Sermon: Epiphany 5 Jan 2014

Preacher:

David Martin

Date:

Sunday 5th January 2014

Service:

Evensong

Readings:

John 2: 10

+ ‘You have kept the best wine until last’ St. John’s Gospel, chapter 2, verse 10.

In his Gospel St. John tells us that he is writing in sign language and he describes this story of the presence of Jesus at the marriage in Cana as the very first sign of the glory of the Lord. The first thing we need to do when reading sign language is to see how one sign relates to other signs. You do not understand a sign on its own but in combination with other signs, any more than you understand a sentence from just one isolated word. I’ll come to that in a moment because you also need to think imaginatively about different kinds of sign. Just how might we think about the different kinds of sign?

Some signs are what I call pictograms: the star in the east that came to rest over where the young child lay is what I mean by a pictogram. So is ‘And this shall be a sign unto you: ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes and lying in a manger’. In the story of the marriage at Cana the pictogram invites you to witness the arrival of two bridegrooms, the one who is to be married. and the one who completes the feast by gracing it with the divine presence.

Other signs come in the form of a pithy phrase ‘And the Word became flesh... and we beheld his glory’. Here the sign language tells us that glory is embodied and that love and truth are incarnate. The message is fleshed out in a vulnerable child. Sometimes the sign language is a gesture. Epiphany means ‘showing’ or manifesting and to manifest means to show by a hand signal. When you want to show someone what glory means you gesture and make a hand signal towards the source of glory: for example, look east towards the coming of the light and the visitation of the Dayspring from on high. Another example comes a little later in John’s Gospel. As you read further in chapter two you notice the repetition of the phrase ‘Come and see’ in two quite different stories. Sceptical enquirers ask to be shown the evidence but the evidence is not assent to an argument but response to a personal presence. ‘Come and see’. Faith is not the conclusion of an argument but the end of a journey. Christian sign language is a gesture of invitation. Come to the table and share bread and wine beyond money and beyond price. Christian sign language is open-handed and invites you to a table where we handle the sacred food with care, raise our hands in thanksgiving and blessing, and then close our hands to be open to God. John does not mention the Eucharist as the Christian ceremony of blessing, sharing and thanksgiving, but the signs of it are everywhere in his Gospel.

Now I can come to the way signs are related to each other, combined and recombined. First let me say something about the way this first sign of glory in John’s Gospel is related to other signs and then I can come to the relationship between the two key signs in our Gospel story: water for purification and superabundance of wine. The first related sign involves a transposition. In the other evangelists the story of the cleansing of the temple comes at the end of the ministry of Christ. But John brings it forward to the beginning because for him it is another sign of the transforming presence of the divine within the holy temple. For John the physical temple has been transformed into the body of Christ. The very stones have been transformed into the flesh and blood of the Saviour. The second related sign comes in the story of the conversation between Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well. Christ offers her the living water that springs up to eternal life and that whosever drinks shall never thirst again. This water slakes our immortal longings. Later in John’s Gospel we find the presence of Jesus realised under the signs of the true vine and the living bread. One of our Eucharistic Prayers begins with a reference to the stalks of grain and the vines on the hillside that have been harvested and consecrated to become for us the wine of gladness and the bread of heaven.

The signs work in combinations, different combinations. How do they work in the story of the marriage in Cana? The water stands for purification: before we come to the feast we need clean hands. We need first to be washed as the feet of the disciples were washed by the hands of the Lord at the Last Supper. But that is only the prologue to the feast, the necessary first step to the banquet. All the signs and preparations of Advent have their consummation here, above all the arrival of the bridegroom. The long-expected has arrived. ‘He comes, he comes, the Bridegroom comes’: now we may sit down and eat at his table. The Lord Emmanuel is present with his people. The sign of that is the overflowing of the containers just as the wheat elsewhere in the New Testament is pressed down and running over. ‘I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly’. The austerity of prophets and forerunners is over. Now there is far more than enough.

In her choice of music for Christmas on The Early Music Show the soprano Emma Kirkby concluded with a devotional sequence. There was first the sober contemplation of the day of judgement before we come to the arrival of the divine grace of the Saviour. That arrival was marked by one of the most luminous of all musical realisation of the epiphany or the ‘showing’ of the Saviour to the world: Heinrich Schutz’ Christmas Story. Emma Kirkby chose the arrival of the wise men following their star to where the young child lay: ‘Where is, where is, the new-born king?’ ‘Wo ist, wo ist, der neugeborne König?’ Then she concluded with an aria towards the end of Bach’s Christmas Oratorio where a solo violin is joined by two anguished voices asking ‘Oh, when will the time of his appearing be ripe?’ and ‘Oh, when will the comfort of his people come?’ But then a third voice says: ‘Haven’t you noticed?  He is already here’.

A vulnerable child in an obscure tenement of earth is the one whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain.