The Courageous Gospel. Robert Allan Hill
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its context has long been forgotten. In fact I may not have been listening closely enough, given band and dance and cake and all, to have grasped the context in its origin. I just remember my head snapping back when he stated, in the flat, easy sense in which someone remarks about a universally held belief: “Of course, all men hate all weddings.”
I took some offense to this, as a man who has spent a good percentage of summer weekend life at weddings, and not hated, at least not all of them. Whatever was he thinking? What did the wedding represent for him that was so recognizably hateful?
Perhaps it is the inherent element of falsehood as several people publicly put forward their best feet. Perhaps it is the flummery. Perhaps the very time, tedious and full, that such an event requires. Perhaps the recognition of mortality, the sense of ending. And the ending (or at least the limits) of personal freedoms.
The first great battle of salvation is with dislocation, and dislocation is the stuff of every wedding. Dislocation is the fact of life that every bride–-and every groom and both their families—must face.
The Bride of Christ: The Battle with Disappointment
The second great battle of salvation is with disappointment, and every wedding has its share of that as well. This is what makes weddings, in Cana and elsewhere, so interesting. Things are just not ever simple.
I do not believe that there is much of anything that might happen in the course of a wedding that would at all surprise me. Not any more. I have had bomb threats, no shows, late shows, sickness, faintings, forgotten rings, electrical problems, plumbing problems, family fights, and neglected fees. Once a groom paid me four dollars for a wedding Jan and I hosted in our living room. My own daughter’s wedding, according to a close friend, hit several records: longest, hottest, most music, most attendees, most faintings, and most memories. It is hard to imagine a setting more apt to disappoint the hope of simplicity with the reality of life. Maybe that is why the first recorded sign in John occurs at a wedding. One in which the simple task of buying the right amount of wine apparently was too much for somebody to do right.
1 Corinthians 13, so often read at weddings, should give us a clue. I expect many of you could recite portions of this chapter. Speak with tongues. . .men and angels. . .noisy gong. . ..bears, believes, hopes, endures. . ..faith, hope, and love abide. . .the greatest of these is love. . .. But as a speaker at Riverside Church said in late August, we may too often miss the most important verses in the whole chapter, the next to last. Faith, hope and love abide. . .yes, wonderful. But do you remember what comes before them? Words to live by in the complexity of life. Words to live by in the confusion of marriage. Words to live by in the strange, twilight condition that is ours. Now we see in a glass darkly, then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know in full. Along with the tide of fear that we spoke of last week, there is an undertow of simplicity around us. We want things simple. They are not. We are disappointed.
In 1989, three days before Christmas, our son Ben suddenly proclaimed a hankering for a train set. We had already bartered for the season’s gifts, and Christmas being what Christmas is in a parsonage, we made a mental note for next year. Next year, a train, for Ben.
I remember that at our staff Christmas party on December 23 I had mentioned this desire of Ben’s, as some sort of illustration of some now fully forgotten interpretation of the Incarnation. So it goes.
At 1 am on Christmas Eve, or rather morning, we return down the slope of Acorn Path and entered our garage, walking toward the backdoor. There on the steps we found a big box, wrapped in a red bow, “for Ben, from Santa.” Ben loved his simple, new train. In January I spent many hours coaxing, cajoling, thanking, pressing my staff about who had given Ben the train. Our organist, former supervisor of music in Onondaga County, G. Frank Lapham—he loved kids, surely he had brought the train. My friend and student minister, now Bruce Lee-Clark, whose own train set covered his basement in full—he loved trains, surely he was the one. My dearest colleague, Al Childs, now 85 and four years from death—he was just the kind of guy to do such a thing. My sweet secretary Jo Stewart, then 80 and looking 55—she loved Ben liked the son she always wanted; it was she.
But they all denied it. To a man. Vociferously, they denied it. They seemed puzzled that I was sure it was they. I hate secrets and surprises, so I would not let it go. I was still at it the next Christmas. Finally, Al took me out to lunch and said, “Bob, drop it.” So I did.
Until this summer. At a June graduation party in the old neighborhood, something marvelous happened. Marvelous like Spirit, full of surprise. Marvelous like real church, beyond any naming or denomination. Marvelous like life, true and good and present. Marvelous like love. I ran into Sue, who asked about Ben, and then said that Stan, her husband, a lawyer, a sometime Catholic, a quiet, quizzical guy, the last person on earth you would call religious, she said that Stan would like to know about Ben for a host of reasons, and, as she ended, “Well, all the way back, you know, to the train that Christmas. . . .” Stan was really angry with Sue for spilling the beans. I, though, was grateful.
This is what we are hoping for, what we imagine at our best: an experience of being alive, an experience of love, an experience of God.
The Gospel of John is not focused on ethics. There is only minimal ethical teaching here. One looks in vain for a Sermon on the Mount or Plain. One searches without result for a parable with a point. One hungers without satisfaction for a wisdom saying, an epigram, a teaching on virtue. In John we have the teleological suspension of the ethical. In John, only the command to love remains.
These things are spoken that you may believe that Jesus in the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
This week you can choose to grow in faith, and so find a fuller part of your second identity. This week you can choose to grow in love, and so open a fuller part of the world’s imagination. This week you can fight through dislocation, like that known by the Bride of Cana, and discover your own courage to be. This week you can fight through disappointment that things aren’t simpler, like that known by the Bride of Christ, and learn to simply live.
Faith is personal commitment to an unverifiable truth. It involves a leap.
Faith is an objective uncertainty grasped with subjective certainty. It involves a leap.
Faith is the way to salvation, a real identity and a rich imagination. But it does involve a leap.
Now is the time to jump.
And all of us are better when we are loved.
Notes from Raymond Brown’s Lectures on John
Union Theological Seminary
Spring 1978
March 9, 1978: The Wedding in Cana of Galilee
The Cana miracle could have been an earlier narrative. In the final form of the narrative, Mary takes on another significance. John brings Mary back at the end of the gospel. This is not a complete rejection of Mary (as in Mark). There is no attempt at all to reclaim the physical mother in Mark. John brings her back at the end. The beloved disciple takes her under his wing. Then the mother of Jesus and the brothers depart. The brothers return in chapter 7. “His brothers did not believe in him.”
James became a great figure for Jewish Christians. John was not in that group. There is a great deal of apocryphal material about James. Paul mentions James in 1 Cor 15. The voice here is hostile to Jewish Christianity. Ignatius of Antioch has very bitter relations with Jewish Christians. This hostility is expressed toward Jesus’ brothers. But Jesus’ mother is connected to the beloved disciple, and at the very least is put into another category. This is interesting: in Luke and John, Mary becomes a part of the Christian community. We do not know that from Mark. So there is reflection about Mary going on in the early Christian tradition.
Who were Jesus’ brothers? They are mentioned in all the gospels. Mark and Matthew also mention sisters. And what about Joseph? Some explain Jesus’ brothers as step-brothers. Tertullian vs. Jerome. Jerome says Jesus could not have had siblings. Jerome’s position prevailed past the Reformation. This, says RB, was not a very good argument, not an authentic NT argument. James,