Year C / Ordinary Time / Week 2 / Sunday
Readings: Isaiah 62.1-5 / Ps 95.1-2a.2b-3, 7-8a, 9-10a,c (R/v 3) / 1 Corinthians 12.4-11 /John 2.1-11
“O sing a new song to the Lord, sing to the Lord, all the earth. O sing to the Lord, bless his name.”
This is the psalmist’s call to everyone. It invites us to thank the Lord for His goodness to us. It also exhorts us to praise the Lord for who He is in our lives. Indeed, hasn’t the Lord worked wonders for us as we began this new year? Like beginning well, having good health, perhaps, starting a new job or simply being happy? And, don’t we believe He will continue to do more going forward?
Indeed, sing a new song to the Lord we must be. Particularly for Jesus’ baptism last Sunday when, with Jesus, we heard God declare him the Beloved. Thereafter, Jesus went into the ordinary, everydayness of his life and ministry making every encounter he had extraordinary. Think of his ‘come and see’ welcome to John the Baptist’s disciples, his merciful forgiveness of the adulterous woman, his trust to call fishermen to become fishers of men and his audacious invitation to eat at Zacchaeus’ house. For us, the grace of Jesus’ teaching and healing, his forgiveness and loving that others do to us are His blessings in daily life. It reveals that we too are God’s beloved.
So look around as we continue onward into 2025. If we pay attention, we’ll begin to sense this: change is in the air. Yes, change that God is bringing about. Can we see its promise? Do you smell its freshness? Will you taste its goodness? What might these be for you? For my nephew, Daniel, it is hope as he begins secondary school.
In the First Reading we hear about the new names by which God will be calling Israel. Instead of former names of abandoned and forsaken, Her new name will be “My Delight” and “The Wedded.” These names signify great change. They tell us God is doing something wondrous, even life-giving. He is changing how the people understand themselves. As their bridegroom He recognises them as his Beloved, even with their sins. God wants to do the same for all peoples, including you and me. We are all His Beloved.
In today’ Gospel we join Jesus, his mother, the stewards and guests at that wedding at Cana. We’re there to celebrate a marriage. There is prayer, feasting, drinking, even dancing. Surely, love is in the air.
Then, the unexpected happens; there’s no more wine. Now, there’s dismay amongst the guests. For the groom and his wife, panic, frustration, anger. For the servants, blame and fear. Simply put, there’s chaos.
Now there’s change in the air too; a miracle is about to happen. Water is brought to Jesus. Water, that image of chaos in the Creation story, is poured into six stone jars. Six, the number of days God created life, meaning and order out of chaos. Jesus changes water into wine. Now, the guests begin drinking from those six jars of wine, "the best that is kept to the end." No more chaos; now, life to the full, joy overbrimming. Truly a new song is sung. It must be for they celebrate not just a marriage but a reenactment of creation.
What is created? Change, really. The kind of change God wants for his people. More than turning water into wine, Jesus’ miracle changes them. Their negative feelings when there was no wine is transformed into delight with the best wine. Now, what they experience is Jesus’ gracious care for them. Even though this was not yet the time for his glory to be seen, Jesus is the Christ who saves them. He wants to for they are His beloved.
For St John the Evangelist, Jesus’ miracle of changing water into wine reveals more than His glory. It is God’s invitation for us to have life to the full. Indeed, through Jesus’ life and teachings, his miracles and healing, we will be saved for life with God.
This is the gift of God’s relationship with us, His beloved own, even with our sins. No one can deny us this truth. Nothing can take it away. If you agree, then we have to fulfil God's task to us: to change our minds about ourselves, about others and then about all of creation, because we can no long see, think or understand, even live and love, in any other way than how God values us – precious and cherished.
This change takes time – like water into wine, like seed into fruit, like beloved from disowned. It happens nowhere else but in the ordinariness of everyday life, its pace often slow, repetitive, seemingly, going nowhere; for many, a banal waiting. Yet it is happening even now for Jesus is with us and nothing is impossible again.
We hear this in the second reading. St Paul teaches us that no matter how different each of us are and how varied our gifts may be, the Holy Spirit who gathers everyone to serve the one Lord and one another. Truly, the grace of living, working, playing and praying as Christians is God gathering individuals into one community, and enriched by everyone’s gift, for life with God and one another. This is how we can do great things that witness God’s saving love in the world.
If you and I choose to do this and let God’s glory shine through us, we are like Mary cooperating with God to fulfil his plan for salvation. The Jesuit Fr Larry Gillick explains: “In a strange way, the history of God’s revelation is a study in punctuation. Creation begins as an exclamation point. Human response is a question mark. God continues the conversation with commas and semicolons, always hinting that there was more to be said. With Jesus there are more definite statements ending with periods and more rearranging which end where God began, with double exclamation points. With Jesus, God is saying ‘yes!’”*
Will we say ‘yes’ too, and sing that new song to the Lord, and bless His holy name?
*Adapted from the writings of Fr Larry Gillick, SJ
Preached at the Church of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Singapore
Photo by Edward Cisneros on Unsplash
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