“Mama Said”
John 2:1-11
Allen Huff
Jonesborough
Presbyterian Church
10/5/14
Life is as good for Mary as it is for most other women in
her place and time. Like all Jewish women, she has to be careful about how she
dresses and where she travels, especially when she’s by herself. She has to be
most careful about who she speaks to, and who is around when she speaks. Like
all of her sisters, Mary simply is not free to speak and act as she might
always choose.
On the other hand, most women know that while men may try
to keep women under tight control in public life, the men cannot control all
things. And one realm of particularly tenacious independence is the realm of
Jewish motherhood. In fact, more grown men than will admit it find themselves
locked in a maternal orbit.
When a biblical story wants hearers to sit up and take
note, it begins with something like, In
the beginning, or, They went up a
mountain, or, An angel of the Lord
appeared. But to begin a story with And
his mama was there, too, escalates the urgency to a whole new level.
Jesus is attending a wedding in Cana, and his mama is
there, too.
Reuben and Nathan have been hired as servers for the Mordecai-Isaacson
wedding. They’ve been told to keep the wine flowing and the matzo balls rolling,
and they’ve done that. But now they face a situation. All of Omar Isaacson’s
fraternity brothers have come to the wedding. Every one of them. And they’ve all
brought dates. Reuben and Nathan feel like they are pouring wine into
colanders.
Insufficient wine at a wedding would mean several things,
and none of them are good. It would mean shame for Mr. Mordecai, the wedding
host. It would also mean vocational catastrophe for the chief steward, a good
friend of Reuben and Nathan. Most of all this party foul would bring entirely
too much delight to Mrs. Isaacson, the mother of the groom. Mrs. Isaacson runs
the debutante program for the daughters of wealthy Jewish families down in
Jerusalem, and she is quite sure, thank you very much, that this Mordecai girl
from the boondocks of Cana is not
good enough for her son. So, like a
hound dog on the hunt, she has her nose in the air, winding this party for
flaws.
Nathan is the first to realize the severity of the problem.
He approaches Reuben slowly, smiling at the guests, politely ignoring those who
raise their empty goblets asking for more wine.
“Reuben,” says Nathan trying to sound calm. “Could I
trouble you to accompany me to the kitchen, please?”
Reuben is flirting with one of the wedding dancers and does
not want to be bothered.
“In a minute,” he snaps.
“Reuben!” says Nathan through clenched teeth posing as a
smile. “You. Me. Kitchen. Now!”
As the two men exchange glares, Nathan mouths the words, No more wine.
Reuben looks the floor as if he has just dropped something.
A moment later he looks back at the dancer, holds up an “I’ll be back” finger,
winks at her, and turns to follow Nathan.
In the kitchen, they mull over the wine. They have no idea
what they are going to do. But neither do they have any idea that someone has
overheard them.
For the last half hour, Mary, from Nazareth, has been graciously
nodding her head as another woman brags on her children.
“And my son,”
says the woman, “has broken all company records for the sale of purple cloth
and toga linen to government buyers. And I suspect that in five years Herod
will be paying interest on loans to my son instead of collecting taxes from
him.”
“Is that right?” says Mary. Then, without impatience or weary
spite, she says, “Well, bless his heart.”
As she listens to the woman boast, she manages to hear key
words and to see the facial expressions in the exchange between Reuben and
Nathan. When they disappear into the kitchen, Mary looks at the woman with the
powerful son and says, “Darling, would you please excuse me. I need to speak to
someone. Enjoy the feast. I hear the wine is excellent.”
She catches Jesus’ eye from across the room and with a quick
tilt of her head tells her son to follow her. Jesus has been chatting with some
of his new friends, relaxing, sharing stories, getting to know them, blissfully
anonymous in the crowd. But he knows the look his mama gives him, so he slips
away from his company and follows her.
When Jesus steps into the kitchen, that nerve center of
hospitality, he sees his mother standing next to the two servants. Their faces
droop like a couple of feedbags on a fencepost. Mary does not give her son a
chance to say or ask anything.
“They have no wine,” she says. And that’s all she says.
“Mom!” says Jesus. “That’s not my problem. Not right now.”
Mary has imagined a day like this, a day when she lends the
authority of her voice as well as the sanctuary of her womb to the Creative
Mystery at work within her and beyond her – the Mystery who is revealing an
eternity that is as near as her breath, and a holiness that is as intimately
hers as the children to whom her body and her love have given birth. It is another
day of clear-minded betrothal to that Mystery, and another day of blind faith.
Standing in this kitchen on this day, she thinks of Moses’
unnamed mother setting her son in the reeds growing in the shallows of the
Nile. Who would find him? Another Hebrew? An Egyptian? A crocodile? What would become of her fine, fine son?
She thinks of Rebekah scheming Isaac’s blessing upon Jacob,
her favorite, younger son. To arrange this deception will mean that Jacob must
flee from her as surely as he must flee from Esau – the reasons being both
perfectly the same and perfectly different. And Rebekah knows that she may
never see her son again.
She thinks of Hannah promising to God her only child. For
the simple privilege of having the capacity to bring even one life into the world,
she will give up her son.
When Mary speaks, there is nothing playful in her voice,
nothing to suggest that she is guest at a wedding. Hers is the voice of a
mother surrendering her son. She turns toward Reuben and Nathan, and in a low,
flat voice she says into the warm, moist air of the kitchen, “Do whatever he
tells you.” And she leaves.
Jesus has envisioned a day like this, too. But in his
vision he decides when to make
himself known. He decides when to step into the river, when to accept the
fullness of his blessing, when to make the wild and reckless promise of himself
to God. And maybe he still can decide. Maybe he can put off the arrival of his
hour. But his mother’s eyes still burn in his. Her words still flutter in his
ears. They sound, and even feel, like the wings of a dove on the rise.
If Jesus tells the servants nothing, they will do nothing –
and the wedding feast will lose its joy. People will begin to grumble, and the
celebration will turn into a committee meeting.
If he tells them to do something, they will do that – and
heaven knows what will happen next. The truth is, of course, that whether Jesus
tells the servants to do anything or not, his mama has opened a door that
cannot be shut. He is not facing a now or
never situation. He faces the past, present, and future of his own identity.
“Do whatever he tells you.” That’s what Mama said.
Jesus looks around the kitchen. Then he looks at Reuben and
Nathan and says, “Fill [those] jars with water.”
The sign Jesus performs in Cana is not about coercing
people into belief through some sort of magic. It’s about revealing to the creation a presence in the creation that transforms water
jars into vessels of holy, spirited wine.
A miracle, you see, is not something that happens outside
of reason. Miracle is the very realm of our existence as God-imaged human beings.
Miracle is the here-and-now Kingdom of Heaven. We live in its midst like fish
in the water.
Miracle saturates what appears to be the emptiness between
you and me, between any two people, between any two creatures, for that matter.
The miracle of presence is a given for us, but it is no small miracle in itself
to become aware of it, to give humbly and to receive gratefully love, encouragement,
admonition, and stories. And in that giving and receiving, in that exchange of
grace, the space between us becomes – it always becomes – new wine.*
*This story/sermon was
offered on World Communion Sunday, 2014, which was also the Sunday of that year’s
National Storytelling Festival in Jonesborough. My thoughts on the relationship
between Jesus and his mother have been influenced by Dr. Jap Keith, a former professor
of pastoral care at Columbia Seminary who once remarked said, “God and mothers
call a lot of oldest children and first sons to the ministry.”
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