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4^th Feb 24 BY Canon Richard Lindley

Sunday Sermon

Chaos
Luke 8.26-39

Chaos. I’ve been trying to understand chaos, what chaos is, how we define it, and so on. We instinctively know when things are chaotic: it’s when things are in a state of confusion and disorder, with no sense of organisation. When my desk gets cluttered, with things all in the wrong places, it feels chaotic, and I’m in a state of anxiety until I restore order and can get on with things again. But maybe I’m just obsessional, because some people seem to thrive on confusion on their desks. But life as a whole can feel chaotic, when things get out of hand and people behave irrationally, and we feel we’re losing control. The whole nature of chaos is that it is unpredictable and unmanageable.

In science, if my understanding is right, chaos is when things are apparently defying the laws of nature and there are what seem like unexpected outcomes. Though, gradually, gradually, as science progresses, as there is more detailed understanding of causes and effect, there is less and less to be described as chaos. Take weather forecasting, for instance. The Great Storm of 1987 wasn’t predicted, and felt like an element of chaos. It probably felt like that to poor Michael Fish, the BBC’s weather forecaster, when he famously got it so spectacularly wrong. But now, meteorological science has advanced, and we have more accurate predictions of storms, and they’re even given names.

This afternoon, we’ve had two stories of chaos for Jesus and his companions. The events must have been terrifying for all involved, with their apparent randomness and irrationality.

The first was the storm on the Sea of Galilee, stilled by Jesus, to the amazement of his anxious disciples. Some say the story was recorded to reassure early Christians when the boat of Christianity in which they were sailing was threatened by waves of persecution. Whether or not this is the background, the amazed disciples say to each other, ‘Who then is this, that he commands even the winds and the water and they obey him’. Echoes of God controlling the elements in the creation stories at the beginning of the Hebrew scriptures, the Old Testament.

The second story is very human, but also shows Jesus creating order out of chaos. On the shore, when they land, they are met by wild man, living naked among the tombs, believing himself inhabited by thousands of demons, who pleads for help in his extraordinary way: ‘What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me’. That’s raw, inner chaos!

Human madness can be frightening: frightening for sufferers and for those involved close at hand. Thankfully, we now have modern diagnosis, modern drugs and more humane treatment. The man in the story would probably now be diagnosed as suffering from a psychosis, with physical-chemical irregularities in the brain. The man had been chained up and guarded, rather like more recent straight-jackets, and this might well have enhanced a paranoid element to his psychosis. The tombs where he was banished gave way in history to lunatic asylums, and then to voluntary or compulsory admission to psychiatric hospitals. And even they have now largely disappeared in our country in favour of care in the community. Though a need for secure psychiatric containment still exists, of which we have recently been reminded.

Here, I have to declare an interest. My parents used to tell me sometimes that, when I was a baby, we lodged under the shadow of the walls of Broadmoor Secure Psychiatric Hospital. Which side of the walls it was, I must leave you to judge!

Back in the story, the man wanted order in his inner being, in place of chaos. He begged Jesus to shoo the legion of demons into a nearby herd of swine. What happened next we can’t be sure of. Perhaps the man’s shouting and raving alarmed the swine. At any rate, they obliged, rushed down the hill, over a precipice, and drowned in the lake. Maybe Jesus made pragmatic use of the incident, saying: ‘There you are, there go your demons: you are healed’. A visual sign to convince him his demons had gone – a sort of sacrament in fact. Jesus started where the man was, with the man’s belief that he had been taken over by inner voices in the form of demons, and took things from there. Chaos had been banished and order restored. Mind you, I’m not sure the local pig-breeders were too happy, and they asked Jesus to leave their region!

The greatest madness in the world must be the madness of war, where chaos seems to prevail across the world just now. ‘Better jaw-jaw instead of war-war’, Churchill famously said: a maxim for today, and a maxim that can restore order out of chaos. At our personal level, too, life can seem chaotic and out of hand. It does for me sometimes, and it may for you. I believe that, with the presence of God, order can be restored to our troubled minds. God works in many simple ways. A conversation with a sympathetic friend; the quietness of the countryside; some exercise, vigorous or gentle, as our age and condition permit; and at any rate a dose of stillness, with reflection or prayer.

Perhaps we can memorise these simple words from Psalm 37:

Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.

Maybe a good maxim to finish with.

And so, let us pray, and pray above all for order out of chaos, in other words, for peace.

Prayers

Let’s pray for peace in Palestine: for righteousness, justice and peace to prevail, for mercy on the part of the strong, for relief for those who are powerless and weak, for good judgement for those with influence. Let’s pray too for peace in Ukraine and Yemen, and in all the trouble spots of the world.

Almighty God, we know all thoughts of truth and peace derive from you. Sow seeds of peace in the hearts of all people, we pray. And guide with your wisdom those who represent and speak for the nations of the world, so that your kingdom of love and peace may prevail, until the earth is filled with knowledge of your love. Through Jesus Christ our Lord.

And now let’s pray for all who are suffering in war and through illness.

Lord God, be with those who are suffering across the world, especially those physically or mentally ill or depressed or lonely. Be with those we know and those from our cathedral community who are ill at home, in hospital and in care homes. . . . . To those who have died grant rest and peace, including . . . . And to those who are mourning grant comfort and strength. Lord God, we ask this through your Son, Jesus Christ.

And now let’s ask for God’s help and strength for the coming week and into the rest of our lives. First, in silence, as we hold our particular difficulties, problems and uncertainties before God, and ask for order out of chaos, for peace in our minds and hearts and lives.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Be still before the Lord, and wait patiently for him.

Help us, O God, to live each day

quietly, hopefully;

to lean on your strength

trustfully, restfully;

to wait for the unfolding of your will

patiently, serenely;

to meet other people

peacefully, joyfully;

to face very task

confidently, courageously;

in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen

In this unprepossessing, out-of-the-way place, this ‘first of his signs’ was witnessed by the servants at the feast – we’re specifically told that the chief steward ‘Did not know where [the wine] came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew)’ [Jn 2:9]. It was to the least and the last that Jesus so often came, and he often revealed himself to the most unexpected of people.
Now my miracle-making powers haven’t quite stretched to transforming water into wine – yet! That was, of course, an illusion, a trick – which is precisely what the narrative we have just heard is not saying. People have tried to explain it in various ways – including as a joke: the wine ran out, Jesus pretended that the water was wine to save embarrassment, everyone went along with it to spare the feelings of the Wedding Couple on their special day, and someone even said it was the best wine they’d ever tasted.

Any sort of reductionist interpretation of the event destroys the significance of these verses in the arc of St John’s narrative of the life and ministry of Jesus, the ‘Word made flesh’, who ‘lived among us’, and ‘we have seen his glory’ [Jn 1:14], as he puts it at the end of his Prologue to the Gospel.

You will probably know that, in contrast to the other three Gospels, the Synoptic Gospels, the story of John the Baptist’s ministry is differently recorded in the Fourth Gospel. The Baptism of Christ is not specifically described. Rather, John points to Jesus and says, ‘Here is the Lamb of God…’ [Jn 1:29], and he testifies that he has seen the Spirit descend on Jesus, and that he is the Son of God [Jn 1:33f.]. The first Disciples are called, ending with Nathanael, and ‘On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee’ [Jn 2:1] – ‘On the third day’, another intimation that something significant is about to be told. It’s often presumed to be a family wedding, as Jesus’ mother was there – she’s never named as Mary in John’s Gospel – and Jesus and the newly-called Disciples were also invited, or called, to attend.

The Greek, ἐκλήθη (eklēthē), has a range of meanings – ‘bidden’, or ‘invited’, or ‘called’ – and is linked to the New Testament word for the Church, ἐκκλησία (ekklesia), those who are called out for a certain purpose – from which we get our word ‘Ecclesiastical’. I wonder whether there are echoes of that sense of calling in John’s use of the word here – the Disciples were called, Jesus was called, we are called.

And you’ve probably wondered before amount the sheer amount of water which was turned into wine. This is not the odd glass or two, not even the odd magnum or two, this is ‘six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons’ [Jn 2:5], so, something like 120 to 150 gallons of wine, which is about 500 litres, for the metric amongst us.

Weddings a still often very large occasions in the Middle East, in Asia and in Africa, so hundreds of guests may well have been present – after all, there was room for Jesus and all his Disciples to tag along with Jesus’ mother, presumably at the last moment.

Nevertheless, after all the wine which had already been ordered had run out, another 120 gallons or still seems quite a lot.

This is surely an eschatological sign, a sign of the breaking in of the Kingdom of God, an indication of God’s plans for the creation which he made and loved and which was to be redeemed through this God and Man, Jesus Christ. It doesn’t always feel like it, but I think that deep down in each of us, there is an inkling of the outpouring of the love and the generosity of God, which has brought us into being, which has been with us through life, which has brought us to this day and to this place, whether physically here in the Cathedral, or worshipping with us on-line.

This is not just enough wine to keep the feast ticking along. This is enough wine to make it a feast which will be remembered for ever. This is a sign to the early Christians that the best is yet to come – unknowingly, the Chief Steward hits the nail on the head when he says to the Bridegroom, ‘You have kept the good wine until now’ [Jn 2:10].

I think that that joy and abundance are wonderfully shown in this image of the Wedding Feast, by John August Swanson, an American artist, born in 1938 of a Mexican mother and Swedish father [Swanson, John August. Wedding Feast, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. https://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=58581 [retrieved February 1, 2023]. Original source: Estate of John August Swanson, https://www.johnaugustswanson.com/]
And after re-telling the story, the Evangelist, St John, adds his own comment: ‘Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him’ [Jn 2:11].

People have sometimes commented that it seems such an odd first miracle – at what looks like a slightly random wedding, after the strange-sounding conversation with his mother, with the servants being the ones to witness what was happening, and so on.

But that’s clearly not John the Evangelist’s view of the matter. This is the first of the signs which Jesus does, all of which show who he really is. They all point to Jesus’ own death and resurrection, the last of the Seven Signs being the Raising of Lazarus in John 11.
And just returning to the Greek text, very briefly, once again, the word used for ‘revealed’, in ‘revealed his glory’, is ἐφανέρωσεν (ephanerōsen), the Greek word from which we get the name of this Season of Epiphany, this Season of the Revelation of Jesus as the Christ for the world.

Three words for us to ponder on:

Calling – Jesus and his Disciples were ‘called’ to the Wedding. How are we being called onwards in our journey in this new year, in this Season of Epiphany.

Abundance – How do we give thanks for, and live the abundance of God’s love in our lives and in our world? Are we modelling abundance, or the minginess of God’s love and life?

And Epiphany, Revelation – God reveals himself through Jesus, as the life of the world. Can we also be agents of revelation, or Epiphany, to those we come across day by day.

And a final thought: ‘If Jesus turned water into wine, imagine what he could do with you’.

AMEN.

Sunday Sermon

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