Back in the '90s, between school terms, I was the go-to substitute for teaching Gospel Doctrine in my singles ward. One of those lessons was on the wedding at Cana, and I was asked if it was Jesus's wedding.
I have a vivid mental picture of it, where I can see the room, and Jill raising her hand and who she was sitting next to and how annoyed I was. I believe that the level of detail in the memory was proportional to my annoyance, which may not have been fair. I assumed she was asking as a way of showing off and being provocative, but maybe she really wanted to know - not that we really can know.
If she was trying to be shocking, I didn't take the bait. I just stated matter-of-factly that Jesus probably already would have been married for quite a while by then. I think our church has always said that we believed that Jesus was married, and that he would have to be to enter into the highest, even if we don't spend a lot of time on it.
Besides that, I believe I'd already had an institute teacher point out that it was very unacceptable for a Jewish man to not marry at that time, and for all the things they criticized on record, that didn't come up. Even his going into the synagogues and teaching indicated that he was married. Those were things that I was told and believed, though I am not sure how accurate they are. I believe that I had also picked up that the traditional marriage age was around 18 for a boy (14 for girls), and he was about 30 at Cana, so all of that makes it very unlikely that it was his wedding.
My intention is not that the lesson we should take from this is that we should get married, though I think that is a good thing to do if you do it right (with lots of not so great ways of doing it too). It's more that the memory kept coming back to me, and it reminded me that even the Savior of the World had time for his own life.
We know a little about his birth and a few location moves (Bethlehem to Egypt to Nazareth). We know that he presented himself at the temple at an age that was appropriate for being examined by the elders - another sign that he respected local traditions and customs, despite focusing on the more needful parts and at the right times being able to overturn conventions and tables. Then we know of his ministry. There is a lot of time in between that we don't know, and I am glad for him.
This goes along with the last post's insistence on our right to party, but it is more than that. We can talk about losing our lives to find them, but still, we can have our lives. Certainly that life has to be compatible with what is right, and something that we can be okay sharing with God (and I know there is a lot to explore there), but there can still be things we do for us, with not everything being service.
There are reasonable questions about balance, or when to give something up, or quibbling over whether the things you do for yourself can count as service anyway because it makes you better able to help others, but what strikes me most is the value of earthly satisfactions.
Some people find a lot of different pleasures trivial and unimportant, perhaps for no other reason than it's something they wouldn't miss. I believe there is a lot of space for us to be us.
One of my pet peeves is people finding it necessary to mention their disapproval of something every time it is mentioned. They hate that food or TV show, or maybe they think that band used to be punk but isn't anymore. It's even more obnoxious when it happens in a context where clearly the pleasure in question was brought up by someone who likes it. It is quite likely that you like things that other people don't, unless you don't like anything at all, in which case the problem is clearly you.
One brilliant thing about not knowing much about the private life of Jesus is that we only have his teachings to focus on. He told us what he knew was important, we should be able to figure out the rest, and we can do that graciously, without needing everyone else to be the same. Look at all of the variety in nature; how could it possibly be any other way?
I will do one more bit of speculation. That the wine shortage was brought to Mary's attention, and then to Jesus - well that could just be friendship or good guests, but it could also be a family connection.
Speaking of getting to have a life of your own, I know that there are traditions that Mary stayed a virgin forever, and acrobatic ways of explaining how that worked out and how the siblings that are mentioned could have fit in, but I have no reason to believe that. It does seem pretty possible that Joseph died not long after Jesus presented himself at the temple - I imagine that would be rather like a bar mitzvah, so becoming a man - and then Jesus as Mary's oldest child and son would have had a lot of responsibility for the family.
It seems possible to me that perhaps the marriage could have been for one of those siblings. Maybe it was the last of the siblings. Maybe that made it a good time to start his ministry, when everyone was in a pretty settled place.
That is pure speculation, but it is a reminder that even though you get that time of your own, it may be time where you are poor, and have a lot of family responsibility that you need to meet righteously.
That sounds like life. There are downsides to it, but it is still precious. It still comes with satisfaction and joy, as well as heartbreak and difficulty. I know it can happen in a way where it is ours, but something that we can share with God. We can follow Him and still have our own choices for things that are not matters of right and wrong but merely preferences.
Embrace life in all of its beautiful, messy complexity.
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