On the day I turned sixteen, I tasted freedom for the first time. With a brand new driver’s license in my wallet, and a car key in my hand, I carefully backed out of the driveway, into the expectant world that awaited me. During those first few days of liberty, my mother told me to go visit my grandparents. She didn’t ask. She told. I loved them dearly, but spending an afternoon in their home with all of those open roads before me wasn’t high on my list of places to explore. Not so excitedly I responded, “Yes ma’am.” Who was I to say no to this first teacher of mine? Could she know something that I didn’t?
The young rabbi’s first teacher came to him, seemingly in a panic, about the wine running low at a wedding party.* Mary tells Jesus, “Do something about this!” “Don’t push me,” he says, a distant and defying echo from his adolescence. Often interpreted as a worrisome mother in this scene, desperate to rescue a soon-to-be-embarrassed bridal party, Mary is hardly that. I’d like to invite you to hear this story in a slightly different way – that this is not a story about Jesus. He’s an actor on his mother’s stage. This passage is normally understood as a story of Jesus’ arrival on the miracle scene, displaying the power that he’d been given, an announcement to the world that a new thing has come. It’s that, but something more. Something older.
This mother’s request, a gentle forcing of his hand, came from an intuition that was older than his. She carried a pregnant sense of timing, and an eye for the brightness of his light that could shine at this time, at this moment. A wedding banquet. The sacred union of hungry hearts and souls. Minding his mother, he yielded a “Yes, ma’am.” Who could imagine that the first miracle would not be a healing, but a boozy blessing of marriage? The young rabbi would later use metaphors of weddings and of smitten partners, to tell of the intimacy and depth of divine love. I’d like to think that he thought of his mother every time he told those stories.
I’m thinking of my mother now, as well as those sweet grandparents who I visited every chance I could. And long after they were gone, I continued spending time with other elders, those who could see within me a deeper possibility…coaxing out my hesitant miracles. A forced hand can be a beautiful thing.
*John 2:1-11 (The Message)
–Jim Marsh, Jr., Bread of Life Church
