Robert Barron - The Marriage of Divinity and Humanity
Peace be with you. Friends, I don’t know if you’re like me, but I always have a sense of relief when we come back to ordinary time. We’ve been through the season of Advent and Christmas and now the Church returns us to ordinary time and it gives us this cycle, this marvelous reading from the Gospel of John, the wedding feast at Cana. And it’s as though as we commence the ordinary liturgical year, we’re meant to see everything through the lens of this reading. And it’s been so much commented upon, but I think it’s of such massive importance for understanding Christianity and biblical religion in general. And how wonderful that it sets it up, the Church sets it up, with this reference to the prophet Isaiah, and the idea of God’s desire to marry his people.
Now here’s the first thing to see. Thomas Merton called this the Promethean problem in religion, referring to the myth of Prometheus who climbs Mount Olympus and he steals fire from the gods. And the Gods are lividly angry with him, and so they capture him and then they chain him to a rock and they punish him for all eternity. And see, Merton’s point is the Promethean problem haunts religious people up and down the ages, namely that the gods or God is marvelous and powerful and all that, but doesn’t want us to be alive. and doesn’t want us to be flourishing. The gods or God, we’re like a rival to them. And so if we take something from them, oh they’re going to be lividly angry, we’re going to be punished. The idea that I got to do all sorts of things to get God to love me. God doesn’t really love me, but if I perform sufficiently, then God maybewill be on my side.
See, that whole attitude is inimical to the Bible. Now, it doesn’t conduce toward a kind of antinomianism, it doesn’t mean, «oh, there’s no point to the law». Not at all, not at all. But see, everything in the Bible begins with grace or we’re not playing the biblical game anymore. Everything begins with the free gift.
Listen now to this passage from Isaiah for today, «For Zion’s sake, I shall not be silent, for Jerusalem’s sake I will not be quiet. Until her vindication shines forth like the dawn and her victory like a burning torch». That’s God speaking about his holy people. He’s not going to rest until they’re victorious, until they come to fullness of life. This is not the ancient Greek and Roman gods. This is not the Promethean problem of, «I better sufficiently impress this awful power». No, on the contrary, God won’t rest until we’re fully alive. Irenaeus’s great statement, «the glory of God is a human being fully alive,» is a perfectly biblical idea.
And then listen now as things get even more intense, «no more shall men call you 'forsaken' or your land 'desolate', but you should be called 'my delight' and your land 'espoused'». So God is delighting in his people. He wants them to be alive. And then this reference, espoused, married, married. And then things get even more explicit, listen, «for the Lord delights in you and makes your land his spouse as a young man marries a virgin, your builder will marry you». Now, I think everybody, these are among the most extraordinary lines in all the religious literature of the world because all religion, I mean, talks about God is great and powerful and demanding and all those things, distant maybe.
I don’t know any other religion that has God announcing he wants to marry his people. And this image of marriage with all of the intimacy and all the delight that’s involved and the sense of giving rise to life and all of that, your builder, it says, so the creator of the universe wants to marry you, not just he wants to give you commands and see if you follow them. He doesn’t want just that you be his followers or disciples. He wants to marry you. He wants to share his life with you in the richest possible way. Gosh, do we believe it? Do we become anywhere near believing that or are we haunted by the Promethean problem? Spend some time, can I suggest, spend some time with these texts from the prophet Isaiah. They sum up the best of biblical religion. Ok.
Now, what the Church has done is, it’s given us this reading from Isaiah to set us up for the gospel because I think we have a tendency to read the Wedding at Cana in a kind of superficial way. Jesus at this wedding reception and this poor couple, and they’ve run out of wine, and that’s so embarrassing to them. And so he helps them and restores this sort of happiness to the feast. Well, okay, that’s true enough I think. But see, in the Gospel of John, this is the first of Jesus' signs. Simeion is the word that John uses. He doesn’t say miracle.
See, miracles is from miraris in Latin, meaning you’re amazed at it. You wonder at it. But John doesn’t call them miracles. He calls them signs. The first of his signs. And there are seven in his gospel culminating in the raising of Lazarus. But why in the world would the wedding feast of Cana be the first of his signs? You might say the one that sets the tone for all the other great signs. Well, I think we’ve got to read it in light of this Isaiahan Old Testament idea of God wants to marry his people. Look, Jesus in his own being is the marriage of heaven and earth. We say in dogmatic language, he’s the personal union of two natures, divine and human.
Well, that’s all the biblical religion. What brings divinity and humanity together? Well, Jesus is in his own person. Listen, the marriage of divinity and humanity. And that’s why it’s appropriate symbolically, that the first of his signs would take place at a wedding. So let’s go back now to some of the details. As I say, this was an embarrassing moment for this young couple because these wedding receptions went on for days in those days and the wine was key to the celebration. And who knows exactly what happened, but they’re running out of wine. They weren’t wealthy enough, they underestimated the number of guests who had come or who knows what happened.
But it’s an embarrassment. But more than that, wine, wine in the Bible, Old Testament and New symbolizes the spiritual life, the life of grace, that inebriating substance that lifts us up and heightens our consciousness and brings delight to our souls. Wine, wine is symbolic of the outpouring of grace. Think again in the prophets, this imagery of the hills running with wine. Well, it’s a sign of messianic grace. And so the wine has run out. It’s not just this couple up in Galilee having an embarrassing situation. It’s symbolic of Israel that has lost its contact with the Creator, with its builder, it’s lost contact with the source of grace.
It’s Israel in its anguish, crying out to God «How long? How long»? Which is exactly why and it’s so beautiful, that Mary plays such an important role here because Mary, especially in John’s Gospel, is evocative of Israel. Think of Mary as summing up the patriarchs, and the prophets, and all the great figures of Israel. And so when she says to Jesus, «they have no more wine,» see her as humanity if you want, but more specifically as Israel saying to its creator, «We’re lost here. We’ve run out of contact with grace. When will you come? Lord, do something».
And then of course, beautifully and as everyone points out, it’s the last thing that Mary says in the entire Bible, «Do whatever he tells you». Well see, can you hear in that an echo of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and Joshua and Moses and David and Isaiah and Jeremiah and Ezekiel and Daniel and all of them. That’s what they’ve all been saying in page after page, in event after event, is, please Israel, do whatever he tells you. Do what the Lord tells you. She’s Israel again, saying, «look, we’re running out of grace». And then she tells the servants there, «For God’s sake, do what he tells you». And then Jesus famously tells them, «fill up these jars with water».
Six stone jars, and the total count is 180 gallons. They’re running out of wine. You want wine? I’m going to give you wine. In John’s Gospel, especially, numbers matter a lot. The superabundance of what Jesus is preparing here. And then of course he miraculously changes the water into wine. So what is this? This is now the moment when the grace flows, when indeed the hills run with wine, when the divine life comes flooding back into humanity. Can we read this new wine? And of course it’s the steward that says, «Hey, normally they serve the new wine first, but you’ve held it to the last».
What’s the new wine but what’s been held to the latter days of Revelation? So all throughout Israelite history, the sort of longing for the flowing of the wine, but now the good wine, the best wine has come at the end, has come with the culmination and fulfillment of Revelation in Jesus. And then how do we read this in terms of our own lives, but the Mass, what happens at the Mass? Well, the Mass is a kind of wedding feast, isn’t it? Because at the mass, divinity and humanity are brought together. What flows with abundance at the mass, but the new wine of Christ’s blood. Poured out in sacrifice, yes.
Remember the sermon last week about John the Baptist and the Lamb of God and the blood poured out and sacrificed for our sins? Yes. But also, the blood of that sacrifice is drunk by the participants at this feast. The altar, yes indeed, where a sacrifice happens and the table at which a meal is served. Both are true, both are true. How much wine is there? Well, the 180 gallons is symbolic of the overflowing wine of Christ’s blood, which will be offered up and down the ages until the culmination of history. Your builder wants to marry you.
Gosh, do we believe it? Do we believe it? That’s extraordinary claim. That’s what he wants. He’s not the distant God of Prometheus. He wants to marry us. And it happened in Jesus. Divinity and humanity came together and then flowing from Jesus is the offer now of marriage to all of us happening through the consuming of the new wine of Jesus' blood. Extraordinary lens now through which we should read the whole of this coming year of ordinary time. And God bless you.