The Testimony of the Jars

The Great Lent is at the threshold. As far as my Church (i.e. The Syrian Orthodox Church) is concerned, the lent starts today evening at 6:00pm. But what is so ‘great’ about this lent until and unless we choose to make it so. It might indeed be ‘great’ quantitatively but to make it ‘great’ qualitatively is our sheer prerogative. Moreover who should testify the ‘greatness’ of our lent? It is not us ourselves but the ‘others’. Greatness is not cheap rather it is costly. Winston Churchill remarks “The price of greatness is responsibility.” As responsible benefactors we should let others reap the fruits of our lent. A lent not observed for others is not a lent at all. When I say others, I mean the unnoticed existence at the fringes. At this juncture I would solicit your attention towards the gospel reading set apart for today according to the Syrian Orthodox Church Almanac i.e. Gospel according to John 2:1-11 – The Wedding at Cana. 

The wedding at Cana episode is familiar to all of us but the essence of it has yet not been infused into our veins. This text is inherently subversive, right from its point of departure; a text which invigorates us to rethink and redefine the notions of sanctity and profanity. In a context when women were perceived as the gateway to hell we find a WOMAN (Mary) persuading her son (Jesus) to not squander any time in executing the salvific plan of God. Thus radical inversion of age old precepts happens; Woman becomes the gateway to Heaven.

Another reason and the most vital one, why I find this text to be subversive is the way Jesus used those six stone jars. Dr. Sam. P. Mathew, a New Testament scholar interprets that the six stone jars which Jesus ordered to be filled by water so that he could change it to wine, were actually the jars used for storing water to wash the feet of guests. So the very first act or sign of Jesus, according to the gospel of John, is the acknowledgment of the sacredness of the defiled. Towards the end of his public ministry, Jesus bids adieu to the world sanctifying even the most defiled ‘Cross’.

The church, deliberately placing this pericope at the forefront of the lent, urges everyone to start this lent acknowledging the sanctity of the impure. If we use Norman C. Habel’s third hermeneutical principle i.e. Principle of Voice, we could hear the testification of the greatness of Christ by those unnoticed, impure and profane six stone jars which were abandoned in the fringes. Within a wink of an eye,by making use of those jars, Jesus bridged the lacuna between pure and impure. The touch of the Master matters.

Take a look at this beautiful poem by Myra Brooks Welch:

The Old Violin: The Touch of the Master’s Hand

“Twas battered and scarred,
And the auctioneer thought it
hardly worth his while
To waste his time on the old violin,
but he held it up with a smile.

“What am I bid, good people”, he cried,
“Who starts the bidding for me?”
“One dollar, one dollar, Do I hear two?”
“Two dollars, who makes it three?”
“Three dollars once, three dollars twice, going for three,”

But, No,
From the room far back a grey bearded man
Came forward and picked up the bow,
Then wiping the dust from the old violin
And tightening up the strings,
He played a melody, pure and sweet
As sweet as the angel sings.

The music ceased and the auctioneer
With a voice that was quiet and low,
Said “What now am I bid for this old violin?”
As he held it aloft with its bow.

“One thousand, one thousand, Do I hear two”
“Two thousand, Who makes it three?”
“Three thousand once, three thousand twice,
Going and gone", said he.

The audience cheered,
But some of them cried,
“We just don't understand.”
“What changed its' worth?”
Swift came the reply.
“The Touch of the Master’s Hand.”

“And many a man with life out of tune
All battered and bruised with hardship
Is auctioned cheap to a thoughtless crowd
Much like that old violin

A mess of pottage, a glass of wine,
A game and he travels on.
He is going once, he is going twice,
He is going and almost gone.

But the Master comes,
And the foolish crowd never can quite understand,
The worth of a soul and the change that is wrought
By the Touch of the Master’s Hand.

I would like to conclude by quoting a story by His Holiness Ignatius Aphrem II, The Patriarch of the Syrian Orthodox Church:

“I want to tell you a story of two twins who were refugees from Northern Iraq, in the Kurdistan region that were expelled from Nineveh on August 10, 2014. I went to visit them immediately and I was there from August 10-13 visiting them and in that little village, in a tiny church, there were 70 families cramped in the church hall, living there and sleeping there.  As it is the feast of Sts Peter and Paul, I will call those young twins Peter and Paul for the story. So Peter comes up to me with his hands open and arms outstretched saying, “We have no place, we have no space.” Of course listening to a child you would understand it as he has no place to sleep on his own or maybe he doesn't have a place to play with his friends. But for me, that was not what I understood from him. He was telling me, we as a people have no place, no space to call home. This was a metaphorical expression not only describing this young boy's dilemma but the entire situation of our people in Northern Iraq, Syria and in fact many parts of the Middle East. During the six months following the attacks and invasions of Daesh on Mosul and nearer plains, I visited our people six times. I went and saw my own spiritual children in August and those of you who visited Iraq know what that means in terms of the weather. I saw them on the streets and in tents with no water, no basic facilities. How do you feel about that when see such children in that sorry case?

Most of them today are in rented apartments paid for by our churches and unfortunately a good part of them have left that region, have left Erbil and other towns making their way to Europe, Australia and the US. I can assure you, for a fact, when I visited them in 2014, the majority said they wanted to go back and stay there, want to go back to our churches and our schools but the longer the violence stays the less people stay there. While visiting them, in another small village, I enter the church, the Assyrian Church of the East, and as a Patriarch they take me to the altar and ask me to offer a prayer for them. When I step in, I see blankets and mattresses spread all over the sanctuary, in the Holy of Holies. Of course, I was surprised at first as it was a strange setting for that's the most sacred place in the Church but then I look around and tell myself, “These people here are more holy than this place. This place, the altar, is made holy by them. You see, the Sabbath is made for the people, not the people for the Sabbath as the Lord says.”

My dear readers, may we pledge in Christ to make this lent ‘great’ qualitatively. Let us search for those stone jars at the fringes, transcending human constructed spaces and notions of purity, to touch the lives of others so as to transform their ordinariness of water into the extra-ordinariness of wine; after all the touch is that what matters.