Hope is a Crouched Tiger

Learning about how to deal with disappointment from the mother of Jesus at the wedding at Cana

The account of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) is a much-beloved story that provides multiple layers of interpretive and prophetic potential. Like almost every story in John’s Gospel, there’s something mystical and symbolic going on under the surface of the bare facts of the tale.

Good news for dark days

But as I prepared to preach from this text last Sunday, I felt drawn toward one aspect of this story that I hadn’t noticed before. In worship that Sunday, we were readying ourselves for the following day (January 20, 2025), when we would celebrate the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the same day as an inauguration that seems likely to usher in a dark and difficult season in this country of attempts to restrict the freedom and flourishing of already-marginalized people, increasing the suffering of the most vulnerable among us.

As I contemplated this situation alongside the Gospel text, I noticed that the mother of Jesus (who is never named in John’s Gospel) initiates Jesus’s action, and seems to expect that he will act, despite his initial refusal to do so. Her example is what inspired the specific proclamation of good news for our worship gathering this past Sunday, which I hope is also good news for you today, dear reader:

Beloved siblings in Christ, though we may not see the specific outcomes we desire on the timetable we want, Jesus is listening to our longings for goodness and justice, and will respond to the cries of his people, transforming our scarcity and shame into abundance and celebration. So even as we continue to lament and cry out for justice, let’s also prepare in hope for the Spirit of God to surprise us with overflowing joy.

When God seems reluctant to act

You likely know the outline of this story: Jesus and his disciples had been invited to a wedding in Cana, along Jesus’s mother, and during the wedding celebration, they run out of wine. This would not have been seen as a minor miscalculation of little consequence, but rather as a source of immense, perhaps lifelong shame for the bridegroom. In the large scheme of things, it’s a minor crisis for a few people in a tiny village, but a genuine crisis nonetheless.

The mother of Jesus seems to notice this before others do, she who received a word from an angel a few decades ago that her son would save the people from their sin and shame, seems to assume that her son will be able to do something about this. So she tugs on his sleeve and nudges him in that direction: “They have no wine.”

But here’s where the story takes a turn we might not expect. Instead of Jesus jumping into action, saying, “Alright, I’ll take care of this!”, the Word-made-flesh seems reluctant to do anything about it. “What does that have to do with us?” he says, “My hour has not yet come.”

This is the aspect of the story that drew my attention. Doesn’t it feel like a parable of our experience of asking God to do something about a need that we see, and feeling like we got No for an answer? Like the mother of Jesus, we also see a world in need, and believe that the Word who created this world and said that he came to bring abundant life to this world ought to do something about the needs of this world.

We see people’s entire lives going up in flames and wind and smoke in Southern California. We see billionaires working overtime to steal more and more resources from public programs that help children, the elderly, and the poor. We see our income-to-expenses ratio shrinking and can’t sleep because we’re anxious about providing our loved ones with their basic needs. We see our loved ones suffering with chronic pain and genetic disease and devastating diagnoses and mental illness. We see all this violence and fear and scarcity and shame and we tug at Jesus’s sleeve in prayer and say, “They have no wine.” Are you going to just let this happen?

And very often our prayers don’t result in the immediate fulfillment of the specific outcomes we desire. It seems as if Jesus says to us, “My hour has not yet come.” When this happens, it’s easy to imagine an emotionally-distant God who’s busy doing God-things and doesn’t have time to bother with your little requests for provision or healing or justice. It’s easy to interpret “My hour has not yet come as” as “I don’t actually care about this” and give up on asking God to do anything for us.

Get ready for God to act anyway

But watch what the mother of Jesus does in response to her son’s refusal of her request: she seems to ignore him (!), and tells the servants to get ready for him to act: “Do whatever he tells you.” Despite not getting an immediate Yes from Jesus, she persists in her faith that Jesus will act in some way at some time, and tells them all to get ready.

I want to suggest that this is a picture of hope. The mother of Jesus models what it looks like to tenaciously hold on to hope in the midst of disappointment. Erich Fromm, a Jewish psychologist and philosopher who fled Nazi Germany, said this about hope:

Hope is paradoxical. It is neither passive waiting nor is it unrealistic forcing of circumstances that cannot occur. It is like a crouched tiger, which will jump only when the moment for jumping has come… To hope means to be ready at every moment for that which is not yet born… Those whose hope is strong see and cherish all signs of new life and are ready every moment to help the birth of that which is ready to be born.

The mother of Jesus is a crouched tiger in this story: readying herself for her son to act, even in her disappointment at his initial response. She is watching for signs of new life, and encouraging everyone around her to be ready to do respond when Jesus begins to transform their scarcity and shame into abundance and celebration, to help birth that which is ready to be born.

Playfully daring God to move?

It’s inspiring for me to think that perhaps this first sign in John’s Gospel only happened because the mother of Jesus suggested it. What if I followed her example and took a more persistent and playful approach to prayer? When I don’t see God moving in the ways I want or expect, instead of turning it into an intellectual problem to solve, what if I just started getting ready for God to act? Daring God to act, even? I don’t want to be presumptuous, of course, but that doesn’t seem like the mistake I’m most likely to make.

This story suggests that God somehow works through those who would dare to tug on Jesus’s sleeve and prod him to act. Those who protest and complain and quarrel and argue with God when they don’t see goodness and justice. The mother of Jesus doesn’t know how or when it will happen, but she acts on the confidence that Jesus is going to do something at some point. So she tells the servants to keep their bodies ready to spring into action. And eventually, Jesus says, “Fill the jars with water…” and she knows that abundance and joy is on the way.

This tells me that though we may not see the specific outcomes we desire on the timetable we want, Jesus is listening to our longings for goodness and justice, and will respond to the cries of his people, transforming our scarcity and shame into abundance and celebration. So even as we continue to lament and cry out for justice in these dark days, let’s also prepare in hope for the Spirit of God to surprise us with overflowing joy.

Responding together, right now

To hold on to hope, to stay ready, like a crouched tiger, to jump for joy when joy comes, we need each other. If we are the Body of Christ, and individually members of it, then staying open to joy is not an individual sport. If we’ve all been given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good, then we cannot do this alone in our prayer closet. We do this kind of work together.

God has designed it so that we are one body with many members, and we need one another to participate fully in the life of God. As we share our gifts with each other for the common good, the Spirit works in our midst to increase our collective joy and establish hope in our hearts. We can’t merely look inward for this hope and joy, we must also look up, and look around at our siblings in Christ. We need to receive their gifts, and offer ours. The Body of Christ works when the gifts of the Spirit are flowing, not hoarded or hidden.

I know that many of you reading this don’t have a local Christian community even remotely committed to these values, which is a deeply painful and tragic situation. Even in the best of circumstances, isolating oneself is a strong temptation in days like these. (I know this temptation intimately.) But isolation leads to the shriveling of the very gifts we need to persevere in these dark days, and it leads to cynicism, and cynicism is a luxury we can’t afford right now.

In his poem “A Brief for the Defense,” Jack Gilbert writes that when confronted with human suffering and injustice:

We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.

So we say yes to this good news by simply gathering with one another in whatever ways we can to give and receive in loving communion together, being honest about our suffering, but also, like a crouched tiger, keeping our eyes peeled for new life, and staying ready to help it be born.

And of course this past Sunday, we were able to respond right then and there, in the moment, by receiving the Eucharist together. Many of us are accustomed to thinking about the Lord’s Supper as a somber time of trying to conjure some sorrow about how bad we are that Jesus had to die on the cross for us. But I encourage you to read the Eucharistic prayers from the Book of Common Prayer. They’re filled with joy and thanksgiving and wonder for the salvation God has wrought in Christ. The final AMEN is literally in all capital letters to emphasize the joy these prayers are meant to evoke in us. It’s the loudest part of our liturgy every week at The Table.

Like the wedding at Cana, the Eucharist meal is a foretaste of the lavish feast of love and unbridled joy that God is preparing for us and all creation. So we come and we receive God’s gifts in hope, readying ourselves for abundance and overflowing joy, which is coming. Sooner or later. Amen.