Sermon Epiphany 4:
Water into Wine, Message of Cross is Foolishness;
Elijah and Widow of Zarapheth
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are a lot of idiots in the world. I’m not prejudiced, some of my best friends are idiots. Some of them are professional idiots. I’m not talking about archdeacons, I’m talking about clowns. Now, there’s a lot of prejudice against clowns. Some people find them disturbing. And they are. Not because they leer in a sinister fashion and upset the children – that’s archdeacons. Clowns are disturbing because they’re anarchic. Clowns are highly trained agents of chaos. I remember going once to see a show called Slava’s Snow Show. It was mesmerising. There were seven brightly coloured yet sadly bedraggled looking clowns, an avalanche of snow and a load of giant inflatables bouncing around the theatre. During the interval, the clowns came out into the auditorium. A school group in front of me had gone out for ice-cream, leaving their coats and bags neatly arranged on the seats. Suddenly two clowns popped up and rushed along the rows throwing the bags and coast in all directions, then ran away. The children were scandalised when they returned, and the teachers were bewildered – who could possibly have done this? They were delighted when they heard it was the clowns.
At the more adult end of the clowning spectrum there was a show called Nate, by the American Natalie Palamides. She played the eponymous hard-drinking redneck male, and also his female life-drawing teacher at night school, for whom she deftly animated a coat on a coat-stand. She rode onstage on a tiny toy motorbike, moustachioed and wearing a lumberjack shirt. She chugged a can of beer and crushed it on her forehead, then challenged a man in the audience to a wrestling match – in which she did not hold back. Nate went on a journey of discovery and desolation after a drunken one-night stand with the art teacher. By the end, he had been stripped of his macho accoutrements and revealed as Natalie, diminutive, female and vulnerable. She engaged the audience in a discussion about consent and toxic masculinity. It was sensitive stuff, sobering but exciting.
Clowning is all about vulnerability. Philippe Gaulier, the world-renowned clown teacher, is infamous for insulting his students. He will call them names, tell them they’re not funny, tell them they should quit, and mime machine-gunning them off the stage. It’s a tough life for a clown – spare a thought. But Gaulier isn’t a bully. He isn’t an archdeacon. His aim (with or without the gun) is to expose his students’ pretensions – the self-images they’re clinging to. It’s painful because these are their survival mechanisms, but they can just about take it, because they’ve learnt over the course that they can trust him. He isn’t out to destroy them but the limiting stories they’ve been telling themselves. What is revealed behind these stories is something more authentic, something childlike, something delicate, playful and surprising. Gaulier calls this “finding your idiot”. It’s a step from survival into joyful living. Gaulier’s three main principles are what he calls complicité, humanity and play. By complicité he means a trusting openness with your fellow performers and the audience. With that, you can dare to uncover your humanity, because it’s safe to come out and play. Complicité, humanity and play – they’re almost like religious vows, aren’t they? (Incidentally there’s a renowned experimental theatre company called Complicité, that really changed the face of British theatre. It was founded by one of Gaulier’s students, Simon McBurney. McBurney also appeared in the TV series Rev – as the Archdeacon.)
In our Mattins reading this morning we heard about the widow of Zarephath, and how her own survival mechanisms were failing. Like a desperately bad clown, she is clinging to the last vestiges of her resources, gathering the last two sticks to cook her final meal, knowing she is dying as she does so, and not just on stage. She too has to trust a crazy old man who has himself been stripped of ego by his calling to be a prophet, to speak not his own words but God’s. In our Gospel reading, the wedding at Cana, we move from a scene of survival to one of celebration. Here, what’s at stake is not the basics of life but fullness of life, and again, human means have run out. The servants must trust yet another strange man: “Do whatever he tells you,” says Mary. And sure enough, Jesus provides an abundance of quantity and quality that delights and amazes the host.
Epiphany is the season of revealing – of revealing what lies beyond human reason. It’s the revealing of the abundance that lies hidden behind natural limitations. It’s the revealing of Christ as the glory of God, in the visit of the Magi, in his baptism, and tomorrow in his presentation at the temple. Today he is revealed in his first miracle, and he is hesitant. “My time has not yet come,” he says to his mother. His time for what? “The hour has come,” he says to his Father on the night he is to be betrayed to death. “Glorify your Son, so that your Son may glorify you.” The revealing of God’s glory in Christ begins with his birth and culminates in his death – and resurrection. It is the journey of the outpouring of his life. The miracle at Cana is a first step along the road to the cross.
The cross reveals God’s glory in Christ in the starkest possible terms. Jesus goes there to bear not just our individual pretentions and falsehoods, our symptomatic sins of a lifetime of survival. The cross goes far deeper than psychology, deeper event than clowning. It goes to the root of sin itself, our senseless, hereditary rejection of our Creator, our rejection of meaning. Original folly, if you will. In his incarnation, death and resurrection, Christ enters into the fullness of our humanity and our fallen human reason, and remakes it from within. It’s an act of total trust and total presence, of full complicité with the Father and with us. He enters into the place of our darkest futility and turns it into fullness. The foolish wisdom of God is his Spirit living within us, which recognises the miracle at Cana and celebrates. It recognises the ridiculousness of the resurrection and delights. The miracle at Cana happens on “the third day”. This is meaningless, it’s completely out of context – unless it’s in the context of the resurrection. The Spirit within us trusts like a little child, and instead of trying to survive on mere adult rationality, it comes out to play and to live. Its foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and its weakness is stronger than human strength. Its widow’s jar of meal will never be empty and its jug of oil will not run fail. Its sacred water vessels will be brimming with wine on the day of the Lord’s revealing. It is the ultimate – holy – idiot. Amen.