Good evening.
We have here in the first couple
rows some very special people. We have
with us at this Mass the engaged couples who’ve been with us since last evening
at our parish pre-Cana wedding prep sessions.
They’ve been hearing all sorts of “war stories” from six real life
married couples, hearing all the dos and the don’ts of building a lasting and
joyful marriage. And they’ve heard from
every one of the presenting couples, as well as the humble deacon, about the
importance of keeping Jesus Christ at the center of their lives, at the center
of their married lives together. But I
don’t know of anything that conveys that message quite as beautifully or as
powerfully as this homily which I read in this preaching book by Thomas
Troeger. A homily which beautifully
demonstrates the power of the grace of Jesus Christ throughout Sacramental
Marriage, through all of the joys and struggles, ups and downs of life
together, a homily which I’d like to share with you this evening:
I would like to think there was some wine left over. Jesus supplied enough. John tells us “there were six stone water jars…each holding twenty to thirty gallons. Three times twenty is sixty, three times thirty is ninety. And sixty gallons plus ninety gallons equals one hundred fifty gallons. One hundred fifty gallons! That is a lot of wine to drink. Especially since they had already polished off the initial supply. Surely, one twenty-gallon jar would have sufficed.
But no.
Jesus is extravagant, wildly extravagant.
It is not unreasonable to believe some wine was left. And I would like to think that when the celebration was over and the couple had left for their honeymoon and the guests had departed, that some friend or family member of the couple, poured the wine that remained into smaller containers and corked them, and when the couple returned, presented them with several crates of the splendid wine, saying “here, this is the wine the rabbi from Nazareth supplied. I thought you might like to have it for special occasions.”
I picture the couple delighted, smiling to think that on the meager budget of newlyweds they can enjoy such a heavenly vintage with their low-cost suppers. In the way of eager young couples, they do not plan very well at first so that at the end of two or three years, they realize, extravagant as Jesus was, they will some day run out. So they begin to save the wine for special occasions, bringing it out on their anniversary, on the birth and dedication of a child, at family reunions, on high holy days that feature feasting and drinking.
And every time they taste the wine, they relive their wedding day, and they recall how at the first sip of Jesus’ wine they had looked at each other with eyes that shone with a love whose intensity caught even them by surprise.
And so the years pass until they are an old couple, keenly aware that “all flesh is grass,” springing up in youth, then quickly fading. I picture the old couple on a chilly night. She is in front of the fire, trying to warm her feet and hands for they are always cold now.
He pauses coming into the room where she sits on a bench pulled right up to the grate. He studies her in the light of the fire: the shape of her forehead, the deep creases of her face, and the lips he has kissed ten thousand times.
All of a sudden, with a prompting he cannot explain, he blurts out, “Honey?”
At first she does not hear him so he calls again, “Honey?”
She slowly looks up, and he says, “Honey, what if we finish the wine tonight. The rabbi’s wine. There’s just one little bottle left. It might warm you up some.”
“Sure, sure,” she says, “that would be good.”
So he goes and gets the wine and brings it back to the fire with the only clean chalice he can find. He sets it down and uncorks the wine speculating: “I wonder if it will still be good, after all these years.”
“Always has been,” she says. “The rabbi’s wine has never gone bad, It’s as amazing as the way he provided it.”
The husband pours the first serving and hands his wife the chalice. She sips and hands it to him. They look at each other and nod their agreement: The wine is as rich as the day they were married.
They drink very slowly, and as they drink they start to tell stories.
She says: “I remember when Sarah was born. You would have thought nobody had ever been a father before, the way you carried on, calling in the whole neighborhood, they consumed an entire crate of this wine, as if it were our wedding all over again.”
“Well you did just about the same, when Benjamin and Rebecca brought home our first grandchild.”
The wife laughs a hearty laugh, “Yeah, I did, didn’t I? Oh, those were such good times, good enough to want them never to stop.”
He pours some more wine, and they each take a sip and he stirs the fire, and they sit absorbed in the flame. She sees him out of the corner of her eye and notices he is trying to hold back tears. She knows what he is thinking: He is remembering when the third child died. Been terribly sick. Tried everything. But he died anyway. All she could pray for weeks on end was “My God, my God, why have you forsaken us?” They were both so distraught and God didn’t seem to answer, they didn’t know what to do but blame the other one.
One evening he came home and she had supper ready, and they set things out on the table without saying a single word, going through the motions that had become rituals of habit, the only thing holding them together day by day now. When they sat down they realized she had not gotten water from the well and he had not brought home any wine from market. So he got up and found one of the bottles of wine from their wedding. Might as well open it now. No sense saving it for special occasions anymore. So he opened it and poured some wine for each of them.
And when the wine touched their lips they tasted grace in their hearts, and they broke down and sobbed together. The grief of their loss never went away – how could it? – but the strength to carry the grief together that was what the wine of Jesus gave them.
And now sitting in front of the fire, he turns to look at her, and hearing him move she turns toward him and they look at each other, and she takes his hand saying “Yes, Honey, I know, I know.” He is silent, then holds the bottle upside down over the chalice. There are a few last drops.
He hands the chalice to her: “Here, you finish it.”
She takes the smallest sip and hands it back to him, pointing out there is still the tiniest bit at the bottom. He puts the brim to his lips and throws back his head holding the chalice straight over him, then slowly brings it down and holds it between them.
“That’s it,” he says with a voice that sounds both satisfied and sad. “All gone. None to pass on to the children or the grandchildren now. Just the story of our wedding at Cana, and the rabbi who blessed us with wine. Just the story. But no wine.”
“Not to worry” responds his wife. “Not to worry. As long as people come to his table, there will always be more.”
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