Adrienne Hickey

“Oh, that someone would get me a drink of water from the well at Bethlehem!”
—2 Samuel 23:15

“To the lady chosen by God and to her children, whom I love in the truth—and not I only, but also all who know the truth—because of the truth, which lives in us and will be with us forever.”
—2 John 1-2

“Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.’”
—John 2:8

Dear church family,

There are a lot of prepositions floating around in the mass: “in” and “of” and “by” and “to” and “for” and “with.” What is it to have the truth revealed to us and in us?

Water and wine weave through the readings this morning, and I wonder if this weaving aids our contemplation of Christ’s prepositionally abundant truth.

Jesus enacts his first miracle at Cana at the prompting of his mother. I wonder at Mary’s courage—she knew what Jesus’s public ministry would mean. I would beg my son to put off—for a month, a year, just one more day—the consummation of his purpose, knowing not only who he was but also how little he could be mine once he belonged to the crowds.

How did she do it? How did David pour out the water the warriors risked themselves to obtain?

The poet Richard Wilbur wrote a wedding toast that gets at this knowledge:

St. John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.

It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

Which is to say that what love sees is true;
That this world’s fullness is not made but found.
Life hungers to abound
And pour its plenty out for such as you.

“What love sees is true/That this world’s fullness is not made but found.” Mary and David and John see in love. My heart would see in fear—fear in uncertainty, fear for safety, fear of death.

But Christ isn’t “in” or “for” or “of” life. He is life and life more abundantly. And I wonder if our lessons this morning in the season of his nativity are to remember that Jesus’s first revelation of himself was marked not by righting wrongs or healing hurts but by making wine. Perhaps Mary saw that though she would sit at his feet at the cross, she would prompt Truth to be poured out first at a wedding. 

There is much to dread in life, but I pray Mary’s heart will guide mine, that I might see the Last Supper yoked to Cana, the wine poured at the Last Supper and at the feast. This is incarnation, and it is holy.

—Adrienne