What do you pride yourself on? Do you pride yourself on that which is fading away or that which will last? Do you pride yourself on love? Paul wants us to understand that love is the way, love is the goal, and love will never end in the new world that Jesus is bringing to us.
So we’re at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, a little place hardly worth noticing, and a poor family have invited Jesus and his mother and the disciples to their wedding. We know they are poor because they had run out of wine. And just when it looked like the party was over and done suddenly there was better wine and lots of it.
Today on this the Feast of the Epiphany we are invited to journey along with the Magi as they are led by the light of a star to the one who is the source of all light and with them we are invited not just to observe from afar but to enter into that light, to come offering ourselves, to come bowing down in adoration and love, and to be made radiant by that light ourselves.
This is what Christmas announces, and it announces it as a matter of fact. None of this depends in any way on you or I anymore than the rising of the actual sun depends on you or I. Whether you know it or not, whether you accept it or not, the proclamation is the same: The sun has risen, light has shone, it is a new day. Peace has come to earth and God has been gracious to all.
Jesus has come to the lowly. To the weak, to the sick, to the elderly, to the poor, to the hopeless, to the lonely. And he has done so in the moral sphere as well, coming not to save the just but to save sinners. Jesus has come to the lowly that he might raise us up with him.
