buckhorn (The latter was 69 cents a six pack, unless one could find it on sale, when I was a young man…a long, long, time ago. It could only be drunk at near frozen temperatures due to a taste that approximated dishwater in which pots containing lots of onions had been washed. But it completed the job cheaply after one had imbibed several Budweisers.), but I digress. Also, Jesus didn’t mess around; when He made wine, He made good stuff, consistent with His whole approach to life.



The miracle at the Cana wedding feast, however, is more than an interesting and entertaining story. I find two aspects especially intriguing and they are at least ancillarily related.

First, John says that the jars or jugs into which the water was poured and from which it was dispensed as wine were not ordinary jugs, but, rather “six stone water jars there for Jewish ceremonial washings, each holding twenty to thirty gallons.” (John 2, 6, New American Bible) So, first, we are talking about some serious drinking here. Second, and more important, note that everything in John is loaded with symbolism and has at least two meanings. In this case, the replacement of the Jewish ceremonial washings with the new wine of Jesus Christ is interpreted as Jesus’ replacing of the old Jewish law with the new covenant of His message and His blood. That is doubtless true. But the replacement of the ceremonial washings with the new wine of Jesus can also be interpreted as the replacement of rote and sometimes empty ritual with the true worship of God “in Spirit and truth” (John, 4, 24). Not all of that empty ritual took place 2,000 years ago in the Holy Land; many still mistake the rote practice of ritual with true worship of God and of His Son.



Second, “the mother of Jesus” (John 2, 2) (who, interestingly, is never named in John’s gospel), gives the servers a command that transcends the ages:



“Do whatever he tells you.” (John, 2, 5)



She was speaking not only to those few attendants who unwittingly, but obediently, became instruments in Jesus’ first miracle. She is telling all of us to “do whatever he tells you” that so we, too, can become instruments in Jesus’ ongoing work. This command of Mary, the only command of Mary in the gospels, is all that we need to do.



The problem of course, is trying to determine what Jesus tells us. God speaks to me and He speaks to you, but never as clearly as we would like. And the problem is compounded by the legions of people who presume to speak for Christ and insist that we do whatever they tell us because, after all, they speak for Christ. And many of these same people seem to insist on the preeminence of ritual, which is sometime good and sometimes not so good, but never capable of leading to salvation. See my 10/22/12 post ST. PAUL, ST. JAMES, AND SALVATION BY FAITH.

“I’D WORRY A LOT LESS...”

11/25/12




“I’d worry a lot less about what other people think of me if I realized how little they do.”



I first heard that quote about 25 years ago. It’s been attributed to many authors, thinkers, even politicians around the great city of Chicago, but its origin is lost in the fog of the past, which is probably especially apropos to the quote. This thought has been immensely comforting to many, including yours truly…or at least it would be if it were as easy to internalize as it is to intellectualize.



We think about ourselves a lot. I realize that the closer we get to God, the less we think of ourselves, but I also realize that few of us are as close to God as we’d like to be, or should be, and that all of us are not sufficiently close to God that we can stop trying to get closer. And, to the extent that we go through the process of losing our selfishness, which some have defined as the maturation process and/or the process of realizing our spiritual potential, even the best of us devote most of our concern to those closest to us, to our friends, spouses, families, etc., rather than to the great, largely faceless, mass of humanity. That’s just the way we are; we are, after all, human.



To a large extent, we realize this innate, and not necessarily entirely bad, selfishness in ourselves, but we don’t see it in others. We often think that people are out there thinking things like…



“Boy, I remember when (insert your name here) really did me wrong twenty years ago. S/he ruined my life. I hate him/her! But he always was an a—hole!”



“(Insert your name here) didn’t even see me or acknowledge me when I saw him at (church, the game, the store) yesterday; s/he acted as if I weren’t there. I’m crushed!”



“Remember when (insert your name here) dropped that pass in the end zone and we lost the state title? What a schmo!”



“How ‘bout that time (insert your name here) got really (drunk, tired, upset, out of sorts, full of himself, or all of the above) and made an enormous ass out of himself? What an a—hole!”



Or maybe we imagine they think



“Remember that time (insert your name here) really did something nice for my (mom, dad, sister, daughter, son)? S/he didn’t have to do that. What a great person s/he is!”



“You know, that (insert your name here) is really (smart, hardworking, helpful, kind, willing to help). What a great person s/he is!”



“Wow! Isn’t (insert your name here) great looking!”



But guess what? They don’t think those things. They simply don’t care. They have more to do than sit around and think about us, what we are doing, what we have done, or how we have wronged or benefited them. They have their own lives, friends, families, etc., about which to concern themselves. They rarely think of us, who we are, what we’ve done, how our lives are going, or how we have had an impact on their lives, mostly because we haven’t, in most cases, had nearly as much impact on their lives as we think we did. We simply are not that important, or at least our importance wanes very quickly with the passage of time. And people just don’t care, or care all that much. This is by no means an indictment of people; it is simply a recognition that people are (at the expense of using what has become an incredibly trite expression) not wired to think much of what other people do or have done, or at least not nearly as much as we imagine. As I said before, this innate concern with self is not necessarily a bad thing; it is a survival device in more than the obvious ways.



Sometimes I think that the best thing for a lot of us would be to run into somebody from our distant pasts only to discover that they don’t even remember us. If we thought we had done them wrong, such a realization would be an enormous relief. If we thought we had done them right, such a realization would be a much needed dose of humility.



Is this a call to care little about how we treat people? Of course not. It is, rather, a call to do right by people NOW, when we can do something about it and for them, rather than dwelling on the good, but mostly the wrong, we have done people in the past. We can’t do anything about that…and the damage we have wrought, or the benefit we have conferred, on people is not nearly as large as we suppose.

WAS ST. PETER AN ALCOHOLIC?

11/21/12




It was the first Christian Pentecost, around 29 A.D., in Jerusalem. The disciples were “all in one place together.” (Acts 2, 2) Suddenly, tongues of fire descended over the heads of the disciples, they were filled with the Holy Spirit, and they started speaking in tongues. Speaking in tongues, at least in this first manifestation, was an ability to speak in one’s own language while one’s listeners heard what was said in their languages. This came in very handy in this instance because there were Jews from throughout the Diaspora, or dispersion, in Jerusalem to celebrate Pentecost, and most spoke languages other than Aramaic. But, as St. Paul points out in the 14th chapter of his first letter to the Corinthians, to most listeners, speaking in tongues can sound like so much babbling. So in response to this first speaking in tongues, some observers said of Peter and the Apostles (Acts 2, 13)



“They have had too much new wine.”



What is remarkable is Peter’s response to the charge that he and his buddies had been drinking too much “new wine” (Act 2, 15):



“These people are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.”



So Peter’s defense against charges of drunken babbling is not so much that he isn’t drunk but that he isn’t drunk yet; after all, it’s only 9:00 A.M. You almost expect him to follow with something like “…but if it were happy hour, well, then you’d have a point.”



I’ve found this passage and interpretation thereof fascinating since a great friend, and Jesuit priest, pointed it out to me more than twenty five years ago. If indeed Peter did have some trouble with the new wine, he would be exhibiting a condition that is very prevalent among people back then and people now; alcoholism is a big deal now and it was a big deal then.



More importantly, if it were indeed true that Peter was an alcoholic, this would be only one instance in which he was the most human of all Apostles, the Apostle to which most of us can most easily relate.



Like many of us, Peter was headstrong and impetuous with sudden and passing bouts of bravado and pseudo-strength followed by a realization of his innate weaknesses and a consequent reassessment of his seemingly rash actions, very human traits and actions that seem to be especially manifested in alcoholics, both practicing and recovering.

The examples of these traits in Peter are abundant. St. Matthew, in his account of Jesus’ walking on water (Matthew 14, 24-33), tells us that St. Peter, obviously impressed by this heretofore undiscovered ability of his Master and wanting to both please and imitate him, said



“Lord, if it is you, command me to come out to you on the water.”



and, hardly waiting for Jesus’ assent, went racing out to meet Jesus on the waves. There he was, caught up in the moment, strutting his stuff…for a few minutes until he realized something like “Hey, wait a minute; I’m walking on water! I can’t do this!” and started sinking, only to be saved by Jesus.



This tendency to act now and think later on the part of Peter again displayed itself at the Transfiguration. There they were, Peter, James, John, and Jesus, up on the mountain, all but Jesus thinking this would be what had become by then a routine prayer session, when, suddenly, Jesus’ (Luke 9, 29)



“face changed in appearance and his clothing became dazzling white.”



and then who showed up but Moses and Elijah! If Peter ever needed a drink, this was certainly the time, but I digress. Peter quickly realized that this was no ordinary day on the hill, but, rather than, like James and John, simply drinking it all in and enjoying it, he immediately blurted out (Luke 9, 33)



“Master, it is good that we are here; let us make three tents, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”



Luke even points out



But he did not know what he was saying.



Effectively, what Peter was saying was something like “Man, this is great! Let’s just stay up here and never come down to the reality of life.”



and thus became like so many Christians throughout the ages who think that signing up for Christianity means, first, going to heaven, which is a great place to be, and that, as an additional bonus, sticking with Jesus will somehow keep trouble away and make life easy. But most of us know that, while Jesus does promise a place in heaven for us, He promises nothing of the sort in this life. He’s not going to take away our troubles; indeed, following Him will result in plenty of trouble above and beyond life’s normal trials. But He does promise us that He will be with us during those troubles; after all, He experienced most of them while He was here. But Peter didn’t want to hear that; He wanted to keep the good stuff on the mountain and avoid the painful stuff that awaited him down in the valley and thought his Master was the ticket for achieving this goal.



Peter’s impetuousness comes through again at the Last Supper when, after Jesus tells his Apostles (Mark 14, 27)



“All of you will have your faith shaken, for it is written ‘I will strike the shepherd and the sheep will be dispersed.’”



Peter replies



“Even though all should have their faith shaken, mine will not be.”



(If my thesis about Peter’s having an excessive love of the fruit of the vine is true, this may have been the 1st century forerunner of the Manischewitz talking. After all, at least according to the three synoptic gospels, the Last Supper was a Seder, and one can be confident that more than the wine that Jesus transformed into His Precious Blood was being consumed at the meal. Note that Peter, James, and John were having a very difficult time staying awake an hour or so hence in the Garden of Gethsemane at a not, by any stretch of the imagination, inconsequential time. But I digress.)



Jesus, being the cooler head at the table, replies (Mark 14, 30)



“Amen I say to you, this very night before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times.”



and, as always, He was right. When the heat was on, Peter, being human and afraid, denied even knowing Jesus despite his previous bravado.



And then, after the resurrection, when Jesus tries to make everything okay again between Him and Peter by asking Peter three times (John 21, 15-19)



“Simon, son of John, do you love me?”



Peter gets “distressed,” not understanding at all what Jesus was trying to do and replies in an exasperated fashion after the third time he was asked



“Lord, you know everything; you know that I love you!”



The guy pops off, falls down, and fights back when Jesus tries to lift him up. Sound alcoholic? Sound human?



Then, getting back to that first Christian Pentecost….



Peter, inspired by the Spirit and now clearly not full of “new wine,” launches into a long explanation of the meaning of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and its implications not only for his Jewish listeners and for all mankind. Three thousand people are convinced and want to be baptized, to sign up, if you will. So what does Peter do? He doesn’t look into their backgrounds. He doesn’t ask if they’ve been good. He doesn’t ask them to renounce their existing faith. He doesn’t make them jump through hoops. And he doesn’t make them feel like he is, through his great graces and manifest goodness, doing them some kind of favor. He, and his buddies, simply baptize them…all three thousand of them. (Acts 2, 41). Impetuousness does have its positives!



Later on, when the family of Cornelius, a Gentile, undergoes a Pentecost like experience, filled with the Spirit, speaking in tongues and all, Peter doesn’t check the rule book and say something like “Wait a minute; these guys aren’t Jews like us. This can’t be real. Our rules tell us only Jews can be filled with the Spirit. No, these guys can’t join us! Not these infidel Gentiles!” Instead, he says (Acts 10, 47-48)



“Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people, who have received the Holy Spirit even as we have?”



and



He ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ.



Again, impetuousness has its positives!





Speaking of impetuousness having its positives, thank God Peter was the often weak, yet headstrong far beyond his abilities, man that he was. Why? Because God’s glory and strength is manifested through otherwise weak and very ordinary and fallible people…people like Peter…and us. So there is hope for all of us, who can all easily relate to Peter’s manifest humanity.



And…



If Peter were the kind of guy who thought through everything, who carefully considered his every move, we might not have had the Christian faith that we have today. No rational person gives up everything for what seemed like, nearly literally, a wing and a prayer. No rational person follows an itinerant preacher up a hill for God knows what purpose. No rational person decides to get out of a boat and walk across the water. No rational person gets up and talks to a group of thousands of people not having the faintest idea what he is going to say. No rational person breaks all the rules and lets insiders in on this great thing we really should save for ourselves. And no rational person goes to his death by being crucified, upside down, as tradition says Peter was.


So, unless you (perhaps, too,) are alcoholic, raise a glass to St. Peter this Thanksgiving. His very human tendency to shoot first, aim later, to rush in where wise men fear to tread, his impetuousness too late tempered by reason…his very alcoholic traits…are among the greatest things for which we should be utterly grateful.

WHEN DOES ETERNAL LIFE START?

11/16/12




I’ve noticed that, over the last twenty years or so, obituaries and the prayer cards we get at wakes have changed. In the past, they contained two dates, labeled “Born” and “Died.” For example:



John Jones



Born: March 10, 1913



Died May 15, 1985



Now the same two dates are in included, but one of the headings has changed from “Died” to “Born into eternal life” or similar words. For example



Jane Smith



Born: March 10, 1923



Born into eternal life: May 15, 2005

The sentiment is a beautiful one; after all, as Christians, we believe that natural death does not end our lives but merely marks a transition into our eternal life with Jesus. So the new language is a more accurate, and certainly more comforting, description of what has happened to the person whose passing we are observing.



And yet the words “born into eternal life” miss something fundamental about Christ’s message. They seem to adhere to the old notion that “all” Jesus is offering us is eternal joy in heaven and that our life on this earth is a mere period of preparation for that eternity and, indeed, can, and some think should, be a time of trial, a valley of tears, if you will, to be endured while awaiting eternal life.



But what Jesus offers us is an eternal life of joy with Him beginning not when we pass from this mortal coil but beginning, if not before, NOW. Eternal life does not start when we pass; eternal life begins when we are conceived. This life is not a time of misery and trial but the first stage of a life of joy in and service to Jesus Christ and our brothers and sisters of all faiths.



Most of us, certainly including yours truly, don’t live our lives entirely in the joy of Jesus Christ, and understandably so. Life, even for those of us with what are now called first world problems, is full of challenges, trials, and worse. As a good friend of mine, and a very good Christian, who is situated much like my wife and me, said at a lunch we recently shared “Life is one big ball of worry.” Those who know me know that I share much of that sentiment and I worry far too much. And much of the world lives in situations that are far more deprived, and with many more sources of worry, than we do.



To the extent that we give into worry and the cares of the world, though, we are refusing to accept the message of our Savior, who, after all said, in a passage that grates on many people, including yours truly (Matthew 6, 31-34):



“So do not worry and say, ‘What are we to eat?’ or ‘What are we to drink?’ or ‘What are we to wear?’ All these things the pagans seek. Your heavenly Father knows that you need them all. But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things will be given you besides. Do not worry about tomorrow; tomorrow will take care of itself. Sufficient for a day is its own evil.”



And again, in a less grating passage (Matthew, 11, 28-30):



“Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble of heart; and you will find rest for yourselves. For my yoke is easy and my burden light.”



Again, I am among the world’s worst violators of Jesus’ admonition not to give into worry and to accept His message of joy and hope in this world; like many people, but probably to a greater extent, I tend to stew in the negative and focus on what could go wrong. The good news is that Jesus is very forgiving. The better news is that, if we truly accept what we profess to believe, eternal life starts NOW, if we haven’t let it start already. This life is not the gauntlet we must endure, the valley of tears we must traverse, to get to the good stuff. If we truly accept the gift of life God offers us, this life on earth can be one of joy and fulfillment…and the transition to the next phase of our eternal lives will be that much easier.



But, ironically, it’s hard…very hard…to accept the message that life here can be, indeed is intended to be, a life of joy and fulfillment. (Much of that is because we seek joy and fulfillment in the wrong things, but that is grist for another mill.) And most of us have, in relative terms, very nice lives. How hard must it be for those for whom life presents challenges we can’t even imagine?



But God is forgiving and, unlike us, does not get frustrated or discouraged. He just continues to offer us eternal life, beginning NOW, and waits patiently for us to accept it. He’ll wait until we join Him in heaven for us to accept it, but He wishes we wouldn’t wait that long.

YOU MEAN NON-CHRISTIANS DON’T GET TO COME TO HEAVEN?

11/14/12




One of the most reassuring, yet troubling, verses in the New Testament is John 14,6. Jesus is at the Last Supper with His disciples and is giving delivering His, if you will, farewell address, which covers chapters 14-17. Early in Jesus’s musings, in an effort to reassure His disciples, He says (14, 3-4):



“And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back again and take you to myself, so that where I am you also may be. Where I am going, you know the way.”

Thomas (who gets the undeserved rap as “Doubting Thomas,” partially for this inquiry but more for his very understandable attitude after Jesus’s resurrection, which will serve as grist for another mill) says (14,5):



“Master, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?”



Then comes the zinger in 14,6:



“I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”



This, along with a much less well known passage in the letter to the Hebrews (7, 25):



Therefore, he is always able to save those who approach God through him, since he lives forever to make intercession for them. (Emphasis mine)



is great news, from an almost selfish point of view, for those of us who follow Christ, or at least try to follow Christ. But it’s perplexing, indeed impossible, to think that God shuts the proverbial gates of heaven to those who are not Christians, i.e., who do not come to God through His Son. This simply cannot be; God cannot exclude the vast majority of His children from His eternal presence; what father, let alone our ultimate Father, would do that?



I have heard two interpretations for John 14,6 that fully take into account God’s equal love for all His children, Christian and non-Christian alike. I can take credit for neither; I simply have heard them both and am simply reporting, and perhaps interpreting a bit, what I have heard.



The first is that the word “through” positions Jesus as the gate through Whom we must pass to enter eternal life. We don’t have to live as Christians in order to gain eternal life; we only must pass final muster, in a sense, with Him. We have to come through the gate of Jesus to enter heaven. This explanation might be consistent with Jesus’s proclamation in John 10,7-9 that



“Amen, Amen, I say to you, I am the gate for the sheep…Whoever enters through me will be saved.”



But it isn’t entirely satisfying.



A much better explanation is we, as Christians, believe as a basic, indeed THE basic, tenet of our faith that Christ is God. In John 14, 10, Jesus says



“…I am in the Father and the Father is in me.”



If Jesus is in the Father and the Father is in Him, Jesus is indeed God. So all who seek God, in whatever way, seek Jesus. Consequently, they are coming to the Father through Jesus; they approach God, who is Jesus, through Jesus, who is God. Put simply, Jesus is God so all who love and follow God love Jesus. This follows so naturally from the basis of our faith that it seems the perfect explanation for a very troubling, in some ways, passage, rendering that passage the reassuring message of love that God intended it to be.

A GHOSTLY TALE FROM ST. LUKE?

11/9/12




You can often find passages in the Bible that are especially intriguing, and not necessarily for reasons having to do directly with the subject matter. One passage that has always fascinated me is Luke’s recounting of Jesus’ (apparently) third meeting with His disciples after His resurrection. Luke recounts that, after Jesus appeared to the disciples gathered in the upper room and greeting them with “Peace be with you,”

But they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, “Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see that I have.” Luke 24, 37-39, New American Bible



Notice that Jesus did not say, in response to the disciples’ initial thought that they were seeing a ghost, “There are no such things as ghosts.” No. He said



“Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see that I have.”



Was Jesus effectively saying that there are such things as ghosts, but that He wasn’t one of them, that He had been resurrected, body and soul? Maybe Jesus’ almost ancillary protestations that He was not a ghost are nothing and I am reading entirely too much into this, but note that Jesus was always very careful in choosing His words, as were the Gospel writers, perhaps, after John, especially Luke.



Do I believe in ghosts? Probably not. But what I will think about and consider is a considerably broader range of topics and phenomena than what I will believe. I have never seen a ghost and, probably, neither have most of you. But I would be willing to say with near certainty that some of you, and other people I know, have seen ghosts, or at least think you, or they, have seen ghosts.



The important message in this passage of Luke, and of the whole Gospel, is that Jesus did indeed rise, body and soul, and, through faith in Him, we, too, will rise to join Him in heaven. His comments regarding ghosts are at the very most ancillary to His message, and indeed may have been said entirely to reinforce the reality of His bodily resurrection. But why did He say, effectively, “I am not a ghost” rather than “C’mon; there are no such things as ghosts”?



Intriguing, to say the least.