January 21, 2007
John 2:1-11
“What We’re Made For”

Do you remember the children’s game “Mousetrap?” I liked it because it projected an air of certainty. If your mouse landed on this space, then the crank would have to be turned, and then – item by item – the mousetrap would be engaged… until the cage rattled down the serrated post trapping the mouse. If a, then b, if b then c, if c then d… all the way to the predictable, unavoidable, inevitable (eagerly anticipated) z.

From childhood we are led to believe that this is the way life is supposed to be: predictable, rational, inevitable and that, for good or for ill, starting down a particular path leads you inevitably to a predestined conclusion. “Cross your eyes like that and they’ll get stuck that way!” they warn. “Get a good education and you’ll get a good job!” they advise. “Carefully choose the right mate, and you’ll be happy for life!”

But… in the game, “Mousetrap,” the anticipated finale (or dreaded end, depending upon if you were the mouse or not!) did not always happen. Sometimes – actually, oftentimes, the cheaply made plastic pieces of the intricate game would get caught up and some action in the process would get hung up (the cage, most frequently). Or, perhaps you didn’t put the segments together in quite the right way. Or, after a few years, you lost a little plastic part, and you had to manually step in and kick the bucket or shove the bowling ball or pop the board so the diver could jump in the barrel.

It is true, that there are times in life when an action leads to an expected and inevitable conclusion. But more often than not, I have found, there are kinks along the way. Sometimes these shifts or changes are epiphanies, surprises, delightful mysteries… Sometimes, they are tragedies, mistakes, missed steps, horrendous mysteries… And sometimes, you just can’t tell for sure what happened.

Robert Burns poem, “To A Mouse” has a line about such unexpected alterations in life plans, a line that is often misquoted as, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” While impossible for me to adequately recreate the 1875 Scottish brogue of the original, I can offer a few stanzas of this beautiful and haunting poem:

But Mousie, thou are no thy-lane,
In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men,
Gang aft agley,
An' lea'e us nought but grief an' pain,
For promis'd joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar'd wi' me!
The present only toucheth thee:
But Och! I backward cast my e'e,
On prospects drear!
An' forward, tho' I canna see,
I guess an' fear! (1)
 

In it, a farmer has chosen to plow his field at an odd time, in December, and in doing so has unearthed a mouse’s nest. Seeing himself in the trauma experienced by the little mouse, the farmer recognizes that not all of life’s plans follow their intended course. One person’s change in course unknowingly affects the lives of others. The little mouse had settled down for a long winter’s nap, and would have normally been out and about long before the farmer would have plowed this ground. But our best “schemes” sometimes go “awry” to no fault of our own, and we are caught out in the cold trying to make provisions for the future with little to go on.

Burns feels for the mouse, and recognizes that while the mouse is in a difficult predicament, he is even more bereft, because we humans don’t just deal with present changes in plans, but we have a memory that recalls to mind other twists and turns in our histories, and an imagination that gazes intently ahead to anticipate likely complications further along in life. Past, present, and future uncertainties overwhelms the poet, and the reader likewise.

Everyday challenges are hard enough to plan for, and no one, mouse nor human, could plan for every single variable that will wind its way into our lives. So we create moments in the course of human planning that give us a sense of confidence in the future, where we allow ourselves to have a deeper assurance in the predictability of life.

Weddings are just such occasions. I have counseled many couples preparing for marriage or holy unions over the course of my ministry, and will no doubt continue to do so. I realized early on, however, that there is no way you can “teach” a couple about the uncertainties of life, especially a young couple where both persons having never been married before. And, to a certain extent, I realize it is neither the time nor the place. Who am I to assume what this couple will or will not experience in their life? They may be divorced before the ink is dry on the wedding license or partner registry, or they may be choosing a nursing home together in their 90’s. They may know death as a persistent unwelcome friend, and they may know birth as a frequent honored house guest!

Even so, in my own simple way, I do try to help couples burdened with the sometimes desperate need for certainty and “perfection.” I do this by trying to offer a realistic perspective their wedding plans, and take the pressure off of the big day itself. I hope that this advice may prove symbolic for the openness with which we need to approach all of life’s little unexpected changes.

One of the last things I tell a couple in our final counseling session is that they might want to plan on one little tiny thing to be not quite right. In the midst of an otherwise beautiful and deeply meaningful ceremony and celebration, it helps to be prepared for just one small thing to go wrong. I call it my “release valve” for the pressure couples are oftentimes under. At one couple’s ceremony, the bride’s veil got caught on her high-heeled shoes and pulled it right off. Someone from the congregation quickly put it back on and all was well. At a wedding of two men, the cake toppled as they cut the very first piece. They laughed uproariously, and we all had “toppled wedding cake” served with a smile!

I can only imagine that weddings in Jesus’ time, while perhaps not as elaborate, were just as stressful as they are today. The wedding feast Jesus, his mother, Mary, and his disciples attended is the only actual wedding reported in the New Testament. Others are mentioned in parables or metaphorically/allegorically.

But there they are, not so long after Jesus’ baptism and immediately following the call of several of Jesus’ disciples, enjoying the party after a wedding. Everything was going perfectly, up to this point, but then the unthinkable happened: the wine ran out. Perhaps the families of the couple were not very wealthy and couldn’t afford much wine. Perhaps more guests showed up than were expected, or they stayed longer than anticipated. Maybe they just held their alcohol better and were not passed out as soon as the host had assumed.

In any case, the best laid plans had gone awry. And what does Jesus do? He just sits there. It is his mother, Mary, who urges him to use his powers to provide a miracle. You could just see Superman’s mom or Wonder Woman’s father cajoling them to do the same. “Come on, this one’s easy for you. I’ve seen you do far more than this. And the groom’s father is my best friend! Come on, Jesus.”

But doing a miracle at this stage of the story is not in the scheme of things for Jesus. He understands that his calling is far too important than to do a parlor trick, especially at the end of a wedding banquet that probably should have ended hours ago. Jesus replies, with a sharpness that makes me just a wee bit uncomfortable, “‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’” Eugene Peterson interprets it more bluntly in The Message when he writes, “‘Is that any of our business, Mother—yours or mine? This isn't my time. Don't push me.’” (2)

Even Jesus, our Savior, had a very human need to see things go as planned. And his plans were timeless and global, too! His “hour,” in the language of the gospel of John, was the hour he would be crucified and would die. Like we get sometimes, Jesus was intensely focused on the larger scheme of things, the ominous culmination of his life, and far too busy for anything that might distract him from his sole purpose.

But thank God for his mother, Mary! Thank God for those persons who intervene and remind us that it’s not always about the end product, the goal, the target, the aspirations, the conclusions. Sometimes it is about the here and now, the people gathered at this moment in this place doing these things, how we journey together. I don’t think we give Mary enough credit as a strong and wise woman. All too often we relegate her to a somewhat pitiful, passive, obedient woman, always following her son a few steps behind. I’d love to know if there are statues or stained glass windows in churches somewhere in the world where Mary is portrayed as the strong, assertive, even pushy woman that she is in this scripture. I *love* this Mary!

Jesus finally agrees, and the water is turned to wine, and the journey of our savior towards Calvary is set. And while it wasn’t what he planned, it was just right.

I think the story of the Wedding at Cana is filled with images of things not going as planned and even objects not being used for their intended purpose. In addition to the wine running out (the first change of plans) and Jesus being called upon for a miracle-in-the-moment (the second change of plans), when Jesus does decide to do a miracle, he calls upon the servants to take the stone water jars used for the rites of purification and to fill them with water. I’m not sure, but I wonder if these very important jars which provided not drinking water, but water for a religious ritual, should have been handled so freely. What I am sure of is that they were not intended for wine, which is exactly what Jesus fills them with.

So not only do we have plans changing by the minute, we’ve got precious objects contaminated. Is there anything left on which one can depend? But our human plans are not God’s plans, and our dependence upon things going in such-and-such a fashion or being used for this-and-only-this way is not God’s way. From the first days of creation when the winds of God swept across the face of the universe, God gave birth to grace in unpredictability. When the winds of the Spirit blew across the disciples at Pentecost, no one could have anticipated what would come next. And at the end of time as we know it, God will blow through our lives, in the words of the new hymn, “with just one more surprise.” (3)

I think there are probably many reasons why God seems to thrive on unpredictability, why God seems even more present in the moments when life goes awry. Whatever the reasons, clearly God does not want us to become too comfortable with the way things are, nor the way we humans think they should be. My guess is, and the biblical record reinforces this, we human beings have a tendency to idolize predictability, we worship our own human plans, we assume that if we build it, God will come. But that’s never necessarily been the case, has it.

Does this mean we should not plan, we should not dream, we should not prepare for tomorrow? Of course not. As good stewards of this life God has given us we must plan and prepare, and even try to predict. But we must never let such plans become an end unto themselves. They are tools to be used when helpful, discarded when found wanting.

What is certain is that God is present with us wherever we wander and whatever happens to us. Whether the cage traps the mouse or gets caught up on the post – God is with us. Whether we are settled in our nest for the length of winter or we are jumbled and tumbled out into the cold harsh world – God is with us. Whether the ceremony is picture-perfect or the cake falls apart – God is with us. And isn’t this the way we would want it? Because no matter how much we hope for our anticipated future, no matter how much we work for, plan for, build for an expected conclusion, we know that through any number of agencies something may happen that shifts us off course, or changes our direction completely. And isn’t it true that we want God with us in those moments?

In the same way, aren’t we glad that we are not the ones to choose, ultimately, what we are “made for?” Like the pots of water for purification, we just might be called upon to be part of a miracle. We get so caught up with being this way or that way, even to the point of saying that God made me this way or God created me that way. Can we allow ourselves to be used for a miracle if we are so intent upon being a certain something? I hope that I am freed up enough at the moment that God might call upon me to say simply, “Here I am, use me.”
 

Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me. Mold me. Fill Me. Use Me. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.

What is the end of a perfect life? To have been with God wherever life’s road took us. What are we made for? To be used by God in whatever way necessary to bring about the Reign of God. The catechisms of other churches put it simply: What is the cheif aim of humankind?  To glorify God and to enjoy God forever. We don’t need a mouse trap to do that! Amen.




(1) http://www.electricscotland.com/burns/mouse.html
(2) http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?book_id=50&chapter=2&version=65
(3) I Was There To Hear Your Borning Cry




Rev. Allen V. Harris
Franklin Circle Christian Church
www.FranklinCircleChurch.org


 

Copyright 2007 -- The Rev. Allen V. Harris

Franklin Circle Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

1688 Fulton Rd., Cleveland, OH 44113-3096