The first story: Water to wine:
On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and Jesus’ mother was there. Jesus and his students had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine had run out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “There is no more wine.”
Jesus said, “What does that have to do with us? My hour isn’t here yet.”
His mother told the waiters, “Do whatever he says.”
There were six stone water jars standing there, used by the Jews for rites of purification. Each held twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim.
Jesus said, “Pour some out and give it to the wedding planner.”
They did so, and the wedding planner tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t understand where it had come from, though the waiters who had poured the water knew.
The wedding planned called for the groom and said, “People bring out the good wine first and then, after the guests have been drinking, get the cheap stuff. But you kept the good wine until now.”
This was the first of the signs Jesus made at Cana in Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his students trusted him.
John 2:1-11
Thomas Moore says that all of the miracles that Jesus performed were termed signs and were not necessarily categorized as miracles. Sign by definition means an object, quality, or event whose presence or occurrence indicates the probable presence or occurrence of something else. And Thomas Moore indicates that these miracles that Jesus performs is a sign for what would be the quality of our lives if we were to change our vision and embrace the kingdom.
And what is this kingdom: heaven on earth. Thomas Moore says that “the kingdom is a new myth of human living,” with mythology being two fold: 1) an actual story, like the tale of the Greek gods and goddesses or an event like the story of Jesus, or it may be 2) a lived story, like the implicit worldview of science that plays a central role in the myth that shapes the modern world. (Writing in the sand, page 10).
Joseph Campbell made this meaning popular in his television programs and books where he spells out four function or purposes of myth:
- to relate to the mystery of the world in which we live – the religious function.
- to create a meaningful understanding of the natural world – the cosmological function
- to establish and maintain values and an ethical way of life – the moral function
- to allow the individual persons to live a meaningful life in relation to nature and in society – the psychological function
In Campbell’s sense, Jesus is proposing a new myth to live by, an alternative vision for accomplishing these four goals: to have a spiritual existence, to have an appropriate relationship with the natural world, to live by real communal values and to be psychologically secure and creative.
This vision of a new way of being covers the whole of one’s existence. Jesus addresses not only the spiritual and religious dimensions but the whole of life – everything we do.
Consider this: in the Gospels Jesus clearly distinguishes between legalistic spiritual practice – following the rules, honoring authority, observing traditions – and living with compassion. The old way is one of authoritarianism, guilt and constraint. The new law, a new way of ordering life, is to honor people not for their position but for their humanity, to serve all people, and to be a healing presence wherever you are. This is clearly how Jesus’ models human life and how he embodies the Kingdom of Heaven. You find the kingdom when you discover a way out of the limited vision given to you by your family and culture, when your old mind has been washed clean, when you accept yourself, when you discover the rewards and challenges of love, when you deal with your mortality” (page 11).
Think back to Peter Mayer’s song: Do you really want to know?
In considering the sign of Cana and the wedding: we find that Jesus is responsive to his mother, he is willing to step out of himself because he was asked, and give a sign that indicates that in every situation we have the ability to change ordinary water, into something that is intoxicating: wine. This is, according to Thomas Moore the crux of all of Jesus’ teaching. We have the ability, we can discover the kingdom on earth, when we take the ordinary and imbibe it with our attention to detail and savor it.
How do we taste wine? I’m not much of a connoisseur, but use your imagination. You swirl it in the correct glass, you smell it, and then you carefully taste it. Savor the flavor and then reflect on its complexity.
Is this not a slightly different way to go through life? Is this not being awake to the essence of the wine?
Can we not be awake to the essence of our lives?
This parable also points to the body-spirit connection that Moore talked about in our video clip. “To be a student of Jesus is to pursue the pleasures that foster human warmth and community” (page 37). Having lived in a monastery for some 13 years, from his teenaged years to his late twenties, he experienced first hand that “the bread, wine, crafts and architectural splendor of the monasteries are not incidental to the life but expressive of its core genius and its central spirituality.”
And finally in thinking about this story, Moore asks us to make the connection of the first introduction to wine to the final experience with it – at the Last Supper. Here he asks us to live our creative, out-of-the-box existence in spite of the consequences. Or perhaps because of them.
The second story: The Prodigal Son
A man has two sons. The younger spoke to his father, “Father, give me my share of the property coming to me.” So he divided the money between the sons. A few days later, the younger son put together everything he had and went off to another country where he wasted his money away.
After he had spent everything, the country suffered a famine and he began to need things. So he got a job with someone who lived in that country and he was sent out into the field to feed the pigs. He wanted to fill his own belly with the stalks he was feeding the pigs, but no one gave him anything.
But then he came to himself and said, how many of my father’s workers have more than enough bread, and I am here starving. I will get going and return to my father and tell him, “Father, I have failed both you and heaven. I am not worthy any longer to be known as your son. Let me be one of your workers.” So he got up and went to this father.
He was still far off when his father saw him and was filled with compassion. He ran and put his arms around his son and kissed him again and again. The son said to him, “Father, I have failed you and heaven. I’m not worthy any longer to be known as your son.”
His father said to the servants, “Hurry. Get the best robe for him, and sandals, and put a ring on his finger. Get the mature calf and butcher it. We’ll eat and celebrate. For my son was dead, but now he has come back to life. He was lost, but now he is found.” Then, they began to celebrate.
During this time the older son was out in the field. When he came close to the house, he heard music and dancing. He called to one of the servants and asked what it was all about. “Your brother has arrived,” he said, “and your father has killed a mature calf because he has his son back in good condition.”
The eldest son was angry and wouldn’t go in, so his father went out and begged him. But he answered his father, “Listen! All these years I have served you and never went against your orders, and you never gave me even a young goat so I could have a party with my friends. But when your son returns, the one who wasted your bounty with prostitutes, you butcher the mature calf for him.”
The father said to him, “Son, you are always with me, and everything I have is yours. But we had to have a party and be happy, because your brother was dead and has come back to life. He was lost and has been found.”
Ah, the proverbial unfairness of it all! Here is Moore’s explanation of these lessons:
“Like all parables, this one shows what it is like to live in the kingdom. It contains two themes, common to other stories and teachings, that are compelling and confusing.
"First the reversal. Although the father loves his solid son who has remained with him and been trustworthy, he also loves the son who has squandered all his money and lived a wasted life. It is the rule of the kingdom to go out of the way to receive and accept someone who has failed miserably, even morally.
"Second, the resurrection. Jesus told his students to bring the dead to life. We have a tendency to think literally and imagine an unnatural miracle of a Frankenstein-ian sort. But this story assures us that Jesus is talking about restoring a dead soul and spirit. The prodigal son was dead to family, virtue, and sense. But now he comes back to life and wants to change his ways. Resurrection is metanoia.
"The prodigal son has a change of heart. He acknowledges that he has failed (traditionally translated as “sinned”), and owning up to failure in this way, Jesus often says, is part of the conversion experience – conversion not in the sense of becoming a follower but going through a radical, life-transforming change of vision. Jesus doesn’t applaud a squandered life, but he places high value on a person who has made mistakes and then had a change of heart.
"Metanoia is of great importance in his vision, and it is always a return to love. You risk life, make a mistake, and return with new conviction. It is not merely a change of mind but a change of heart as well.
"Most of us know the experience of wasting time, talents, money and other resources, of making mistakes and bad judgments; of associating with the wrong people and not always being able to be sexually virtuous. In Jesus’ eye, these failures in judgment are precious in a certain way. They can be redeemed and perhaps transformed into a meaningful life that may be better, in the long run, than that of the person who lives virtuously from the beginning.
"Naive virtue is often a defense against life’s complexity. It can be an unwillingness to take risks and discover what life is all about. After making some mistakes, you are ready for another, more sophisticated kind of virtue. Then you enter the kingdom with your eyes open, as an adult. Your sense of virtue is tougher and darker. This second kind of virtue seems rare among religious people and not often discussed. Religion usually champions primary, naïve, unbroken virtuousness, but that is not the way of the Gospels.
"A by-product of metanoia, of having lived a full life, taken risks, and made mistakes, is empathy for those who have done similarly. You are capable of forgiveness, another key action that Jesus demonstrates again and again. Forgiveness is not easy, nor is it cheap. It arises when you feel sufficient empathy with the human condition that your own excessive feelings of virtue don’t get in the way” (page 49).
The idea that we don’t let our sense of virtue get in the way is a theme that carries throughout Moore’s interpretation of the Gospels. Beyond metanoia, changing your vision, which he says was actually mis-translated as repentance, another key concept is agape, love with respect; love that holds another in high esteem. The father of the returning son holds his son in agape. It is not pity, or piousness; it is agape, love with respect.
And with this love, with respect – there is the possibility to heal and to make whole.
