Father Rick Bolte's Homily

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As you likely have heard before, John’s Gospel usually has a meaning deeper than the simple story that’s told.  Today the story again seems simple.  Mary, Jesus, and his disciples are all at a wedding banquet when they run out of wine.  Mary asks Jesus to do something about it and he seems to say no.  However Mary tells the waiters to do what he says and he turns water into wine.  The wine is indeed better than the first wine which is a surprise to the wine steward.  Jesus’ apparent dismissal of his mother’s request grabs our attention and gives us a clue to what John wants to teach us.  Jesus says, “My hour has not yet come.”  If we were reading this Gospel for the first time, this would point out for us that this story is only a pointer to what is important.  Another hint at what is to come is the wine.  The first wine is representative of the old covenant and the Old Testament relationship to God.  By the time of John’s Gospel, the early cordial relationship between the Jews and the followers of Christ has broken down.  Jesus was a Jew and his followers continued to be followers of the Jewish way of life and worshipped side by side with those who did not recognize Jesus as the fulfillment of the Old Testament prophecies.  Reflecting this split from the Jews, Jesus creates a new wine from water and it is better than the first wine.  This becomes a hint that there is a new covenant which Jesus establishes with the new wine – his blood – and so a new and better relationship with God.

Our first reading from Isaiah also speaks of a new relationship with God.  This Isaiah (commonly referred to as Second Isaiah) is prophesying during the time that Judah has been defeated, Jerusalem with the temple has been leveled, and many of the people are held in captivity in Babylon, the capital city of the enemy.  Isaiah prophesies that a time is coming when they will no longer be call “desolate” and their land “forsaken.”  God will call them “my delight” and their land “my espoused.”  This new relationship, the relationship that today we recognize as what Jesus reveals to us, is a relationship of great intimacy.  We are the beloved bride of Christ!

This often seems too good to be true.  We want to believe in love as great as this but our experience reminds us of disappointments when we’ve dared to hope in the past.  In our lives no one has loved us as much as we felt we needed; not our parents, girl/boyfriends, spouses, etc.  We get hurt when we expect any one person to meet our needs.  The key is to let go of the idea that there is a person who can meet all our needs and to realize that only God can love us as fully as we need.  Each person who shows us love gives us but a small piece of the picture of God’s love.  Every person can help others encounter God’s love in a limited way but no one can show the whole of it.  We know also that we do not love as fully as others wish or even as much as we’d like.  Yet hopefully we are aware that the love of God does flow through us as a gift to others.  Again the key is to see the love that is in others and realize it points to the true love and our hearts desire.

The same is true of God’s kingdom.  There is no utopia on earth.  But we do see glimpses of God’s kingdom in our midst.  We see it in the community and love experienced in our CRHP weekends, fish fries, parish festivals, dinner dances, parish missions, helping the grant recipients, etc.  We see it especially when we gather around a hurting member of our community with prayers, meals, material support, and the like.  It is true that there is no perfection in any one person or in any particular activity.  However these actions do invite us to look beyond a particular occurrence and to see God and the kingdom.

To be a person of faith is not so much believing in is some abstract tenants of our belief system but to believe in the reality of God’s love and kingdom in our midst.  We don’t see the whole of it but we do see enough to choose the kingdom of God’s love.  This is what we are about as a church community.  We rally together to reinforce our belief in God’s presence, to try to reveal it to one another, and to encourage each other to let the world see it through us.  Let us be true believers in the power of God’s love and the fulfillment of God’s kingdom on earth.