out at the back hill which rises out from our summer home. The hillside once offered pasture to Holsteins and Guernseys, but now simply watches over valley and lake. To climb it, though, low as it is, does require energy and strength.
This year we will scale a far greater promontory, the highest peak in the Bible, which is the Gospel of John. With every cut-back trail, at every rest point, atop every lookout, with every majestic view, this spiritual gospel will address you with the choice of freedom, with the ongoing need to choose, and—in choosing—to find the life of belonging and meaning, personal identity and global imagination. More personally, this Gospel helps those who struggle with dislocation and disappointment. The Bride in Cana experienced dislocation, and so have you. The Bride of Christ experiences disappointment, and so have you.
The two basic historical problems of the New Testament are ancient cousins, first cousins to our two fundamental issues, the two existential battles in your salvation today.
The first historical problem behind our 27 books, and pre- eminently embedded in John, is the movement away from Judaism. How did a religious movement founded by a Jew, born in Judea, embraced by 12 and 500 within Judaism, expanded by a Jewish Christian missionary, become–-within 100 years–-entirely Greek? The books of the New Testament record in excruciating detail the development of this second identity, this coming of age, that came with the separation from mother religion.
The second historical problem underneath the Newer Testament is disappointment, the despair that gradually accompanied the delay, finally the cancellation, of Christ’s return, the delay of the parousia. Jesus was an apocalyptic prophet. Paul expected to be alive to see the advent of Christ. Gradually, though, the church confessed disappointment in its greatest immediate hope, the sudden cataclysm of the end.
These two problems, historical and fascinating, create our New Testament: the separation from Judaism and the delay of the parousia. In the fourth Gospel the two come together with great ferocity. What makes this matter so urgent for us is that these very two existential dilemmas—one of identity and one of imagination—are before every generation, including and especially our own.
How do I become a real person? How do we weather lasting disappointment? How do I grow up? How do we become mature? What insight do I need, amid the truly harrowing struggles over identity, to become the woman or man I was meant to become? What imagination—what hope molded by courage—do we need to face down the profound despair of nuclear twilight and break free into a loving global future?
Dislocation and disappointment. More than any other document in ancient Christianity, John explored the first of these great dilemmas. More than any other document in Christianity, John faced the second.
The Bride in Cana: The Battle with Dislocation
Some years ago after a particularly warm July wedding, we had the opportunity to join newlyweds, families, and friends at an evening reception. A wedding folds two worlds into one new creation, and does so with alarming speed. It is quite amazing what can happen in forty minutes. During dinner a round, large man accosted me to say, “Nice service Reverend. But I have two words for you: ‘air conditioning.’” We then enjoyed the round of food and drink, of dance and music, none of which really has changed very much since Jesus went up to Cana in the north country of Galilee. Roles have changed. Power shifts have occurred. The age of betrothal, the economics of the household, the rhythms of procreation, the status of women, the frequency of divorce—all these have changed. The wedding banquet is about the same. It was in this sort of universal spirit that my new, large and round friend offered his second wisdom saying. Like most epigrams, its context has long been forgotten. In fact I may not have been listening closely enough, given band and dance and cake and all, to have grasped the context in its origin. I just remember my head snapping back when he stated, in the flat, easy sense in which someone remarks about a universally held belief: “Of course, all men hate all weddings.”
I took some offense to this, as a man who has spent a good percentage of summer weekend life at weddings, and not hated, at least not all of them. Whatever was he thinking? What did the wedding represent for him that was so recognizably hateful?
Perhaps it is the inherent element of falsehood as several people publicly put forward their best feet. Perhaps it is the flummery. Perhaps the very time, tedious and full, that such an event requires. Perhaps the recognition of mortality, the sense of ending. And the ending (or at least the limits) of personal freedoms.
The first great battle of salvation is with dislocation, and dislocation is the stuff of every wedding. Dislocation is the fact of life that every bride–-and every groom and both their families—must face.
The Bride of Christ: The Battle with Disappointment
The second great battle of salvation is with disappointment, and every wedding has its share of that as well. This is what makes weddings, in Cana and elsewhere, so interesting. Things are just not ever simple.
I do not believe that there is much of anything that might happen in the course of a wedding that would at all surprise me. Not any more. I have had bomb threats, no shows, late shows, sickness, faintings, forgotten rings, electrical problems, plumbing problems, family fights, and neglected fees. Once a groom paid me four dollars for a wedding Jan and I hosted in our living room. My own daughter’s wedding, according to a close friend, hit several records: longest, hottest, most music, most attendees, most faintings, and most memories. It is hard to imagine a setting more apt to disappoint the hope of simplicity with the reality of life. Maybe that is why the first recorded sign in John occurs at a wedding. One in which the simple task of buying the right amount of wine apparently was too much for somebody to do right.
1 Corinthians 13, so often read at weddings, should give us a clue. I expect many of you could recite portions of this chapter. Speak with tongues. . .men and angels. . .noisy gong. . ..bears, believes, hopes, endures. . ..faith, hope, and love abide. . .the greatest of these is love. . .. But as a speaker at Riverside Church said in late August, we may too often miss the most important verses in the whole chapter, the next to last. Faith, hope and love abide. . .yes, wonderful. But do you remember what comes before them? Words to live by in the complexity of life. Words to live by in the confusion of marriage. Words to live by in the strange, twilight condition that is ours. Now we see in a glass darkly, then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall know in full. Along with the tide of fear that we spoke of last week, there is an undertow of simplicity around us. We want things simple. They are not. We are disappointed.
In 1989, three days before Christmas, our son Ben suddenly proclaimed a hankering for a train set. We had already bartered for the season’s gifts, and Christmas being what Christmas is in a parsonage, we made a mental note for next year. Next year, a train, for Ben.
I remember that at our staff Christmas party on December 23 I had mentioned this desire of Ben’s, as some sort of illustration of some now fully forgotten interpretation of the Incarnation. So it goes.
At 1 am on Christmas Eve, or rather morning, we return down the slope of Acorn Path and entered our garage, walking toward the backdoor. There on the steps we found a big box, wrapped in a red bow, “for Ben, from Santa.” Ben loved his simple, new train. In January I spent many hours coaxing, cajoling, thanking, pressing my staff about who had given Ben the train. Our organist, former supervisor of music in Onondaga County, G. Frank Lapham—he loved kids, surely he had brought the train. My friend and student minister, now Bruce Lee-Clark, whose own train set covered his basement in full—he loved trains, surely he was the one. My dearest colleague, Al Childs, now 85 and four years from death—he was just the kind of guy to do such a thing. My sweet secretary Jo Stewart, then 80 and looking 55—she loved Ben liked the son she always wanted; it was she.
But they all denied it. To a man. Vociferously, they denied it. They seemed
