St. Botolph’s Parish, 6th Sunday after Pentecost, 4 July 2010
“You have kept the good wine until now”. (John 2.10)
If we had eyes to see, these four walls would disappear. The Church of Christ is not to be found within these four walls. The Church founded by Christ, which has come to be called ‘Orthodox’, was born in the Middle East seventeen centuries before the stone and mortar and wood went into making these walls and columns. If our enemies, visible and invisible, drove us into the desert, into the woods, into caves beneath the earth, and we offered the Divine Liturgy on any stone in the forest, we would be no less the Church of Christ. If we had eyes to see, we would see that the Church is us: the body of disciples, first gathered in Galilee and Jerusalem, first called ‘Christians’ in Antioch. We are not a part of a remote past. We are the eternal present. If we had eyes to see, we could never mistake this Divine Liturgy for a folk custom, staged Sunday by Sunday. It is not simply ‘going to church’. It is nothing less than the worship of the Cherubim, the angels, offered perpetually before the throne of God. But, because our eyes are clouded, we merely dip in, dip out. If our eyes are clouded, all that we see is an irrelevant old ritual in memory of a dead rabbi called Jesus who worked a few miracles two thousand years ago. Because our eyes are clouded, we figure that we have come to see just another man get married to just another woman on our weekly day off. That is what churches are for, aren’t they? But if we had eyes to see, we would realise that this is the day of Resurrection. A day that weds time and eternity, heaven and earth.
What better day for a wedding? Not Saturday but Sunday. Not a private affair, discreetly tucked away on a quiet afternoon; but the holy mystery of the Church, proclaimed loudly and clearly from the rooftops. Not a ‘family gathering’ but the gathering of our family in God. If we looked on this wedding with clouded eyes, we could ask: ‘Where is the organ playing “Here comes the bride”? Where is the bridal veil, the father of the bride, all the pretty bridesmaids and grooms? Where is the vow “Till death do us part”? Isn’t this ritual just part of the laws of nature: birth, marriage, death – “hatched, matched, dispatched”?’ But if we have eyes to see, we realise that Mother Nature is not in charge. Nature, and death, have no power – no authority – to part those that we unite this day. This is no private affair, in a quaint old historic church or a chapel in the valley. This is the cosmic union of heaven and earth. If our eyes are clouded, all that we can see is nature: a man and a woman. But if we have eyes to see, we see the living icon of Christ, the eternal Bridegroom, and the icon of his Bride, our Holy Mother the Church. If all that we see is ‘just another wedding’, all that we can offer is the cheap wine, the poor wine that all too quickly runs out. But if we have eyes to see, we toast them in the good wine, the rarest of all wines: the Blood of Christ, conqueror of death, who unites himself this day to his eternal Bride.
‘Pretty far-fetched’, you say. How can an ordinary man and woman be the icon of Christ and the Church? But then again, how can Jesus Christ be God who has become a man of flesh and blood? Isn’t he just a teacher, who spins out a few miracles? Where does a teacher get the authority to wed heaven and earth? This day, Christ shows his authority: his authority over nature; his authority over death.
Those who have eyes to see bring him a paralytic, a man confined to his bed, lying like a corpse in his own filth. To those who think only of his natural condition, this man might as well be dead. We do not know anything about him, except that he is paralysed. Does he even believe that anyone can cure him? So, instead of performing the ‘natural’ cure, Jesus tells the sick man: ‘Your sins are forgiven’. How absurd! Why does he not simply heal him? ‘Who does he think he is – God?’ ask the academics, with their clouded eyes.
‘What gives him the authority to defy the law of nature?’ Jesus reads their thoughts. ‘Tell me’, he says, ‘which is easier to say: “Your sins are forgiven” or “Stand up on paralysed legs and walk!” What I do’, he says, ‘I do, not because “nature” demands it. Here, now, I defy the laws of nature. I say: “Rise, take up your bed and walk” only so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority over nature, authority over life and death’. And, in spite of every natural law, the man walks. Christ has not come to confirm the laws of nature. He has come to conquer death.
Beloved in Christ: all these miracles of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ are only one, all-encompassing conquest of death. To make the blind see, the lame walk, or the dead rise from the grave is no more miraculous than changing water into wine – if you have eyes to see. If we see ‘just another marriage’ today, we see ‘just another paralytic lying on his bed. We see with the eyes of the world, not the eyes of the Church. Not one of the miracles is a private affair, discreetly tucked away on a quiet afternoon. All are the same holy mystery of the New Covenant, shouted from the housetops: eternity breaking into time, changing ordinary water into extraordinary wine. If our eyes are clouded, what can we see but a quaint old custom, a little private ceremony in a pretty old church? We cannot see the glory of God. But lift the scales, drive away the clouds from your eyes of flesh, and you will see: Mother Nature has no dominion here. She has no authority. All authority in heaven and earth belongs to the One who descended from heaven to earth, so that he can lift us up from earth to heaven.
Like the steward of the feast at that first miracle in Galilee, I say to the bridegroom and the bride: ‘You have kept the good wine until now’. Never exchange it for the poor wine. Never exchange your faith in God, and in each other, for that barren desert of unbelief. You are not ‘just another couple’. You are icons of Christ the Bridegroom and his Bride, the Holy Orthodox Church.
May the word that turns water into wine and makes a paralytic walk fill your life together.
May the prayers of our Holy Mother the Church be more ‘natural’ to you than the breath in your lungs.
And may you always have eyes to see.