Epiphany 2 Year C

Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.

John 2:1-11

I think it’s probably a safe bet that most people don’t have six stone jars inside their house capable of holding 20 to 30 gallons of water.  In First Century Israel, however, this wouldn’t have been quite so uncommon, especially if you were relatively wealthy. John tells us that these six stone jars were for use in the purification rites that all good and faithful people of Israel were expected to perform quite regularly.

I understand that purity isn’t a word we often use anymore in association with religious rituals, but the concept of purity was nonetheless pervasive in Jesus’ day.

Things and people were either pure or impure. . . clean or unclean. . . accepted or rejected.  One might simply be born to the wrong parents, or be in the wrong occupation, or suffer from physical disease through no fault of their own, and as a result, such people were likely destined to live out their lives clearly stamped as unclean!

 It was enough of a concern that some Biblical scholars speak of the Politics of Purity when describing the social structure of First Century Israel.  Biblical scholar Marcus Borg contends that Jesus challenged the politics of purity and advocated instead for the politics of compassion.

Where one was on the economic scale was also seen as an indicator of how one measured up. Most First Century Palestinians under Roman rule were peasants, including Jesus of Nazareth, so you might guess where that left them on the purity scale.

Of course, it helped considerably to be born a man because men were considered to be higher on the purity scale and therefore more socially acceptable than women. One would think this idea would have disappeared by the Twenty-First Century, but as I follow the current political discourse, it seems alive and well in some quarters.

Today, many churches have stepped up to the plate on this issue, and we now know that we cannot claim to follow Jesus Christ without also following the law of equality and justice for women, indeed for all people. 

As we read through the Gospels, we find that Jesus chooses to include women among his disciples, and even among his close advisors. He also invited a Tax Collector to join his inner circle as well as a number of men who spent most of their day in boats wading in fish guts and untangling slimy nets.

I’m certain that if these appointments had needed confirmation in the U.S. Senate, not a single one would have been approved, but the rejected ones always win approval with Jesus, and he had picked his cabinet. 

 As we read this week’s Gospel, we find that it is Inauguration 

Day for Jesus, and the Inaugural Ball turns out to be a wedding bash in a town called Cana about 9 miles west of Nazareth. I have been to present day Cana. It’s a quiet, sleepy little town, but Jesus is in town and it’s about to wake up! Jesus didn’t plan on this being inauguration day, but things can change fast when your chief of staff is a Jewish mother!

The bride and groom find themselves in an embarrassing situation. They have run out of wine. Now at a First Century Jewish wedding this isn’t just an inconvenience, it’s not just a matter of, Oh well, we’re out of wine, does anyone want sparkling cider? Wedding Feasts lasted for days, and running out of wine would have been a social catastrophe.

John sees this as an opportunity to show us, right up front in his Gospel, that this Jesus is not going to be like any prophet that has come before him.

A Reformed Jewish Rabbi once told me that when he is asked which person in the Bible he would most like to meet, he always answers Jesus. When I asked him why, he said, Because Jesus was the first reformed Jew.

Jesus equates purity and perfection with compassion, and he intends to show compassion on the wedding couple at this feast. And so, Jesus looks around the room, and he spots them. Six stone jars that were used for the prescribed purity washing rituals; six stone jars that represent the politics of purity. These were six stone jars that have become symbols of all that is out of balance in the social world at the time of Jesus.

We should note that John bothers to tell us that those jars were empty. John’s Gospel is full of symbolism. He didn’t just throw that little factoid in there to fill space.

I believe those empty stone jars symbolize the emptiness of a world that polarizes itself around notions of who is in and who is out, who is perfect and who is imperfect, who is acceptable and who isn’t.  They symbolize a reality that is still as pervasive among us in the Twenty-First Century as it was in the First Century.

If you’re tempted to think that I’m creating a straw man here and that all of this purity stuff only happens in the long past annals of history, think again.  In my own Anglican tradition some time back, Presiding Bishops of the various member churches of the world-wide Anglican Communion gathered in Canterbury Cathedral and voted to sanction the Episcopal Church for a period of three years. My own church was threatened with the possibility of no longer representing the Anglican Communion on ecumenical and interfaith bodies.

They preferred to soften the blow by using the word consequencesrather than sanctions, but if it walks like a duck and sounds like a duck. . . 

They exacted these sanctions to scold the American Church for our being so audacious as to work toward full inclusion of the LGBTQ community into the life and ministry of the Episcopal Church by officiating at their weddings and including them among all orders of the professional ordained ministry.

Now, practically, this means very little because the Episcopal Church is an autonomous church that follows the guidance of the Holy Spirit, and we have and will continue to make all our decisions regarding polity and doctrine accordingly. However, our own Presiding Bishop was as disappointed in this action as the rest of us in the church.

The ones that are hurt by this are LGBTQ Anglicans, especially in those countries where there is tremendous bigotry and hatred already. They have been through enough, and this part of the Body of Christ we call the Episcopal Church in the United States was deeply saddened by this, and can only promise to redouble our efforts toward inclusive love on their behalf. I’m sure that even those who read this reflection who are not members of the Episcopal Church have had similar experiences.

The Politics of Purity is alive and well, and we need to pray all the harder to bring it down. It’s always a tragedy when religion is catalytic in structuring a society of winners and losers and when we make this structuring the center of our religion.

In my opinion, too many Christians have spent far too many hours in church councils debating over who ISN’T welcome at the Communion Table, instead of trying to figure out how we can help everyone feel welcome enough to make their way to the Eucharistic table.

The miracle of new wine in our Gospel this week, represents a promise to inaugurate a new world that celebrates the perfection of compassion, not the politics of purity. As it turns out, the closest that any of us can come to perfection is when we embrace compassion and disavow the emptiness of social rejection.  

Only compassion can turn ordinary water into the wine of divinity.