14th Jan  20072nd Sunday After the Epiphany

Fr Julian Browning

Isaiah  62  :  1 - 5 ; I  Corinthians  12  :  1 - 11 ; John  2  :  1 - 11 

His disciples believed in him.

Catholic faith is the faith of those with public religion, not private opinions about it. We celebrate difference, varieties of gift, but the same Spirit.

If you made any of those half-hearted New Year resolutions – the ones designed to bring about a new you – the chances are that you have broken them by now. You know the ones I mean, like taking more exercise, and the most difficult one of them all, as irritating as any health and safety leaflet, the one about consuming not more than half a bottle of wine a day. Where is the half way point on a bottle? Certainly we would have broken that resolution at the wedding at Cana in Galilee where the quantity of water turned into wine was stupendous, about 120 gallons. If you have broken any of your resolutions, here one to fill the gap in your life. In 2007, let us give God a chance to work a miracle in our lives, to change us as he changed water into wine. Jesus Christ lived on earth and went to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, not to give us a complicated and difficult religion, although the complexities and the absurdities can be quite fun, and keep the brain cells moving. He came that we might have life and live it abundantly. And this is no makeover that's on offer, it's not a new diet, it's not a new you, and it's not even a positive and confident 'can do' attitude. What Jesus offers is life after death, His own life, an eternal life. Our lives, our little worlds, can reveal that glory too. As Isaiah says today, You shall be called by a new name ...you shall be a crown of glory in the hand of the Lord.

It has always seemed a little odd that the first 'sign' of that glory, as St.John puts it, should be correcting a caterer's mistake. Nobody's healed, or brought back to life. Was this a frivolous moment, a trial run? We need to know. The story has many layers of meaning, like all good stories, which is why it is a story we can remember. And on this little story of a wedding has been built a huge edifice of theology, about the bridegroom in our first lesson from Isaiah, and the significance of numbers, and the use of purification jars, and why Mary was there, and much more. You will be relieved to learn that I do not intend to explore these with you, because we would be here all morning if I did, assuming I could remember any of it. So what can I say? The story is about who Jesus is. In its own idiom the story contains the whole Gospel message. So if we say, as many people today would say, that it didn't happen, it's like saying that Jesus didn't happen.

Jesus and his mother went to a wedding, a joyful event, public, special, celebrated in the sight of God. Oh be joyful in the Lord all ye lands; serve the Lord with gladness, and come before his presence with a song. Here is joy, here is truth breaking through, here is God with us, indeed His Son has joined us, and through what he does and says, Jesus want us, his disciples, to see and understand what glory means. I don't think this is something we can achieve on our own. We have to be there, taken out of ourselves if you like by the joy of the occasion, to see water turned into wine. Private religion has to go public. Those New Year resolutions, were they all about yourself? Mine usually are. Your religion: is it all about yourself, about each of us on our own, following the golden string, deciding what we're going to believe in, what to accept and what to reject, what to try next? If so, and it's true of all of us to some extent, then our religion and its practice will have the same failure rate as those New Year resolutions. We shall be disappointed, because we set targets we can't reach, that's why, we want to be different people and that's not going to happen. Catholic faith is the faith of those with public religion, not private opinions about it. We celebrate difference, varieties of gift, but the same Spirit. We don't want to be clones of some ideal person. There is no disappointment because we are all sinners anyway. If we disagree with bits of it , if we don't understand some of what the Church says, does it really matter? What matters is to behold His glory before our own. What matters is to see the miracles as done for us, so that we might believe that Jesus is the son of God.

What we find at that wedding in Cana of Galilee, and in our church, and in our lives outside these walls, is a truth about our being which is beyond words, but which we try to express in words. We don't hear much of the psalter in this this church, but that doesn't matter because we can read the psalms at home in the Prayer Book, morning and evening if we remember. One of the psalms appointed for today is Psalm 36. I'm not going to recite it, because there's a lot about wickedness which I think is best left for another occasion, but there are just two verses which underline my New Year resolution and prayer that God will work a miracle in all our lives. The psalmist describes you and me as sitting trustfully under the shadow of God's wings. They shall be satisfied with the plenteousness of thy house: and thou shalt give them drink of thy pleasures, as out of a river. For with thee is the well of life; and in thy light shall we see light.