Text: John 2:1-11
Prayer
O Lord support us all the day long of this troublous life
Until the shadows lengthen
And the evening comes
And the busy world is hushed
And the fever of life is over
And our work is done
Then in thy mercy
Grant us a safe lodging
And a holy rest
And peace at the last
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Ancient Thresholds and Identity Crises
A long time ago, in a foreign land, there lived a group ofwomen and men, followers of Jesus, who endured a change of identity. The landwas Turkey (perhaps the city of Ephesus), the time was 100 years after Jesus’death, and the group of people made up the church that gave us the Gospel ofJohn. This gospel came to life in their worship, as a venerable preacher,perhaps named John, presented sermons week by week, that were meant to help themendure their time of change, their transition, their crossing of a greatthreshold.
Crossing a threshold is a frightening experience. We mayassume that many of the thresholds crossed in John’s church are thresholds wetoo have known. Ask any young mother about giving birth for the first time.Speak with one of our teenagers today about growing up in the land of lust andgreed, one who, like Jesus in this passage, is creating some emotional distancefrom his parent. Are there adults among us, moving into employment, moving outof relationships, moving on to another stage, moving out on your own? Theseliminal moments come with a cost.
Today’s Gospel presents us Jesus immersed in thatquintessential liminal event, a wedding feast through which, walking or carried,two people cross over the threshold into a new existence. The ancient preachercannot have selected this setting by accident. In order to teach his troubledchurch about human courage and divine presence during transition, he painted awedding portrait. John’s church was itself in great need of courage andpresence during transition. For this small group of followers of Jesus wasenduring a great identity crisis. They were moving away from their mother. Nottheir mother tongue, and not their mother land, and not their birth mother. Theywere moving away from the synagogue, their mother culture and mother religion.All of this Gospel is written against the backdrop of a great and exceedinglypainful exodus, a movement "out of the synagogue".
John’s beleaguered friends were being thrown out of thesynagogue that had been their home, their nest, and their source of identity.For a time, their twin loyalties to Moses and Jesus had been tolerated. Then,for reasons unknown, they were forced to choose: Moses or Jesus. They came to adoorstep wide enough for their future but not wide enough for their past. Theycame of age, as people, moving away from the homey and happy comfort of Moses,their mother, and moving on to a new, open, and frightening future with Jesus,their brother. They moved away from familiar regimen, on out into a land ofrelationship. They had to sever and sunder, we can imagine, many close ties andintimate bonds. This gospel is written for and by a group of people who oncewere Christian Jews, and now are Jewish Christians. So it is a gospel thatspeaks with great power to all of us who are leaving a familiar past and movinginto an unknown future. I wonder if there are many here today, who are leaving afamiliar past and moving into an unknown future?
Each of the seven signs in the first half of the Gospelformed the heart of a sermon in that ancient church. The fourth gospel is astitched together series of sermons. Today Jesus changes massive amounts ofwater into wine. The water of the past is changed, by his presence, into thewine of the new future. He rebukes his own past, embodied by his mother. Healters the Jewish custom for purification, bringing the wine of relationshipforward, and pushing back the water of purification and religious ritual. Hesteps forward, and announces his presence and power right in the midst ofserious transition, liminal change, the crossing of a great threshold.
To announce this one saving presence, the ancient preacherrelates again an old story of Jesus’ power. Jesus presence in the middle ofexistential transition is unmistakable, he says. Why look at the great jars ofwater, he exhorts. And see the gallons of wine produced, he exclaims. It isunmistakable, unmistakable, he asserts—Jesus is with us, powerfully so, as wecross these scary thresholds of intimacy, of identity, of relationship and ofmortality.
I wonder…will we today hear in the Gospel a promise ofpresence that we can trust as we cross the thresholds of life?
Marital Threshold: A Longing for Intimacy
For instance, along the back roads and blue highways of ourland there lurks a hunger for intimacy.
Ironically, our very restlessness, which is the hallmark ofour history, our trek from Atlantic to Pacific over mountain and through forestbattling nature and the native peoples subduing waterways and carving faces ingreat mountain cliffs mapping a continent by dint of sheer restless energy andwill and determination, this restlessness impedes our approach to intimacy.
There is resistance in intimacy, and there is embrace too.Through all the anonymous dog eat dog and devil take the hindmost homo hominilupus crushing competition of the global village which moves some fromwelfare to work and others from welfare to death and some from home to thefarthest coast, still there survives, like a flower pushing through asphalt, alonging for intimacy.
You may be crossing the threshold of marriage this year. Asone carries another across the doorstep, the restless energy of anonymity meetsthe embrace of intimacy, for our hearts are restless until they find their restin intimacy, presence and love. There is a depth of human courage and a heightof divine presence across the threshold of intimacy. Remember that when youdisagree about money, or when you jostle one another in sexual love, or when youharbor different religious hopes, or when your mother or mother in law pointsout the lack of appropriate beverages. Christ is crossing the threshold withyou. Just here, he manifests his glory!
Developmental Threshold: The Crucible of A New Identity
I hope that the church of the future will make wide space for20 year olds. There is a new culture within our culture, new in the lastgeneration, made up of young adults twentysomething and on their own, muchlarger and much longer lived and much needier than their counterparts of 1975.Amid volleyball and rollerblading, connected by instant messenger and e-mail,alert and real and skeptical, your children and mine are crossing adevelopmental threshold, forging a new identity in the crucible of youth.
The novels of CP Snow, oddly, capture a similar moment inBritish culture of the 1950’s and 60’s. It is a new occasion, teaching usnew duties, a time that makes ancient good uncouth.
For a decade I have seen this wave pound in upon the shore ofcollege classrooms. One student spoke about her decision to return to church andto worship in a little catholic church every week. "There are only oldpeople and children there—you know. (After a moment I realized that she had mepresent as one of those two, and not the latter. Like the day you can no longerread the phone book, it is another kind of threshold)…They don’t speak to mevery much but they begin to notice me in the same pew, and I see the same olderpeople and the same children, and I feel a part of something now that I havereturned to my faith…that is the hardest part of being 25 in this city, justmeeting up with other people…its harder to do than in my small town…
She named her hometown. What great small town names there arein this empire state: Great Bend, Chasm Falls, Owls Head, Mountainview, WolfPond, Natural Bridge, Black River, Oswegatchie, Madrid, Barnes Corners, ColdBrook, Dugway, Grindstone Island, Horseheads, North Bangor, Point Rock, PrattsHollow, Sheds, Starkey, Wilawana, Middlesex, Eagle Harbor, Indian Falls, QuakerRoad, Chautauqua, Irondequoit, Ischua, Short Tract, Hemlock, Rush—andevery one has a little church or two in it, sending young adults into a newidentity, forged in the crucible of young adulthood. Christ is crossing thethreshold with you. Just here, he manifests his glory.
A Millenial Threshold: Religion Becomes Relationship
It may be that the Fourth Gospel was compiled after thesecond grief and glory, not the cross of Christ, but the death in great old ageof John the beloved disciple. This towering figure had guided the church out ofJudaism and into Christianity. So the stone jars in today’s reading representthe religious quest for purity which has been transformed to the wine of love inthe person of Christ. From Christian Jews to Jewish Christians.
This text speaks bluntly to us today.
It reminds us to watch for relationship first. We are movingfrom the water of ritual to the wine of relationship! We are moving from thewater of regimen to the wine of relationship! We are moving from the water ofreligion to the wine of relationship! KOINONIA!
Unamuno: Warmth, warmth, warmth! We are dying of cold notof darkness. It is not the night that kills but the frost. The darkness oftheological uncertainty we can handle. It is the cold of relational clumsinessthat kills.
In your leadership at Asbury First, are you a ChristianAsburyite, or are you becoming an Asbury First Christian? It makes a difference,which noun and which adjective. Watch for relationship first. We do not importall of the ways of the world here, all of the forms of corporate organizationhere, all the speech of the culture here. We are Christians, not Asburyites. Soto some modes of discourse, some coercive styles of leadership, some bottom lineharshness, some worldly wisdom, we say at the threshold: "Abandon all hope,ye who enter here." That may work at Kodak, but this is not Kodak.
In our denominational conferencing, are we ChristianMethodists, or are we becoming Methodist Christians? It makes a difference whichis the noun and which is the adjective. Watch for relationship first. Thereneeds to be space, in our great church, both for "them"—the currentmajority, and for "us"—the emergent majority. There needs to bespace, in Cleveland, both for the conservatives who will have the votes thistime around, and for the liberals who will have the votes in 2008. We are movingout of religion and into relationship, if we hear today’s gospel. Let us becareful stewards of lasting friendships, especially with those who thinkotherwise than we. That may work in Washington, but Cleveland is not Washington,and we are Christians first, whatever pile of adjectives we later add.
In our life in Christ in the new millenium, are the followersof Jesus attentive, really attentive to relationship? When we talk about newspace, are we talking about new relational space? When we talk about newworship, are we talking about new relationships emerging? When we talk about newstaff, are we talking about new relational advances? In our common life, dopeople come first, or are we really interested in ideas, meetings, music,history, architecture, philosophy, and power? When Jesus comes, will he beimpressed with tambourines in worship in a land teeming with poor children?There was a time, call it 1965, when Christian Americans may have harbored lessinternal existential conflict between the substantive and the modifier, the nounand the adjective. But this is a new age. Like the new age behind the Gospel ofJohn. You are being asked, you Christian Americans, you are being invited todayto become American Christians. In fact, much of the turmoil of our churchlife, near and far, may simply be due to this millenial threshold. Today you areAmericans, Christian Americans. But you are becoming a new creation, AmericanChristians. Christ is crossing the threshold with you. Just here, hemanifests his glory.
A Final Threshold
Every threshold crossed prepares us for another that awaitsus. "My hour has not yet come… So he manifested his glory"…References for the preacher and church to the hour of glory—the cross. It ishard to know the meaning of hurt and struggle across many thresholds. Nor is itoverly helpful to misidentify such meaning. There is great, unexplained hurt inlife.
We do learn, though, through liminal moments, the power ofhuman courage and divine presence. Crossing one threshold prepares us to crossanother. And crossing that other prepares us to cross a third. And… Someinchoate presence gives the courage of intimacy, and we move on…Some mysticalpresence gives the courage of identity and we move on…Some uncanny presencegives the courage of real relationship and we move on.
Every one of the liminal foothills ascended prepares us forthe great mountain ahead. Every one of the liminal sandbars crossed prepares usfor the great ocean ahead.
Sunset and evening star
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crossed the bar.
Jesus adorns by his presence every single threshold, butevery single one prepares us for the last. And this may be some of the hiddenmeaning in every liminal struggle, every one a covert meditatio mortis,every one a foreshadowing of the cross of Jesus, every one a preparation for thefinal horizon.
We live as if we were temporarily immortal. So we findnothing odd in our relentless restlessness, our anxious activity. So we canforget we are human beings and become human doings.
And then we may be brought up short. A couple dies in murdersuicide, over the threshold of intimacy. A pair of Emilys, college studentsabroad, die over the threshold of identity. A 53- year old dies jogging (Margiehas gone to do her cousin’s funeral), over the threshold of relationship.There is a kind of shadow that hovers over the doorsteps of life.
Looming inside that shadow there stands the magisterialpresence of Christ. Christ is crossing the threshold with you. Just here, hemanifests his glory. And as we face the final threshold, we may do so, you maydo so, confident. You have crossed other thresholds and been inspired by humancourage and divine presence. Why should this last be any different? You haveentered other doorsteps and been inspired by human courage and divine presence.Why should this last be any different?
You believe in God…Believe also in me…In my father’shouse there are many rooms…I go to prepare a place for you, that where I amyou may be also…
All of this and more, thankfully, has been poetically statedin the most disturbing and inspiring film of our time, The Cider House Rules.
Intimacy, identity, relationship, life and death—they areall here, potently propounded. And yet what lingers, at least for this viewer,out of the shadow of that film, is the cadence of the evening prayer, offeredfor the princes of Maine and the kings of New England. And aren’t all ourprayers, prayers of the evening?
O Lord support us all the day long of this troublous life
Until the shadows lengthen
And the evening comes
And the busy world is hushed
And the fever of life is over
And our work is done
Then in thy mercy
Grant us a safe lodging
And a holy rest
And peace at the last
Through Jesus Christ our Lord.
No comments:
Post a Comment