One of the hardest things a
parent ever does is to leave her child in someone else’s care for the very
first time. For some, it’s handing a three page list of instructions to the
babysitter (who may well be a grandma or grandpa, who raised 12 children of
their own – but still!) and walking out the door. For some, it’s checking the
diaper bag for the fortieth time as the baby goes to daycare. For some, it’s
waving at the hind end of the school bus as it pulls away from the curb. For me, it was the first day of nursery
school.
You see, there’s this little dance that happens. Moms and dads with brave
smiles frozen on their faces arrive with little ones held firmly, and I do mean
firmly, by the hand. As they enter the building, there is much encouraging
chatter – “You’ll have a great time – you’ll see.” “Your teacher is so nice,
you’ll love her and she will love you.” “Daddy will be right back, I promise.” It’s
a little hard to tell who is trying to convince whom that everything will be
all right.
Finally the moment comes and the
teachers with firm but pleasant smiles begin to move the parents to the exits. One
last hug and the door to the classroom swings shut. But do the parents leave?
Well, some do, the ones with six more children, all older. But
most just stand around in the hallway or outside on the grass, chatting, pretending
to themselves that they could leave, and will, when they've finished catching up with old friends. They are the ones who listen to each other with only one ear, the
other tuned in to a frequency that only they can hear, the sound of their
child’s voice. And then, there are the ones like me who had no shame at all
and simply sneaked back to the window to take one more little peek just
to make sure.
Eventually, even I got in my car
and drove home. At some point, you have to put it in the hands of the Lord and walk away.
But that kind of trust comes very
hard for us in this culture in this time and place. In agriculture economies,
those who live off the soil know from their earliest days that there is a great
deal over which they have no control. You can toil from dawn to dusk – but
hailstorms and clouds of locust, drought and dust, frost and famine still come,
crops still fail, and sometimes nothing can stop that. In the technologically
advanced West, however, we have been brought up on the cultural myth that our destinies
are within our power to control. Deeply ingrained in our collective psyche is
the belief that there is no problem that humankind faces that does not have a
solution; we may not have the solution in our hands yet, but make no mistake,
the solution is out there waiting for some Louis Pasteur, some Thomas Edison, some
Alfred Nobel, some Bill Gates to discover it. In fact, sociologists tell us
that one of the great difficulties of Western life post-9/11 is facing up to
the sudden realization that there may in fact be threats to our security and
way of life that we cannot, in all times and places, control. As one New York
City security chief has so famously said, “We are always in the process of
defending ourselves against the last threat.”
We have a lot to learn from the
mother of Jesus, Mary. Present in the home where a wedding celebration is being
held, she realizes the wine is all gone. She turns to her son, Jesus, who is
also there, along with his disciples, and says, quite simply, “They have no
wine.” Jesus wiffle/waffles around a bit, distancing himself from the problem,
the place, the time, even his mother’s implied demand, but his mother never
flinches. She knows her son, she knows where he came from, she knows what the
God who gave him to her can do, and she believes.
So many of us, western Protestants,
in particular, have problems with the mother of Jesus. Too passive, we say. Too classically female, always
just standing around taking what’s handed out to her, waiting to be filled up
by the Holy Spirit like a car at the gas station. We like Peter or Paul much
better – the men of action, rushing here and there, baptizing, building,
preaching, making things happen.
But we have much to learn from this woman,
Mary, who does not wait for the actions of others but intentionally and with
purpose rests her life and the life of the son whom she loves in the hands of
God. Far from being passive, hers is, next to Jesus’ own, perhaps the most
active faith in view in the New Testament. We have much to learn from Mary
about who God is and what God can do.
The question is: Can you and I live as she does? Can we lay
down our need to control, our need to follow an agenda that we set, our need to
provide for ourselves in all things, and say to the Lord, “Let it be with me
according to your will?” Do we have the energy, the perseverance in prayer, the
openness of spirit to trust not only that our Shepherd will supply our need in
the big things of life, but that even when the wine runs out, the Word made
flesh can and will provide? Can we live as Mary did, as visible signs of God’s
glory in the world, pointing always to the One who came into the world that we
might receive grace upon grace upon grace upon grace?
It doesn’t seem like much of a
problem, does it, that Mary hands over to her son? The wine ran out – big deal.
Go to the liquor store; plan better next time. Even Jesus doesn’t seem entirely
sure up front that a lack of wine for the wedding feast meets the criterion for
the in-breaking of God’s grace to the natural ordering of the universe.
But no God-in-a-little-box for
Mary. Mary is sure. Whatever the need, Mary is sure that the God of abundance
will provide. She knows this God intimately for she has experienced God’s
abundant grace in her own life and has seen God with her own eyes active and
present in Jesus. For Mary, God has made a baby where there was no baby; God
has made a way where there was no way. Mary knows that Jesus is God’s son as
much as her own and that with God all things, even the impossible, are
possible. And so she turns to the servants and speaks profoundly out of her own
experience, “Do whatever he tells you.”
And suddenly, where once there
were only six stone water jars, now there was wine, the best wine, more wine,
much, much more wine than was needed, wine flowing like water, blessing the
disciples, the guests, the bridegroom, even the snooty wine steward, with the
intoxicating taste of God’s amazing grace, precious wine poured out eternally
as a gift and a sign pointing straight to the heart of God. Once where there
were only empty lifeless stone jars, now there was abundant life – grace upon
grace upon grace upon grace.
The question is: Can we do what
Mary does?
Can we live this way? Can we stop
thinking that God’s amazing grace is either the result of our own hard work or
some kind of a hocus-pocus hit-the-lottery kind of trick? Can we lay down what
we think we know of the way the universe is ordered and believe against all
evidence to the contrary that God is in the business of doing the impossible,
turning water into wine every day, quietly, miraculously, astonishingly
supplying the need of a hungry, thirsty, broken world?
Can we live the faith of Mary? Can
you and I live as she does? Can we lay down our need to control, our need to
follow an agenda that we set, our need to provide for ourselves in all things,
and say to the Lord, “Let it be with me according to your will?” Do we have the energy, the perseverance in
prayer, the openness of spirit to trust not only that our Shepherd will supply
our need in the big things of life – but that even when the wine runs out, the
Word made flesh can and will provide? Can we live as Mary did, as signs of
God’s glory in the world, pointing always to the One who came into the world
that we might receive grace upon grace upon grace upon grace?
It’s time and past time to stop
worrying that we’re running short of wine. It’s time and past time to stop
putting God into a little box that has no room for the miraculous, time to stop
proclaiming that this and only this is what God can and will do. It’s time that
we took a look at the stone water jars of our lives and trust the God of
abundance to fill them up and refill them and fill them again. Grace upon grace
upon grace upon grace. Jesus did this,
the first of his signs in Cana in Galilee and
revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
The question is: Do we?
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