What does the light reveal?
Clare L. Hickman
St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Ferndale
January 19, 2025—Epiphany 2C
Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11
The story could have gone so differently. Could have entered the lore of the town as “Remember that awful wedding where the wine ran out?” And everyone left early, and how embarrassing for the host, and you KNOW the wine steward got sacked for that one! It would all have become a source of ridicule, a cautionary tale, a not-so-secret shame for the family.
Instead, the story became something else entirely. “Remember that wedding with the really amazing wine? My stars, it went on for days! For a moment there, everyone thought the party was over, and then they just rolled out barrels and barrels of the good stuff, and it was incredible!”[1]
Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding in Cana is the first public act of his ministry in John’s gospel, set as a template of the gospel itself: that Jesus comes into the scarcity of the Israel’s experience (Roman occupation, corruption in both political and religious leadership, economic exploitation and hardship, not to mention their own personal sinfulness) and promises to turn it into the abundance of God’s kingdom.[2]
It is an image of overflowing and great rejoicing, assuring us that our deep hunger will be fed, our deep thirst will be quenched. “For with you is the well of life,” as we heard in Psalm 36. But it does not end there, does not come simply as a promise that we will be given all that we need. The psalm continues: “and in your light we see light” (36:9).
The abundance, the healing, the saving power of God’s kingdom is inextricably wrapped up with a new understanding (a light, an epiphany) that breaks into our understanding and changes everything. The kind of light that does not just dispel the shadows and banish our fears, but also enables us to see things that we had preferred to ignore. To bear things we had not wanted to see. To begin to imagine how God could transform those things now that they’ve been brought to light.
We will recognize this spiritual truth, from our battles with our own sins. That it is only when we’ve recognized them; only when we’ve seen the damage that they cause; only when we’ve seen all that and still owned up to them; only then can we begin the process of repentance and atonement. Of making right. Of being made new.
It is a challenging light to bear, though, and we (understandably) shy away from it. It might even require someone else to point out things that we had not been willing or able to see in ourselves. Or we might need the safety of a therapist’s ear to delve deep enough to find them. Even then, we will need deep belief in the reality of forgiveness, to give us the courage to truly face them.
The good news is: Forgiveness IS indeed real. Which means that, hard as it may be, in that light, we will see light. In God’s light, we will see ourselves (the whole of us, brave, and battered, and ready for salvage). And the scarcity of our sin-damaged life can be re-made by the abundance of God: A whole new story.
And not just on an individual level! Jesus always speaks on a societal level as well, speaking into OUR national scarcity as he spoke into Israel’s, our sinfulness, our unwillingness to let the light of God illuminate the everything of our world.
I was thinking about that this week, not only with MLK Day tomorrow, but because of an exhibit I experienced on Friday up at the Broad Museum at MSU. Created by artist Esmaa Mohamoud, Complex Dreams explores “the enduring perseverance and strength of Black girlhood in the face of great adversity.”[3]
The gallery for the exhibit is a tall space, all white walls and sunlight and pale wooden floors. Your eye is immediately caught by the statue of the young girl, carved in total, striking blackness: braids and overalls, hands on her hips, leaning forward with curiosity (boldness? frustration?). Before her is a white fence. But not a friendly, well-to-do picket fence. This is a chain link fence. And it is SO high, and it is so white, and any attempt to see through it is half obscured by vines and weed trees and uncut grasses.
But it is SO worth it to peer through. Because on the other side, there are 5,999 laser-cut steel butterflies, suspended on strings. They are monarchs, though they have been rendered so that each one appears as a creature made of black lace, dancing in a huge cloud above our heads.
Guiding our exploration of the work, the artist borrows words from singer Nina Simone: “How sweet it would be if I found I could fly, I’d soar to the sun and look down at the sea, then maybe I’ll know what it feels to be free.”
And I was so struck by the whole thing, but especially by that fence. By what it keeps out, and how it keeps in. By what it might be to stare at the world through almost impenetrable whiteness. And by how hard it was for me to make her out, when I was on the other side, looking back at her through that huge white fence.
It was an evocative reminder of how hard it is (so hard, almost impossible) to really see and understand the experience of another person or group of people. But it is particularly difficult, if you are part of the dominant culture, the one that is presented as the default, to grasp the reality of those who aren’t part of that paradigm. Because we naturally tend to universalize our own experience of the world, and it’s so hard to imagine things that fall outside that experience. Not only that, it’s extremely uncomfortable when those differing realities bring injustice to light … when they illuminate a chasm between our abundance and someone else’s scarcity.
This is what makes people eager to insist that the Civil Rights movement ended any significant gap between black and non-black people in this country. Such touching faith in the power of legislation ignores the reality of how little the Emancipation Proclamation itself was able to achieve when it came to undoing bone-deep structures of economic exploitation and social inequality. And it also ignores the lived experience of the majority of black people in this country, when they try to bear witness to the generational challenges and day-to-day truths of their lives.
All this speaks to our nation’s scarcity, our sin (which is as painful and reluctant to come to light as our personal sins ever are). And it begs the transformation of God’s abundance. Calls us to be brave enough to step into God’s light, so that we might experience the healing that can only begin if we are willing to listen, give credence, and see.
To do so, it must be said, is not in the worldly interests of those in power. It NEVER is. It is, however, in their Kingdom interests, bearing as it does the promise of liberation from a hierarchy that warps even those at the top. And the work itself is packed chock-full of Jesus. Full of the Jesus who constantly dared people to reach themselves beyond their fears. Full of the Jesus who went to the margins to draw people into the center. Full of the Jesus whose first miracle was to face scarcity unafraid, and transform it into abundance.
This is the kind of God we have, as I heard this week: “the kind of God who once he starts to doing good things, doesn’t know when to stop.”[4] Which means we don’t even know where we might end up, if we are willing to let God go to work on us. But with God’s help, we can write ourselves into a whole new story! Amen.
[1] Rolf Jacobson, Sermon Brainwave podcast #1003, posted Jan 6 2025
[2] Sam Wells, Sermon Preparation Workshop, posted on Facebook Jan 7 2025
[3] https://broadmuseum.msu.edu/exhibition/complex-dreams/
[4] Jacobson, ibid