Skip to main content

drink up

A little while ago I was re-reading the story of Jesus' first miracle: the turning of water into wine at the wedding at Cana in John 2. Nice little story. It has been used to illustrate everything from Jesus' approval of liquor to God caring about the smaller details of our lives. At this last reading just over a week ago, I asked God what the point of the story was, and the answer was unmistakable: It is a wedding! Jesus celebrates weddings! Anyplace there is love, commitment, mutual submission, a coming together of differences, unity, the joining of one to another, oneness, family, and unselfish unconditional affection, Jesus is present, celebrating, adding something to the occasion, turning the ordinary into the best. He loves weddings so much he instituted the celebratory institution himself as a picture of his desire to be one with us. One of the most intimate pictures of Jesus is as the bridegroom.

Being the church or body of Jesus is so much more than holding meetings or being involved in programs. It is about living in that wedding attitude, about always coming together even when we would rather exert our individuality, about giving ourselves to one another, of pursuing oneness with God and with others in all the ways we can and knowing it is such a worthy endeavour that Jesus will always infuse it with his extraordinary spirit.

This bottle of wine, now empty, was given to me on my birthday by a good friend. It was enjoyed by a small group of friends and family a few days later.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Names of God

The Hebrew word "YHWH" (read from right to left) This past Sunday I gave a talk on the Names of God, the beginning of a series on this topic. This first talk was to be a gentle introduction so I thought it wouldn't take too many hours of preparation. Well, I quickly discovered that the research is almost bottomless; every time I thought I had a somewhat definitive list of names, I found another source which added a few more or gave a different twist on some of the names I had already come across. After several hours I was getting overwhelmed by the sheer amount of data (and that was only looking at the Hebrew Bible). I wondered how I could present this to people in an orderly and accessible fashion and within a reasonable time frame. Not everyone is up for a 3-hour lecture crammed full of detail on a Sunday morning. So I took a break and spent a bit of time meditating on this problem and asking the Spirit for guidance. And then I thought that being overwhelmed by Go
3 comments
Read more

it's a mad mad mad world (of theology)

The mad dash for the end of term has begun.  I have finished all my required readings and have jumped into research reading.  One of my papers is on the madness of theology (the correlation seems more obvious to some of us than to others).  Truly inspiring stuff, I am finding.  Let me share a few quotes here: There is a certain madness in Christianity – in a desert God who is jealous and passionate, in a saviour who speaks in apocalyptic terms, in a life of sacrificial love, in the scandal of particularity.   In principle, a confessional theology should bear the mark of this madness, but the mark or wound must constantly be renewed. - Walter Lowe, "Postmodern Theology" in The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology , 2007.   “In the Scriptures the odd phenomena constituting the ‘Kingdom of God’ are the offspring of the shock that is delivered by the name of God to what is there called the ‘world,’ resulting in what I call a ‘sacred anarchy.’   Consider but a sampling o
10 comments
Read more

comedic timing

Comic by Joel Micah Harris at xkcd.com One of my favourite jokes goes like this: Knock, knock. Who's there? Interrupting cow Interrupting cow w--- Moooooooo!! Timing is important in both drama and comedy. A well-paced story draws the audience in and helps it invest in the characters, while a tale too hastily told or too long drawn out will fail to engage anyone. Surprise - something which interrupts the expected - is a creative use of timing and integral to any good story. If someone is reading a novel and everything unfolds in a predictable manner, they will probably wonder why they bothered reading the book. And so it is in life. Having life be predictable all of the time is not as calming as it sounds. We love surprises, especially good surprises like birthday parties, gifts, marriage proposals, and finding something that we thought was lost. Surprises are an important part of humour. A good joke is funny because it goes to a place you didn't expect it to go. Sim
Post a Comment
Read more