Deacon's Homily: The Wedding Feast at Cana

Homily for Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2022.

The wedding feast at Cana is a popular and familiar Gospel, a favorite across the ages. Today I’m thinking of this Gospel as depicted by George Mackay Brown, a twentieth century Scottish poet, novelist, and playwright. His short story “The Treading of Grapes” is set in a little church on the shore of one of the Orkney Islands, just off the northern coast of Scotland. It’s a windswept, north Atlantic landscape, half-Celtic, half-Viking, and a weather beaten church has stood there for centuries.

In the story, Brown imagines that church’s pulpit on three different Sundays in three different centuries. In each case, it’s the second Sunday after Epiphany (which is also today) and the Gospel then as now is the Wedding Feast at Cana. Brown imagines how a preacher might have tackled this Gospel in 1969 (the year it was published), 1788 (when the island was firmly Calvinist), and finally 1548 (perhaps the climax of Scottish Catholicism, a few years before the Reformation reached Orkney).

Brown tells the story in reverse chronological order, so we hear first from the modern pastor. This poor fellow appears to be a kind man, but he’s intimidated by the spirit of the world. He’s embarrassed by Biblical miracles, proposing that the Wedding Feast at Cana is actually a symbolic victory for “supreme common sense….Turning water into wine is merely a graphic shorthand” for the way in which Jesus, social organizer extraordinaire, had the foresight to lay aside extra supplies in a back room, to be called out at the last moment.

The pastor concludes “what a brilliant business executive, what a wise ambassador, what a competent” government official Jesus would have made. It’s brutal, cringe-worthy satire of the modern Christian temptation to be so accessible and up-to-date that we drain our faith of anything supernatural, turning the Church into a shadow of its true self.

In the second vignette, Brown takes us to 1788. The Reverend Doctor Thomas Fotheringhame is fired up on moralistic righteousness, demanding his congregation shape up and be better:

"Magnus Learmouth, you in the second pew from the back, at the wedding you made for your third lass Deborah…all the guests lay at the ale-kirn like piglets at the teats of a sow till morning….Andrina of Breck…don’t look at me like that, woman! you have a brazen impudence commensurate with your debauchery. Well I know you and your runnings back and fore between Breck and the alehouse with your bit flask [hidden] under your shawl."

After all this bluster, Dr. Fotheringhame goes on to propose that at the wedding feast of Cana, the hero is actually the thrifty host, the one who bought wine cheaply and responsibly. He argues that Jesus honored the host’s frugality by not embarrassing him and quietly fixing things. Fotheringhame concludes that the most important thing is that we should all be more thrifty, grateful, and moderate.

Brown's whole story comes alive and concludes with the third homily, the medieval one. Here the priest lingers over the steps normally involved in making wine. He speaks of clusters thickening on the vine, each grape containing in itself the promise of joy and dancing, “the quick merry blood of the earth.” He speaks of the farmers and the wine-makers, heroes treading and smashing heaps of grapes until their arms and thighs are red, as if from terrible battle. As the grapes lie in their vats, the priest invites us to put our ear close to the barrels, listening to the “ceaseless murmur” of fermentation, the juice “clothing itself in sound, in song, in psalmody.”

The medieval priest then paints a vivid picture of the wedding itself. He puts before us a house full of light and music. As they gather at the door, none of the guests realize that this carpenter from Nazareth, with whom they’ve bargained for cradles, chairs, and roof-beams, is also the Incarnate Word of God, for his miracle has not yet occurred. None of the guests realize that Mary, who along with all the other women has done her laundry in the creek, is also the Queen of Angels, the Mystical Rose, the Gate of Heaven, the Holy Mother of God.

As the feast progresses, as the harps play and faces begin to flush, a serving man whispers in the steward’s ear that the wine is running low. But on this evening, Jesus Christ hovers over the water jars, just as he hovered over the primordial waters at creation. The Lord’s Word is once again creative and efficacious, filling every vessel to the brim with rich wine, and the guests’ trembling lips approve the mystery.

In the face of this miracle, the medieval priest at first demurs. He concedes that here in Orkney, in 1548, “we are poor people,” fisherman and farmers, “and we think it is not likely…that we will be bidden to such a feast. We are...Olaf the fisherman,” Jock the farmer, “Merran the hen-wife,” and we “are pleased enough with oatcakes and ale,” for we were born to hunger and much hardship.

“But,” he continues, “let me tell you a secret. Christ the King hath uplifted our fallen nature as miraculously as he clothed water in red merry robes of wine.” You, dear ones, you appear ordinary but in reality you are princes, for “each one of you has in his keeping an immortal soul, a rich jewel indeed, more precious than all the world beside.” I have good news for you, for the King bids you to attend his wedding feast. In this very hour, when I raise this bread over you - hic est enim corpus meum - this is my body - then is Christ the King come once again to his people, “as truly as he was present at the marriage in Cana.” Dance then, he concludes, for there is no end to this marriage.

Friends, here in 2022, we too are adopted into Christ’s royal family, we too are included in the wedding feast. We’re not medieval peasants, but the good news is the same. Jesus Christ has descended to earth, first in the flesh and then again in the Sacraments, so that medieval and modern peasants can taste heaven.

It is also true that, like our medieval forebears, we have our own versions of poverty, hunger, and hardship. I read the other day that in the last two years of the pandemic, the number of miles that Americans have driven is down thirteen percent, but traffic deaths are up seven percent. If you’re wanted a visible way to measure our mental, spiritual, and emotional health, a measurable increase in reckless driving might be one way. We also know about the rise of arguments and incivility on airplanes, we know that the murder and violent crime rates are rising, we know that drug overdoses are increasing, we know that schools report more and more disciplinary issues. Meanwhile our politics are more polarized, and many people are afraid to say what they really think for fear of losing friends.

In short, all is not well with our culture right now. That 1969 pastor – he had a point. We need government officials to plan and organize better. That eighteenth century finger-wagging pastor wasn’t all wrong either. Moral reform is necessary. It matters that tomorrow is Martin Luther King Day, and it matters that Friday is the March for Life in Washington.

But – at no stage in history, very much including today, can we be part of the reforms and fight the despair without God’s holiness and grace. We are not going to become holy and be the missionaries that the world needs without cultivating our own supernatural, sacramental sense for the presence of God, alive and working in creation. There is a Catholic way of living sacramentally, and the world can hardly imagine it. We’ve got good news to share, a Catholic way of pushing back against the darkness, from which everything else follows.

Our first reading today is from Isaiah. God is speaking to Israel. To a nation that had been destroyed, who lived in exile, who had lived in deep darkness, God said:

"No more shall people call you Forsaken, or your land Desolate, but you shall be called My Delight, and your land Espoused. For the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse. As a young man marries a virgin, your Builder shall marry you; and as a bridegroom rejoices in his bride so shall your God rejoice in you."

Friends, through Jesus Christ, God includes us in the marriage of heaven and earth. Jesus Christ is the marriage of divinity and humanity, and we are invited to participate in both his ministry and his holiness. Today, as we continue with our celebration of the Eucharist, let’s give thanks that we’re invited to the royal wedding feast. Let’s give thanks that we’re guests at Cana. There is a dignity with that, a call to live a certain way, and it starts with sacramental joy.