The Finest Wine
“The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each for the common good.”
If this 2017 depiction of the Wedding at Cana may at first seem a little heavy-handed in its anachronistic adaptations, it rewards some patient contemplation. Essential to the style of the Austin-based artist James B. Janknegt is bringing the world of the Gospel and the parables into a dialogue with our world in a way that gestures to the depth and timelessness of the stories themselves through folk and iconic simplicity. Here, as much as the center of the image is very much a contemporary bride and groom, and Jesus fades to the background as a participant in the feast (even wearing a coat and tie to match the theme of the wedding!) the connection to the sempiternal carries through the border, where vines and flowers communicate fruitfulness, and the Eucharistic elements of bread and wine come to us, not only as symbols of communion, but as offered to us in festal joy.
This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.
—The Beloved Apostle (John 2:11)
The Second Sunday of Epiphany
Texts for this Week
Prayer
Almighty God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ is the light of the world: Grant that your people, illumined by your Word and Sacraments, may shine with the radiance of Christ’s glory, that he may be known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and for ever.
Songs of Thankfulness and Praise
The classic 19th C Epiphany-season hymn of Christopher Wordsworth, sometime Bishop of Lincoln, anchors in the key term for the season: manifest. Christ is manifest, the Lord has shown forth his glory. Manifest in his baptism, he is further manifest in first miracle at the wedding of Cana, manifest in his miracles of healing, and last, manifest in his temptation in the wilderness; the entry way to the Lenten journey. “Anthems be to the addressed: God in Man made manifest!”
Many hymnals use the tune SALZBERG both for this Epiphany hymn and for the robust Easter Anthem, At the Lamb’s High Feast we Sing. When practiced, this is a beautiful (if subtle) connection. The Resurrection — and the feast of our Resurrected Lord — are the completion and the culmination of his manifestation initiated in spirit and season of Epiphany.
