Third Sunday of Epiphany

And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.

“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me!” Good morning teenage Jesus! Go and tidy your room Jesus. “Woman, what concern is that to you!”

Hi mother if you’re watching. Or, should I say, woman! What on earth is going on with the words of Jesus here?

There are lots of important themes in St. John’s Gospel and in the words of Jesus here we have two of them. Woman and hour. “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

The woman is a figure in the Gospel of St. John who, along with the hour she shares with her son, ties together the beginning, the middle, and the end of the Gospel.

At the beginning of the Gospel, she appears at the wedding feast in Cana when the hour is not yet. “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

She appears in the middle of the Gospel, in chapter 16 as Jesus warns the disciples of his death and consols them. He tells them, “When a woman is in labour, she has sorrow, she grieves, an interesting choice of words for labour pains, she grieves because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world.” She grieves in labour but has joy at having brought a human being into the world.

Bearing these words of Jesus in mind, she appears at the end of the Gospel when the hour is come for Jesus to be born through death and the woman grieves in the hour of her labour. John chapter 19 reads, “Standing near the cross of Jesus were his mother, and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw the mother and the disciple whom he loved standing beside her, he said to the mother, “Woman, here is your son.” Then he said to the disciple, “Here is your mother.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come;” “When a woman is in labor, she grieves, because her hour has come. But then when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a human being into the world;” “Woman, here is your son.” And from that hour the disciple took her into his own home.”

When contemplating the theme of the woman in St. John’s Gospel, it is important to remember how St. John connects his Gospel with the creation account in Genesis, starting the Gospel with the words, “In the beginning…,” quoting the first words in the Church’s scriptures, “In the beginning.” It is in St. John’s Gospel that, as Jesus is being flogged and struck in the face before his judgement and death, that Pilate proclaims, “Behold the anthropos.” “Behold, the human.” Adam was a shadow of the first human being. At the death of Jesus, God’s great creation project to make a creature in his image, it is finished.

Jesus becomes, through the Cross, the perfected human. He becomes the Adam, or the Adam in Hebrew, which means humanity. Just as Jesus becomes the Adam, the human, so Mary, the mother of Jesus, through the water and blood which come from his side, like the water and blood which pour forth from a woman during labour, at this hour Mary is stangely born from her Son to be the first Woman.

The fullness of Eve, which in Hebrew means “life,” is found in the Woman in St. John’s Gospel. Just as Eve was taken from the side of Adam, so the Woman is born from the side of Jesus, the new Adam, to be the mother of life, the mother of the living. “Woman, here is your son, my beloved disciple.”

What does it mean for us? If the Woman and the Hour are such important themes in the Gospel, what do they mean in the message of God to us? “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.”

I’m not sure that there is an answer and these are wonderful themes for you to reflect on further but one thing to point out is how Mary, the mother of Jesus, in her role as the Woman, the new Eve to the new Adam, she becomes a figure which others follow.

After Jesus calls his mother “Woman,” at the beginning of the Gospel, he also addresses the Samaritan woman as “Woman.” And, after Jesus dies, it is Mary Magdalene who finds the risen Jesus in the garden and who Jesus calls “Woman.”

Perhaps then, some or all of us are also called to embody the figure of the Woman, the mother of life. I don’t think that this is necessarily a question of what it means to be a man and to be a woman in our current untransformed bodies or anything like that, remember Adam means humanity, and Mary is strangely born from her own Son.

But what it is is a difficult call if we remember that the way in which Mary became the mother of the living was through the death of her Son. So also, in this life, we may share in the sorrow of Mary - the loss of a child, the loss of hope, the loss of certainty, and here at the Mass where, if we come with open hearts, we learn to grieve the death of Mary’s Son and to share in their hour - but we know that this sorrow is only temporary as we will also share in Mary’s joy of bringing a human being into the world, into the world yet to be born.

A wise tutor once suggested that perhaps these words of Jesus to his mother should be understood as more of a question. My hour hasn’t come yet, has it? Where else had Jesus learnt the stories of his Jewish heritage but on the lap of his mother, who we know from her responses to the angel in Luke’s Gospel, was someone who knew the scriptures intimately? Perhaps both Jesus and his mother knew from reflecting on the stories of Israel, that to fulfil the prophecy of the angel, Jesus had an hour of some kind to face. My hour hasn’t come yet, has it? What will it mean for us then to share, like Mary, in the hour of Jesus? To share both in the grief of that hour but also the joy of that hour? To ask Mary, the woman, and her offspring, the church, the question, “My hour hasn’t come yet, has it?”

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, amen.