Shoving Can be Good

 Epiphany.  The word means showing.  When Jesus showed us who he was. Like the pulling back of a veil, the moment the curtain opens, a tear in the fabric of reality when the Son of God lets us know that he is real.  He is alive.

The first Epiphany that we celebrate in the season of Epiphany is the Baptism of Jesus. That was last Sunday.  Today we celebrate Jesus’ first miracle in the Gospel of John, the changing of water into wine.

The strange thing about this first miracle is that it was totally spontaneous.  You would think that the Son of God might have a plan to unveil his ministry, a strategic plan. Or at least a first step.  But no, Jesus begins his miracles at a wedding, at a party, when his mother pesters him.

The relationship that Jesus has with his mother in the Gospel of John is very different from the relationship that he has with his mother in Matthew, Mark and Luke. In the other three gospels, Mary seems determined to stop Jesus in his tracks and to bring him back home.  In the Gospel of Mark, Mary claims that Jesus is possessed and must come back home. He is not acting himself!  He is out of his mind, she claims.

But in John’s gospel, Mary is not trying to stop Jesus and bring him home. In fact, in John, Mary is doing the exact opposite.  She is trying to activate her son’s ministry.  Mary is challenging Jesus to get started.

“They have no wine,” she says to him.  And you know that she must have given him that look that only mothers can give, the look of “you’d better do what I say.”  And here they were, in the middle of a party.  And Jesus’ disciples are with him.

Was he embarrassed?  Angry? Annoyed?  Something was wrong.  Jesus’ response is curt and unfriendly at best.  “Woman,” he says.  “What have you to do with me? My hour has not yet come.”

Woman.  People addressed women that way. It was not considered rude. Jesus would later address the woman at the well in the same way.  But he is clear with his mother that this is not the time.  And he sounds firm.

But she doesn’t listen to his protests.  Instead, she instructs the servants to follow his orders.

And Jesus performs his first miracle because his mother would not leave him alone.

What is your most challenging relationship right now?   Sometimes, miracles come when we confront the most difficult people.  Challenging relationships- they can be exactly what God wants for us.

In the late 1870’s there was a doctor living in Paris.  His name was Stephane Tarnier and he was an obstetrician, he delivered babies. He worked in a hospital for some of the city’s poorest women.  And he saw their agony when their babies died. 66% of low-weight babies died in his hospital. 66%. Being born early was close to a death sentence. 

Tarnier could have gone to another hospital. He could have escaped the pain.  But he didn’t. He looked into the faces of the mothers in agony and realized that he had to do better. They were asking him to help them. One mother in particular looked at him and begged him to help her baby. Desperate for an idea, he went wandering through a zoo. There he stumbled upon chicken incubators, there to help the eggs hatch.  In that moment of challenge and grief and frustration and even agony, Tarnier had an idea.  An idea that would save the lives of millions of babies to this day. The incubator.  It was already being used on chickens but no one had connected the dots.  So simple.  Such a miracle.

How random that Jesus would make wine for his first miracle.  No one was starving. No one was sick and in pain.  No great humanitarian need.  Just a newly-wed couple trying to celebrate their love.  And a mother challenging him.

When I was in college, I traveled to Russia to research the Eastern Orthodox liturgy.  But there was just one problem, I was too scared to talk to a priest.  Most of them didn’t speak to women about worship.  I was not only a woman, I was a foreigner.  Who would talk to me? So I wandered into churches day after day not daring to strike up a conversation with a priest. Until one day, I brought a friend from college with me.  He too was studying in Russia that summer.  He knew my dilemma, how I was stuck.  He stood there with me in the church after the service as I watched the priest greet people.  I was hanging back.  So my friend shoved me.

It made me really mad.  He came up behind me and pushed me.  Arrg!  I could have turned around and hit him.  But his shove also humiliated me, just a bit.  I knew he was challenging me. And I took that anger and walked over to the priest, to establish one of the most formative relationships of my life.

We always think that the most successful relationships are the peaceful ones, the loving ones, the supportive ones.  But what if God works best when we are with people who shove us, make us mad and even annoy us?  Maybe the ones who make us uncomfortable, maybe those are the people we should make sure that we meet.

Jesus changes water into wine and launches his ministry.  All because his mother would not take no for an answer.  Who shoves you?  Who pushes your buttons?  Who holds you accountable and tells you the truth?  Love does not sit by and allow the other to just be comfortable, not when the world is so broken and we have so much to do.  Love challenges.  Love makes you move and grow and reach out for something that you did not know that you could attain.  Love does not wait for you to like that other person.  If they truly love you, they will be willing for you to dislike them or even never want to see them again.  If someone truly loves you, they will challenge you.  They will ask something of you.  They will not rest until you grow.

Epiphany.  God is showing you something right now.  It has to do with the challenge of being in relationship.  When someone shoves you, maybe the best response is Thank You.

As a Child...

Sometimes I babysit Liesl and Paul’s little girl Alexis.  She is not yet two.  In a odd way, I find that she is my teacher when she comes to my house.  That may sound strange but Alexis sees the world.  I mean, she really sees it.  With absolute fascination, she will look at the clock in my house, point to it on the wall and say the word CLOCK!  And it will hit me like a ton of bricks that yes, this is a clock and it is a wonderful thing and fascinating and why did I not notice it?  In fact, now that I am an adult, I pass by so much without seeing it. I pass by entire days, sunsets, flowers, rain…not even noticing.

This past week, my son Luke and I took Alexis for a walk on one of her visits.  It was getting dark and she kept pointing out the moon and shouting at it, “Moon!!”  Then we reached a small puddle at the end of a driveway.  And she was intrigued.

Knowing that a washer and drier were not far away, I let her stomp in the puddle.  SPLASH!  I said, and she giggled loudly.  SPLASH! She sang out.  And splash and splash and then run faster and faster and come back and splash again.  Alexis was fascinated with how the water worked, how it moved around her feet, how there were leaves in it. (yes, we did wash our hands afterwards) She did not want to leave.  She was not done exploring that puddle for a very long time. I could not rush her. She moved and jumped in that tiny amount of water.  It was a song of praise. It was a dance. It was pure joy. 

There was another little boy who would not be rushed. Today we hear about the boy Jesus. He was just twelve years old when he went to Jerusalem with his parents.  They visited the temple annually. But this time, Jesus did not leave when everyone else left. The adults all thought that Jesus was lost, but he was not lost, he just never left the temple. He was not done with what he had to do there. Jesus did not wander off.  It was everyone else who wandered off without him.  He was exactly where he should be. 

Jesus was in God’s house, where else? And that to me is no surprise at all.  Jesus felt safe and fascinated by the beautiful space just as you and I do.  Isn’t that why we are here?  Jesus was drawn into God’s presence even as he was God himself. 

Remember that God tells us again and again that this is the place to be.  If you encounter someone who is lost or lonely or suffering, invite them here!  It is so simple but we forget.  They can say no.  You are not going to offend them. Just invite them.  After all, Jesus wanted to be here too.

It took his parents an entire day to realize that he had not left Jerusalem with the group from their village. I can’t imagine how frantic they were when they went back to look for him.  I have felt that panic before, the rising sense of danger as your child is lost.

When they find Jesus, they are no doubt frazzled and rushed and angry and afraid.  They felt like most of us do on many of our days.  Sort of self-pitying and afraid.  We often rush at God will all of our urgent problems as if God has abandoned us when we actually left God somewhere along the way.  We say, “How could you do this to me?  Don’t you know how much I have been worrying?  How could you be so thoughtless? How can you leave me?”

It is not where he was that surprises me, it is what he was doing.  For years, I glossed over this passage and assumed that Jesus was arguing with the teachers and rabbis and telling them about God. I assumed that Jesus would show them how he knew more about God than they did. I was wrong.

Jesus was not telling them anything.  Jesus was listening.

And Jesus was asking questions.

It blows my mind that the Son of God would be listening and asking questions.  But somehow, the child Jesus knew something that most of us grown-ups seem to have forgotten…that God is in the questions.  God is in the wonder and the amazement and the awareness.  If we want to find God, we have to stop talking for a minute and listen.

In this world, it seems that we are bombarded by talking.  Everyone knows what they think and everyone has an opinion.  But we do not learn from talking at each other.  We do not learn when we pigeonhole another person as liberal or conservative and stop listening. No one human being is exactly like another.  We no more understand each other than we can understand the moon.  When we stop listening, we cut off the very means by which God communicates with us. 

Jesus listened and Jesus asked questions.

Recently, I have begun to picture an image in my prayers. It is an image of glass.  Each of us is surrounded by a lens of sorts, a piece of glass or a bubble of our perception.  When we encounter events in life, they color or warp the glass.  When a girl is abused by her father and touched inappropriately, her lens becomes warped.  She sees all men as dangerous and even the sweetest man will step in front of her and his actions will look warped to her through her lens. She will not be able to see him clearly or to love clearly.

It is not only traumatic events that warp the glass, it is simple opinions.  Telling a child that teenagers are rude or old people are bad drivers or that Republicans are mean or Democrats are stupid. They believe us and it colors their perception. And if they don’t clean the glass, forever will their world be warped.

And finally, the worst kind of warped perception is when we don’t try to look through the glass at all because we are simply too busy looking at ourselves.  Or when the glass becomes so dirty, so covered over with opinions and arguments that we can’t see through it at all, all we see is a reflection of our own selves. It is amazing how fascinated we can be with our own moods and actions meanwhile the true awe exists all around us waiting to be seen.

We all see through a glass dimly, wrote St. Paul so many years ago.  The point of prayer is not so much to talk as to listen, to ask questions and to clean the glass of your perception.

Remember the children.  Remember the child Jesus who listened.  Return to who God created you to be, a child of God.