“Do whatever he tells you.”
John’s gospel is not like the other four gospels at all;
it is a completely different genre of gospel.
It is rich in symbolism and in layered meanings
like irony and double meaning.
In John’s gospel, miracles are not called miracles;
they are called “signs.”
For the entire of the gospel of John, there are only seven signs.
Today’s sign is the first of the seven signs.
Even the number seven is a reminder of symbolism,
because “seven” in Roman numerology was the perfect number,
since “3” was a divine number and “4” the earthly number.
Heaven and earth together made “7” so it was the whole number.
Seven signs was another way of saying “all the signs necessary.”
It was the perfect amount of signs.
Signs point to something and symbols represent something.
To really to get to the meaning of this gospel,
we must break it open a little bit and un-layer it,
to find out what is really going on.
Bear with me for this first part of the homily
so we can get to the richer, deeper meaning that is going on here.
First of all, it talks about a wedding feast
but we do not know whose it is; not bride nor bridegroom.
I don’t know about you
but generally we do not talk about weddings
without talking about whose wedding it was.
As a result we immediately get a clue that it is symbolic;
it is not about the wedding but it is about what it is representing.
The symbolism! In ancient Israel time,
the marriage was a symbol of the relationship
between God and his people; God and Israel.
We heard this in the first reading with the prophet Isaiah,
calling the Israelites the “espoused” and they are a delight to God.
This wedding is a symbol of God’s relationship to his people.
The second thing is the wine.
Wine equals joy.
I know that may be true in reality;
with a little bit extra wine, you get a little bit joyful.
In the biblical representation, wine equals joy.
When Mary says there is no more wine;
or we are running short of wine,
she is saying is that the relationship between God and his people
is running out of joy.
Jesus initially responds to Mary
“What does that have to do with me?”
because he was thinking of the first level
and then he thinks about the second level and acknowledges the need;
then gives an abundance of wine, abundance of joy.
Now let’s do the numbers here for a second:
6 jars are 20-30 gallons of wine.
That is between 120 to 180 gallons of wine.
Put that in bottle-terms for us who might be thinking of bottles.
That is between 600 and 800 bottles of wine.
I do not know about you but that would bring a lot of joy.
Even if there are 300 guests,
that is still 2 to 3 bottles per person after they have had the wine.
This is at the end of the party! Wow!
If we were at a dinner for 10 and I came in and said,
“Oh, I’ve just got a little extra wine and brought in 2 cases of wine.”
And it was the best wine.
You’d say “Whoa, that’s great.”
The idea here in the symbolism is that there is an abundance.
It’s an outrageous, an abundance amount of joy that God gives to us.
And that is what he wants to shower us with
and it comes to us in and through Jesus.
This is Jesus announcing his ministry to the world;
that he comes to bring joy to the world and that the people,
we, now are the people who are espoused.
We are the Church.
We are the bride.
Jesus is the bridegroom and
we are called to commit to this relationship.
That is the theology and it is really rich.
We just get focused on the surface of it.
We are not really getting down to the depth of where
John, the Evangelist, wants us to go.
So that is all great but what does that mean for us?
How does that apply to us?
The key to this is the second reading.
We are called to be joy-filled in this relationship with God
and in our relationship with Jesus.
How can we be joy-filled?
The precursor to be joy-filled is to be gratitude-filled;
that we are grateful for all that we have.
We cannot be grateful unless we can feel the love God has for us
and so it comes back to this
in the second reading from Paul’s letter to the Corinthians
in which he says God showers us with gifts.
Again, it goes back to this abundance of gifts.
Remember, the Corinthian community was a secular community,
a non-Christian environment.
We are probably a more religious environment than they were.
Also we often see ourselves and the gifts that we have
as gifts given to just us.
Paul says “No, the gifts are not just for you.
They are for the whole.
They are for the whole community and beyond.”
Beyond just the religious community and for the whole community.
And so he goes through a whole list of gifts that people have.
To put that into prospective for example:
Tamami, who plays the piano here every week,
her gift of her piano playing is not given for her.
It is given to her not for the sake of just for us
but given to her for the whole community and beyond St. Simons.
And the children’s voices who can sing,
those gifts are not given to you kids;
they are given to you for all the benefit of us.
If they just played in a room on their own
there would be no benefit to anyone.
But when they sing with us and we hear it
then the joy in our heart is from sharing in that joy.
Being grateful is recognizing the gifts that we have
and using those gifts for others.
We all have different gifts but we need to hear what Paul has to say
as it is really, really important:
Every single one of us has been given gifts.
There is nobody who has not been given gifts.
Now I know some of you may say,
“I’m too old. I haven’t discovered my gift.”
You have a gift.
You may be late in discovering it but you have a gift.
Whether it is a gift of just a listening heart;
today we need people who are willing to listen.
We’ve got lots of talking and not a lot of listening going on.
Maybe you have a gift of being able to smile or let people laugh.
What a gift that is to be able to bring laughter.
Don’t we need a little bit more laughter and joy in our world?
There are a multitude of gifts but we need to stop and pray
and find out what the gifts are
that God has given to me for the good of all;
and then we are called to share
because that sharing of it is where the joy comes alive.
Let me put it a different way.
I am sure we have heard of a group called “Doctors Without Borders.”
They are doctors who give up their time
and they literally go across international borders
to reach out to people in far flung countries
often torn by religious strife or war;
or all sorts of other stuff.
They use their gifts of medicine and surgery
to bring people healing gifts
that they never otherwise would have access to.
There is another group called Magicians Without Borders.
You might think “That’s a strange group. What would they do?”
They go into Refugee Camps and they do magic.
You might say “How is that a gift?”
Their motto is that of the Great Houdini
“make the impossible possible” and they give people hope!
If you are sitting in a Refugee Camp for months without end
and sometimes even years without end,
it must seem impossible that you will ever see freedom.
You can see the gift of what they do;
it is simply magic and making those kids
and those people have the idea that the impossible is possible.
It is not magic that we do at Sunday Mass when we gather
but what we do is we talk about the impossible made possible;
that we become what we receive.
We become the Body and Blood of Christ for others.
We become only that when we are willing to do
what we do here in our daily lives.
We go out and we bear what gifts we have;
first of all to discover what those gifts are
and to not shrink from them.
Then share them with others so that their joy can be complete.
That is how this gospel comes alive today.
When we hear about this wedding feast of Cana;
it is all about the relationship between God and his people;
and that we have been gifted and
we are called to be grateful and full of joy.
We are called to share what we have with others.
When Mary says to the servers: “Do whatever he tells you.”
She is saying that to us.
“Do whatever the Lord tells us to do.”
Use your gifts for the greater good of the community and
today, let our joy increase because it is abundant.
God has blessed us and
we are called to shower those beyond borders,
beyond our neighborhoods,
beyond our families;
and to share our gifts with all we meet.
