In year C in the lectionary, the readings we will hear this weekend always are heard near the day we honor the life and legacy of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Although I don’t know if that was deliberate or simply serendipity, I think it is worthwhile to examine the readings alongside Dr. King’s life and legacy.
Our reading from Isaiah 62 and Psalm 36 highlights God’s love, faithfulness, and redemption, and protection, and use wedding metaphors to remind us of the covenant between God and God’s people. Given that last week we were called to remember our own baptismal covenant with God, our promises to live and act faithfully as witnesses to God’s lovingkindness in all we do, we see a common theme between these last two weeks of readings.
The reading from the 12 chapter of First Corinthians emphasizes unity, honoring differences, and the gifts given by the Holy Spirit… and of course is leading up to Paul’s famous, poetic tribute to Godly and Christian love in the next chapter—a reading that is often read at weddings.. The gospel portion from John 2 highlight’s Jesus’s first miracle at a wedding, focusing on issues of God’s abundance, and questions of honor at the occasion of a wedding. Jesus, as God’s son at the start of his ministry on earth, makes sure the bridegroom would not be accused of poor hospitality as the start of his married life.
If you step back, there is a tie among all the readings about unity and love and obligation. The same longing is expressed that I would think most of us have felt—to know that God loves us and is present to us, that sense of immanence that can be all to difficult to find in our profoundly secular and often overburdened daily lives. But there is also an implication here to remember that, as people of faith, we have, at our baptism and henceforth, entered into a covenant with God and with each other in fulfillment of the Great Commandment, which commits us to love of God, and love of our neighbor in all our actions and choices.
How does this fit into Epiphany? Once again, Christ’s light is shining forth into the world, and his love for us is overflowing. Jesus is “giving himself away” at the wedding; two people give themselves away to each other in our modern understanding of what a marriage is.
Note Jesus’s mention of “time”—that his hour has not come. Biblical scholar Karoline Lewis in her commentary on this passage points out that the wine had run out on the third day of the wedding feast. This is a detail I had missed previously. The language brings to mind Jesus’s death --and resurrection on the third day.
How does this apply to the life of Dr. King? His sense of calling to fight against segregation and racism stemmed from his call to be a faithful witness to Christ, who always took the side of the oppressed and marginalized. Dr. King was empowered by his deep faith in God at a time when the laws and culture in which he lived sought to disempower and control people of color by legalized oppression and a cultural hierarchy that denigrated the honor and dignity of the lives of African Americans al over the country, but especially in the Deep South.
May we too remember and live into our covenant with God, and continue in the quest that Dr. King frequently described as being guided by “Soul Force,” and by seeking to build an inclusive society that was part of one “Beloved Community,” bound together by faithfulness and the love of God and love of neighbor. On this coming Monday, let us remember that our country was also founded on promises to create a country where all receive the blessings of liberty, as the Preamble to the US Constitution declares.
In Christ’s love,
Mother Leslie+