One time on the way back from visiting our college mentor Noel King in Watsonville, a friend and I took the mountain road over the hill past Mount Madonna and into the countryside west of Gilroy. We pulled up short at a crossroads. There was a Mexican wedding celebration in progress and it filled the intersection … with music, laughter, food, and joy. We gladly pulled over and paused to take in the sights and sounds of the festivities before us. Yes, there was a mariachi band. As a singer friend of mine once said, when you hear mariachi music, you should have a beer in your hand.
Maybe at a mariachi wedding mass...
48 years ago my cousin was getting married. Before the wedding the groom's brother and I drove across town to pick up the keg. Since it was a long drive Lonnie stopped to pick up a six-pack so we wouldn't get thirsty. We made it, there and back again. The wedding ceremony itself was a small affair; one less person and I'd've been best man.
The party however was in the front yard of the shop, Blue Ox Millworks. The band set up on the back of a gooseneck trailer. And we made it through the keg. I guess if we'd run out Lonnie and I would've been back across town to get another one. Maybe less expensive.
Because as we know, everybody serves the good stuff first, and once taste buds are coarsened, you can fill in with Old English 800, Burgie, or two-buck Chuck.
The point is not the beer, or the wine. Maybe it's the party. We celebrated. Something joyous was happening - and has kept on happening ever since.
There was definitely something to celebrate in that little hillside town in Galilee that day. And there was no reason to stop, if the refreshments held out.
A wedding is the beginning of a brave adventure.
A Palestinian winemaker recently explained to a reporter why he’d named one of his new wines “Grapes of Wrath”: “The vineyard (in the middle of the West Bank) reminded me of the book by Steinbeck,” he said. “The delusion of opportunity on one hand, the resilience and the transforming of pain into opportunity.”
[https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/11/dining/drinks/palestinian-winemaker.html]
Marriage has many pains, as Dr. Johnson said, but celibacy has no joys.
Friends invited me to their Jewish-tradition wedding service, at the Camp Fire Girls headquarters in San Francisco. Under the shade of the huppah, they exchanged vows, and then stomped on a glass.
The Talmud says, “Mar bar Rabina made a marriage feast for his son. He observed that the rabbis present were very gay. So he seized an expensive goblet worth 400 zuzim and broke it before them. Thus he made them sober. (Berakhot 5:2 )”
In other words, it has been said, where there is rejoicing, there should be trembling.
[https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/breaking-the-glass-at-a-jewish-wedding/]
We know the trembling as well as the rejoicing. If we have been to a wedding, we know.
The Massacre of the Innocents, ordered by the king soon after Jesus’ birth, was just the beginning, of the suffering that he, and his Mother, would know in his lifetime.
But weddings are the celebration that reminds us of the Song of Songs, in which we sing that love is strong, strong as death.
Set me as a seal upon your heart,
as a seal upon your arm;
for love is strong as death….
(Song of Solomon 8:6)
The jars were empty; Jesus had them filled. Israel had come to the end of a long road. John was the last and greatest prophet of the old. New had come. The witness of Mary began the celebration.
There was definitely something to celebrate in that little hillside town in Galilee that day. But of course there was something more going on. Something bigger. But somehow the same... in a couple of ways. There was something to celebrate, and the best wine, held till now, was certainly appropriate.
For at last and already time was coming to its fulfillment. In a simple town, in a smalltown wedding, among friends, the Messiah revealed himself. This was the first sign he performed in the village of Cana, in Galilee. He'd be back soon, and he'd heal a royal official's son. Who wasn't even there. He was down the hill by the lakeshore, an eight-hour hike away, past Tabgha, at Capernaum. Jesus just said to the man, ‘Go; your son will live.’ The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. (John 4:50-51) A second sign.
Is this small-town stuff? A wedding banquet is saved, a boy gets well.
Or are these the beginning of something great? These were the first two signs, in Cana, and eventually, the time for signs would disappear. But before it did, Jesus held up a cup of wine at another banquet, and said something unexpected (or dreaded): This is my blood shed for you, and for many, for the forgiveness of sins.
And soon enough it would not be a sign anymore, not a pointer to anything beyond itself, for Jesus' blood would indeed be shed, and if it pointed to anything, it pointed to itself, to the outpouring of love by God in that moment, and in all moments.
There was a wedding, a bringing together, a joining of two into one. And then there was a bigger banquet, where we were made one with God, in the wine, in the food, in the death, in the resurrected life, of the one who, unexpectedly, became the life of the party, and the reason to celebrate.
In Galilee at that time it was almost an act of defiance to have a wedding. Maybe in some ways it always is: for love is strong as death; Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it. (Song of Songs 8:6-7)
And the forces of death will be vanquished, in that very cup and that very bread, shared and broken, that at this first banquet and that last supper showed that in him was life, this life was the light of all people, and the darkness has not and cannot overcome it. (John 1:4, 5)
So - extra wine? A second keg? Or a crack in the midst of something ordinary, so that the light got in and shone upon us, showing us the truth that is beyond and behind every occasion of joy: the presence of the joyous one in our midst, hidden or revealed, that is God with us.
Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh, you have
caused a new light to shine in our hearts, to give the
knowledge of your glory in the face of your Son Jesus Christ
our Lord.
CEpiphany2 2025
Episcopal Church of Christ the King, Tucson.
Saturday 18 January 2025, 6pm
Sunday 19 January 2025, 8 & 10:30am
• Isaiah 62:1-5
• 1 Corinthians 12:1-11
• John 2:1-11
• Psalm 36:5-10
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ's glory, that he may be known, worshipped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
