From wonder to life

A recording of today's gospel and blog can be accessed here.

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Today’s gospel (John 4:43-54) sees Jesus wandering between Samaria, Judea, and Galilee. The narrative is not wholly clear, but at some point along the road Jesus encounters a man whose son is sick and in need of being cured. As sometimes in the gospel, the Lord is not immediately the sweet and gentle Jesus of popular piety. Indeed, His first response seems quite cutting: Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. If this is where the conversation had ended, the man’s son might never have been cured. But the father presses his case further, saying: Sir, come down before my child dies. The rest, as they say, is history. The man departed, found that his son was cured at the very hour of Jesus had said to him, Your son will live, and the man and his household became followers and believers. How could they not?

Jesus ends this gospel as the healer, but He begins it as the great wanderer, the mobile preacher, or we could simply say, as the Good Shepherd who has gone in search of the lost sheep of Israel. It is a search He continues now in our world through His Church, through His disciples, although how many of us are wholly willing to be the voice of His mercy and the touch of His tender kindness? He returns as well to Cana where He had transformed the water into wine. Can we believe that this story had not leaked out of a gathering of so many people? Is it likely that the steward of that wedding banquet had not dined out several times on the extraordinary story of Jesus’ miracle? The story might even have become a favourite among hard drinkers in the district, as well as the despair of every innkeeper with an eye on his business.

And now, Jesus is approached in Cana by a man from Capernaum whose son is ill. Capernaum was some journey from Cana. Cana is 14 miles from Tiberias on the Sea of Galilee and then it is another 10 miles around the lake to Capernaum (or less if one sails across it). Is it possible that this man had heard of the miracle of the water and wine amidst all the gossip of the seashore markets, and thus pursued Jesus in search of a cure for his son?

If Jesus had read that story in the man’s eyes, perhaps this is why He greeted him with such apparently unwelcoming words: Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe – words said with perhaps a raised eyebrow and an ironic smile? The gospel does not say. This reproach – for reproach it is – is somehow gently delivered, for it does not discourage the man who is in any case urged on by the desperation of the situation: Sir, come down before my child dies. Why does Jesus apparently have then a change of heart and respond to this man so positively? Has He not just reproached him for being a chaser of signs and wonders? Beneath these exchanges, there is a world of action, of decisions made and challenges launched, and it is as well to dwell on them.

Jesus’ reproach is a reproach to us all: Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe. We all seek signs and wonders, not necessarily in some gaudy, carnivalesque manner, but it is human to rise to the thrill of the spectacular. Even if we mature enough not to demand the cheap thrill of the spectacular, it is, nevertheless, only a short distance to writing ourselves into the story of faith as a deserving recipient of the Lord’s wonders. How quickly we forget the words of the publican: O Lord, have pity on me a poor sinner. Or as Aleksander Solzhenitsyn put it, Pride grows on the human heart like lard on a pig. Happily, God knows our weakness. He knows we sometimes need this comfort of the spectacular. He gifts His greatest saints with charisms that sometimes leave us gasping with wonder. Jesus is not a showman, but He knows the power of amazement, even though He also knows its dangers.

In other words, Jesus asks for our faith, but He knows it will be a journey for us; a gradual passage, if we are faithful to Him, away from the shallows and into the shadows, the darkness of the afternoon of Good Friday, where nothing but the consolation of obedience to the Eternal Father is left to us. Jesus knows and can hear us pray: Lord, I believe, help my unbelief. We do not need to be perfect enough to enter heaven instantly; we just need to be humble enough to bow our heads and ask for His mercy. And then, see how His mercy flows on the father in the scene. The shrift is short; the outcome a transformation of all his hopes.

Who is he, this father, if not in some ways a figure of the Eternal Father whose child – the humanity he has created – is sick and in need of a healer? The Father sends the Son to save us, but in doing so, solicits from the Son His obedience to heal the sickly child: Jesus is His Son by nature; humanity a child of the Father by a grace which has been lost. Here we see that in redeeming us, Jesus does not only reconcile us with the Father, but He restores to the Father the child that has been lost or at least as many of them as are willing to accept this gift.

Nothing is lacking to the Holy Trinity, and yet in the redemption of the wayward child of humanity, the glory of the goodness of God shines forth.

Your son will live, says Jesus. Indeed, he will. Be it done unto us according to His word.