COME FILL THE LOCKDOWN CUP
A letter of cheer to the faithful (and the unfaithful for that matter)
The gospel story of the wedding at Cana in Galilee is a very familiar and popular one. Like a great many other priests( I imagine), I usually read it and talk about it at actual weddings which I conduct. You can always raise a laugh, or at least a smile, by expressing the hope that the booze won’t run out at the reception down the road and pointing out that, if it does, it would have been a good idea to make sure Jesus was on the guest list………..
I also love the verse His mother said to the servants “Do whatever he tells you.” My goodness me, what wonderful advice to each one of us for all occasions from the Mother of God.
Best of all, we actually get a joke – jokes are fairly thin on the ground in the New Testament as opposed to the Old.
After Jesus has performed the miracle, the head waiter remonstrates with the bridegroom: What’s going on? We’re supposed to serve the good wine first and then start serving the plonk when everybody’s too sloshed to notice the difference!
But let’s get down to serious business.
The gospel says what Jesus is doing here is performing the first of His SIGNS whereby He REVEALS HIS GLORY.
What is this first sign supposed to signify, to tell us?
Well. There’s a lot of stuff in the bible about wedding feasts in the grand sense (not just a common or garden village wedding reception where Mary and Jesus happen to be guests).
The Old Testament prophets sometimes talk about the relationship between God and His people Israel as being a love affair in which the people are unfaithful by flirting with other “gods”. When they repent and return, God is so overjoyed that He “marries” them and there is a heavenly banquet to celebrate. The New Testament talks about Jesus being married to His church and again there are images of heavenly banquets. (Drag them in from the hedgerows if necessary to fill the dining hall etc)
Then you get verses in which the “new wine” stands for the new life under the new covenant in the Kingdom. And don’t put into old wineskins (Mark 2.19-22) because they will burst and the new wine will be spilt. This clearly means the old petty regulations of the Pharisees can’t contain Jesus’s new message.
And now to the greatest words of today’s gospel: the head waiter, picking a bone with the bridegroom, says BUT YOU HAVE KEPT THE GOOD WINE UNTIL NOW.
How true!! The beautiful wine of the new kingdom has been kept until the plonk of the Pharisees has been used up. NOW LET JOY ABOUND. THE FINEST WINE HAS ARRIVED AND THERE’S MORE THAN ENOUGH OF IT! Just like there was heaps left over after the feeding of the 5000. The message is loud and clear. God is spendthrift. He’s overflowing with blessings and generosity. And we should be too.
But we’re not, are we?
God wants the children of the poor to receive second helpings of the most tasty free school meals but His way is to rely on us to do His will. And what happens?
The government subcontracts to a miserly private company which sees an opportunity to sell people short for a profit. And it takes a young football star who himself grew up poor and deprived to shame them.
The following picture is of a week’s supply for one child. The whole basket would cost £5.22 in Asda. Public funds were charged £30.
God does not stint or penny-pinch with His love and the “sign” of the water-into-wine is there to prove it.
I mean, just look at the scale of the thing.
Six monster jars of purification water, each holding 20 gallons. So you’re looking at 60 or 70 cases of wine - that is, the best part of 1000 bottles.
This is getting silly. Enough wine not just to get the flagging reception going again but to drown the whole village. More wine than you would be able to bring back in a people carrier from a Calais hypermarket once that is possible again.
We are always being told that religion is being sidelined in our society. One of the saddest consequences of this is idolatrous worship of the market economy. Hence the appalling business of the free school meal packages.
Imagine if the school-meal subcontractors had done the catering for the wedding reception at Cana for a competitive fixed price per head. Each guest would have had to produce a pre-paid voucher entitling him or her to a half-full plastic glass of warm white plonk, and a stale egg sandwich.
But we musn’t give up on the human race, even in a capitalist society. Just look at the NHS in the Covid crisis. Doctors, nurses and paramedics are exhausted, overworked and understaffed. They are just about coping. Just about.
And yet, praise God, they are still capable under great stress of acts of spontaneous and uncalculated kindness and self-sacrifice.
My friend the bass player Ron Mathewson who sadly died in hospital of Covid had been given the most moving love and care under near-impossible conditions. When his consultant found out from his cousin that he was a famous jazz musician, the staff actually went out to find jazz tracks to play by his bedside while he was in a coma in case they might elicit a response.
There you have a shining example defiantly outside the miserable machine of the calculating market place, of those gospel values which Our Lord teaches us by signs.
Echoes in the human heart of those promptings in God Himself to get His wallet out and not to count the cost.
We know only too well, if we will only stop to remember, that our God is a God who would drive a celestial accountant or budget caterer to despair.
What a catalogue of imprudence the New Testament reveals:
the shepherd who would take a wholly uneconomic amount of time looking for one lost sheep
· the ruinous amount the master of the house was prepared to write off as a debt owed to himself
· the joyful dash by the old farmer to embrace and forgive his errant younger son and kill the best fatted calf for him
the crackpot prodigality of the winegrower who paid a full day’s wages to labourers who had only worked one hour.
And what about the signs given by the one who was God in human form?
The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised…………………..
Free healing. Unconditional forgiveness. God with His chequebook open hoping against hope that He can love us into being like Him, into giving of ourselves to others without counting the cost.
But remember it is only with God’s help that we can make that breakthrough. This letter will be as weak as water unless God blesses it. But if He does, my words just might be turned into the wine of consolation or of inspiration, according to your needs.
And God can and will give a sign of His extravagant, inebriating love for others through your watery life, if you let Him!
BOTTOMS UP!