The Second Sunday After the Epiphany - January 14, 2007

The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
January 14, 2007

In Norman Maclean’s A River Runs Through It, the younger son Paul says that “all there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible.”

Which is, as Shakespeare says, how the poet thinks.

The poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven;
And, as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet’s pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
– A Midsummer Night's Dream (Act v, Sc 1)

Like God. In the beginning, the Spirit of God hovered over the waters and saw something more than an “airy nothing,” without form or shape, something more than chaos. And the Spirit turned the waters into shapes and brought forth order out of the chaos, and gave it “a local habitation and a name.”

That’s what creation is, the giving to “airy nothing” a shape, the taking of formlessness and giving it a local habitation and a name. And creation’s name is Poetry. From the Greek noun, ho poietes, Poet, Creator; from the verb poiein, to create.

God, the Creator, looked out on the shapeless water. And brooding over it with his breath, God “poeted” the world. The eye of God saw something without form – ordinary water – and his poet’s eye imaged within it the possibility of something more, the possibility of a shape and an order where no shape or order was, and a place to be and a name, something new out of something old, something extraordinary out of something ordinary.

“What is man?” Loren Eiseley asked. ”What is man but a way that water has of going about beyond the reach of rivers?” And ever since I first looked at us through Eiseley’s poetic eye forty-five or fifty years ago, I have never been able to see us human beings disconnected from rivers and oceans, disconnected from the damp of humus, disconnected from that moist, organic soil into which, in the beginning, the Poet breathed to give us a local habitation and a name. There is more to us than meets the physical eye.

“What is real?” the Greeks asked centuries ago. Is reality the tangible world of tables and chairs, the world of the things we can see and touch? Or is there some unseen reality behind the world we see with our eyes, a reality that holds what we see and touch together, and gives it meaning?

“Reality is what we can see and touch,” some said. But Plato said that a specific table is not as real as the Idea or Form of table, not as real as the “tableness” which lies behind each and every specific table, and makes it a table. “Tableness” is the reality the form of which every specific table of wood or metal partakes.

“Not so!” cried Diogenes. “The specific table of wood is what is real, because I can see a wooden table, but I cannot see the Idea or Form of a table.” “Very likely that’s true, for you, Diogenes,” replied Plato, “because for one to see a specific table, all one needs are eyes. But to see an idea one needs a mind.”

To see what’s really behind the world of things, to see behind the world of tables and chairs and dogs and cats and grass and trees and men and women, to see beyond the world of physical things to the fundamental reality that lies behind it, you need the eye of the Poet, the eye of the Creator himself, the eye of imagination, that eye that can image forth order and shape and body and meaning where none is apparent to the optic nerve.

And at this point you’re asking, ”What does all this have to do with the Epiphany and with Jesus’ turning water into wine?”

Epiphany is about what we see, and about how we see. It’s about seeing with the eye of the Creator. For example, what do we see when we see water turned into wine? C. S. Lewis sees a local habitation of Creation. Lewis says that the miracle at Cana tells us to expect that Jesus can do, in a local habitation, what God does all the time on a cosmic level, namely, take something good, but ordinary – water, the people of God, you and me – and change it into something really special, into something even better: water into wine, you and I with all our sin and self-absorption into a body united as one mind and spirit in love.

“Every year as part of the natural order,” says Lewis, “God makes wine. He does it by creating a vegetable organism that can turn water, soil, and sunlight into a juice which will, under proper conditions, become wine. Thus, in a certain sense, God constantly turns water into wine, for wine, like all drinks, is but water modified.

“Once, and for one year only, God, now incarnate, short-circuits the process, makes wine in a moment, uses earthenware jars instead of vegetable fibres to hold the water, but uses them to do what he is always doing. The miracle consists in the short cut, but the event to which it leads is the usual one.”

What do you see when you see a human being? Just a collection of cells and tissue that can walk and talk and use his head as a hat rack? Or do you see a local habitation of Creation, an image of the marriage of heaven and earth, the mystery of water going about beyond the reach of rivers, a person created in the image of God, just a little lower than the angels?

And what do you see when you see a church, a local congregation? Just a collection of individuals with all our individual vanities and jealousies and interests? Or do you see water turned to wine, a local habitation of Creation – not a collection of individuals at all, but a body united as one mind and spirit in love in Christ?

When St. Paul looked at the young church in Corinth through his optic nerve, he saw a group of quite ordinary people, a group of people with the gifts that ordinary people all have, a group of teachers and counselors and miracle workers and prophets. He saw a group that was ordinary in their factiousness as well, ordinary in their vanity, ordinary in their argumentativeness, ordinary in their boastfulness and jealousy, with lots of them quite proud of the fact that they possessed spiritual gifts that were better, they thought, than the gifts of others, proud of their belief that they were, they thought, more right than other people, superior.

But when Paul looked at those same people through the imaginative eye of God, when he looked at them through their redemption in Christ, he saw something very different: not a group of individuals at all, but one body,... the Body of Christ himself, a New Creation in the world. “Each of you has lots of gifts,” he wrote to them, “but remember that you are one body, the Body of Christ. And it is one Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, who has created you and given you your gifts. And it is the Body, not yourselves, that you serve.”

How is that possible? How is it possible to look at a group of people and see a body? I look out at this congregation, and on a good day I see a hundred and fifty or two hundred different people, but I don’t see any body that all of us make up. Not with these ordinary eyes, at least.

But with Creation all things are possible. God took nothing in particular – ordinary water, the chaos of the deep that had no shape – and he imaged forth from it, created from it, “poeted” out of it, something in particular, and gave it a local habitation and a name. “The heavens and the earth, wild beasts and fish,” he named them. “Man and woman,” he named us. A shape and a form, an orderly body he gave us, with the greater lights to rule the day and the lesser lights to rule the night, and his servants man and woman to rule the beasts and the fowl. And Jesus took ordinary water, and brooded over it, and brought forth wine.

Shakespeare and Eiseley and St. John and St. Paul and all the poets understand this divine act of creation, and they seek to share in it. From this side of the Creation, they look at us human beings and see more than body parts, more than arms and legs and noses and teeth. They see human heads that are more than something to hang a hat on. They see God’s act of poetry: ordinary water made to swoosh about beyond the reach of rivers in the shapes of men and women, water given life and meaning because of the imagination and Spirit of God, water turned into wine.

And from this side of the new Creation, St. Paul asks us to consider what the Poet, the Creator, has made of his Church. St. Paul looks at God’s Church in Corinth, and at God’s Church in Colorado Springs, and he invites us to see a reality far deeper than a few individual men and women running around “doing our individual things,” some of us prophesying, some healing, some teaching, some doing various other good works.

Paul looks at the Church, and he says, “Remember, in Christ you’re not just a bunch of arms and legs, not just a bunch of individuals running about at various activities, often in competition with each other. Christ has “poeted” forth a new people, a Body, a New Creation. You are one, not many. You are divine love bodied forth as water going about beyond the reach of rivers, love given a local habitation, and a name, the Body of Christ.

One Sunday at church the choir sounded perfectly dreadful! The choir director, who usually remained inconspicuous, took several loud, flatfooted steps to the the middle of the aisle and jammed his music stand down on the floor with a bang. And before he could raise his arms to prepare the choir to sing, the organist issued an immense blast, all stops out, and then began a series of softer runs up and down the keyboard.

Choir members began to get to their feet in a state of disarray, some lurching up, others rising slowly and fiddling with their music folders. At various times they sang – at various times – a couple of them quite loud, several of them off key. Three just muttered into their music books. None of them sang together, and as the piece concluded they began to sit down, at odd intervals.

In time the organist quit playing, the director dropped his arms and shuffled off, and a lone soprano warbled a shrill “Amen.”

Then the director came back out to the distressed congregation. “You see what happens,” he said, “when we forget that all our individual gifts are to be used for the common good.” And then the choir rose again, this time in unison, and in harmony, with blended voices, offered a magnificent hymn of praise.

So St. Paul wrote the people of Corinth to remind them of “what happens when we forget that all our individual gifts are to be used for the common good,” to remind them, and us, of the meaning of our redemption in Jesus, to remind them, and us, that from the Creator’s perspective, Jesus died to give us a new song to sing and a new life to live, the life of the Body, where the only possible failure is the failure of community, the failure of charity.

“Each of you has several gifts,” Paul said. “And the old song you’ve been singing is “Look what a good boy am I,”as you pull out your plum to show everyone else. But remember the new song of Christ, which is that these gifts each of you possesses are not really anything for you to brag about, because they are not your doing. These are gifts to you from the Spirit of God. And they have been given to you not to toot your own horns or feather your own nests. These are gifts to you from the Spirit of God, and they have not been given to you to withdraw into yourselves with your own particular brands of righteousness, but to use to serve the common good, to image forth love, and to give love a local habitation, and a name.

Here, then, is how Paul names it for the congregation of Christians at Philippi, and for us at Our Saviour Parish in Colorado Springs: “If you’ve gotten anything at all out of following Christ, if his love has made any difference in your life, if being in a community of the Spirit means anything to you, if you have a heart, if you care, then do me a favor: Be of one mind. Be united in your convictions and united in your love. Be deep-spirited friends. Don’t push your way to the front. Put yourself aside, and help others get ahead. Don’t think of your own interests first; forget yourselves long enough to lend a helping hand. That’s the wine that God has created you to be in Christ, and to share with others.” (Philippians 2:1-4)

This, our common life redeemed through Jesus, is the new song that the Body of Christ, God’s Church, has to sing to the world. We don’t always sing it well. But we do keep at it, remembering that in the New Creation, in Christ, the Lord has remade his people. He has looked at us and has seen more than our fractious ways, and he has bodied forth love, and given it a local habitation and a name, the Body of Christ, where the only real failure is the failure of community, the failure of charity.

Talk about miracles! For God, turning water into wine to save a wedding feast is a piece of cake compared to the miracle Paul is talking about here! Taking a group of ordinary people such as the church in Corinth, or the church in Philippi, or the church in Colorado Springs, with all the ordinary vanities and jealousies and one-upmanship of ordinary human beings, and turning us into a body united as one mind and spirit in love, into a body which serves the interests of others rather than our own, and where there is no failure other than the failure of community and charity – now that’s a miracle worthy of our attention!

Epiphany asks us what we see. Epiphany asks us what we see when we see Jesus? Just another man? Epiphany asks us what we see when we look at Jesus’ Church? Just another collection of fractious people each of whom insists on his own way? Or do you see water turned to wine, love bodied forth from ordinary water, and given a local habitation, and a name?

Turning water into wine is a local habitation of the miracle of Creation. Turning Christ’s One, Holy Church into a body that is truly Apostolic and truly Catholic; turning the Anglican Communion into a body which serves the interests of the whole rather than the agendas of some of its parts; turning the Episcopal Church into a body united as one mind and spirit in Jesus; turning a parish church like the Chapel of Our Saviour into a body where the only failure is the failure of community and charity can be accomplished only through the eye and gifts of the Spirit, because that’s a miracle right up there with Creation itself, a reality that only “the poet’s eye, in a fine frenzy rolling, glancing from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,” can see. It’s a miracle only the imagination of God can body forth and turn into shape, giving our airy nothings a local habitation and a name.

It is only by that Spirit, only with the creative eye of faith, that we can look at ordinary people like ourselves and see that there is more here than ordinarily meets the eye. It is only by that Spirit, only with the creative eye of faith, that we can look at the ordinary bread and ordinary wine our Holy Communion this morning and perceive within them the reality of our life together as a New Creation in Christ, the reality of love bodied forth here in this local habitation, and given a name, the Body of Christ, where the only real failure is the failure of community and charity.

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.