Richard Bollman, S.J.

HOMILY: WEEK 2 / C / 2007

John 2:1-11. "Drinking the New Wine"

A number of us in the Jesuit house who prepare sermons for Sunday

are carrying the Gospel story on our mental back-burner through Saturday.

I brought it up in conversation even on Friday night–"well,

Sunday we have the Cana story to work with."

And Joe Bracken said casually

"Oh, you mean the one where he turned water into wine."

Well, I thought, that’s not exactly the point.

We went on for a while: back and forth.

This is not a nature miracle.

This is not saving people from social embarrassment.

Something else is going on.

First of all WINE is a sign of something, a sign of life, vitality,

the spirit of the feast, and it’s something that comes out of

sacrifice and surrender too: the crushing of the grapes.

Then on Saturday I had a different kind of conversation

which brought me closer to the story.

A friend of mine, a physical therapist, was talking about her week,

a casual report over coffee.

As you probably can guess, this kind of work is not easy every day,

not everyone is attentive physically, or ready to respond.

But, she said, "today I had a wonderful session with a woman client.

At the end, she sat up taller, her breathing was more deep and nourishing,

her face was relaxed and her who appearance so much softer.

There was a kind of radiance."

There, I thought, that’s the point of the best wine poured out,

the abundance of life given from inner resources we hardly know are there.

That is the revelation of Jesus, the Sign of Presence given at Cana.

Jesus is among us making a difference just by being who he is.

He is himself the new wine we have to get used to.

The discipleship to be learned here

is to get used to Jesus being a part of our feast, even part of our famine.

A miracle occurs not so much in Jesus being clever or powerful over things,

but in ourselves becoming aware of how extraordinary this presence is,

how his hour is presently happening for us.

That’s the point of the story. Yes, there’s wine for the wedding,

but more important, the disciples began to believe.

The last sentence says it all: they began to believe in him.

Where are you with that crucial step of change and radiance?

Try to imagine it:

the actual loving life of God made human in the person of Christ

sitting at every meal, listening at every council meeting, every argument,

praying at every bedside . . . . get a feel for this act of God among us

and you begin seeing miracles even when we don’t ask for them.

And ordinary life has a different dynamic, a different rule book.

Here are three little examples.

For one, I have found in my own work, whether as teacher or pastor,

whether my sights are set on parish or city or classroom,

the issue in front of me is not "needy people,"

rather I’m in touch with people who are gifted, who have resources,

and who are just a little bit asleep to the vitality they are gifted with.

I remember waking up to this teaching writing classes,

how the best thing I could do was to get interested

in what students were saying in their essays,

to engage the ideas and feelings, not their limitations.

Suddenly you have so much more to appreciate and work with.

I think that’s the issue in our church these days too,

where we’re often worried about "vocations"

when the abundance of spirit gifts

have been poured out, as St. Paul found in the earliest communities.

As we hear in today’s letter to Corinth: spirit abounding! Paul’s teaching

is to help people name their gifts.

And third: think of Martin Luther King, who we remember this weekend.

He drew out a new sense of purpose

among the African American community

not by focusing our the needs, or neediness, of his people,

but on their latent power and spirit for becoming themselves,

becoming a creative and equal force in the American culture.

One of our local community philosophers,

a man named Peter Block, noted in an interview that

better experts, leaders, programs, might seem like a good thing to pay for,

but they also create passivity, disengagement of ourselves

from the very city we have created.

We continue the old analysis of those who are needy

and those who have superior gifts.

And so we find many citizens of capability remaining disengaged.

We approach God this way don’t we: "I’m a screw-up,

bail me out." But we are reluctant to change, from soul up and outward,

reluctant to see how our problems are part of our habits and choices.

People, no matter how broken, are not powerless;

people are creative, Peter Block insists,

once they begin to be in relationship

and respect the gifts everybody brings.

"We need to believe that conversation is an action step,"

that’s Peter Block’s point of view.

When people are engaged, the right agenda follows.

Block maintains, "The answer to the question How?!

is simply Yes."

Confounding as this might seem, this is the core of Jesus’ method too.

What saves victims is not the ingenuity of Jesus’ healing powers,

but their faith that they can get up and walk. Their "yes."

He did not come to fix us, but to turn us on to life as it is

and as it keeps wanting to be. If you’ve got water, in other words,

pour it out, make abundant good use of it,

and see what happens next.