“MARRIAGE:
FILL THE JARS WITH….”

INTRODUCTION

The title of my homily is, “Marriage: Fill the Jars With….”

In today’s gospel [John2:1-11], Jesus tells the servants at the wedding, “Fill the jars with water.” And we know the rest of the story. We’ve heard the story of Jesus’ miracle of turning water into wine at Cana at Sunday Masses as well as many a wedding.

GREGORY PIERCE

Gregory Pierce, a businessman, a publisher, community organizer, husband and father, said, “Preach about work and relationships. Those two places are where most people spend most of their time.” (1)

So when I read this gospel, the obvious thought was, “Say something about marriage.”

THIS GOSPEL

When I do a wedding I ask the couple to pick the 3 readings. I like it when they pick the story of the wedding feast of Cana – but most of the time they don’t.

So here’s my chance. I have a chance to say a positive thing as well as a scary thing about marriage that I would not say at a wedding.

As the wedding song goes, “We’ve only just begun / White lace and promises / A kiss of hope and we’re on our way.”

BLINK

I was talking to a guy in the parish recently at his and his wife’s 25th wedding anniversary. Being guys we talked about work. He told me one of his jobs was interviewing people who might be interested in being part of a franchise. Listening to what he did reminded me of something I had to do years earlier – figure people out. I mentioned to him something that a counselor told me years ago. “I was trained to listen to my belly. When I shake someone’s hand and welcome them for their first session – I jot down in my brain – what my belly is saying at that exact moment.” I then told this guy in the parish about a seminarian that I was dealing with. He was tough stuff. And as my hand was shaking his hand for the first time, my belly said, ‘Sick!’”

I said to myself, “Uh oh!”

I was aware of all the warnings: Jesus’ messages about not judging… I knew about the sayings, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” “Before judging someone you have to walk a mile their moccasins.”

Then this guy who was celebrating his 25th anniversary said one word to me, “Blink.” Then he added: “Read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink.”

I had seen the title on the best seller list, but I hadn’t read it – nor did I have a clue about what it was all about.

So I bought it with a gift certificate I got for Christmas.

Blink.

It’s easy reading.

And as I read I realized why this guy in the parish told me about the book.

Blink is all about that first moment – that gut reaction – or gut instinct.

Be aware of it.

BLINK – YOU’RE MARRIED

Now here is the scary stuff – the challenging stuff – the nervous stuff.

I am aware that some of you are not married – or are married – or you are divorced – or your spouse has died.

But let me get back to Gregory Pierce of Chicago’s comment: talk about relationships and work.

Well, in Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Blink, he talks about a psychologist, John Gottman, who works in a clinic near Washington University in Washington State – and he has filmed and studied over 3,000 couples. And Blink says that Gottman and his team can predict whether a marriage is going to work or not 95 % of the time by just studying a 60 minute tape of the couple – and 90% of the time by just looking at a tape of 15 minutes of a couple talking and being with each other.

That’s quite a statement!

The couple sit in two chairs on a platform – which measures their body movements – and shifts in their chairs. They have wires and things connected to their hands and ears, etc. And there is a video camera taking pictures of each of them the whole time.

One exercise is to have a couple wired up and with cameras rolling –they are asked to talk together just 15 minutes about a recent source of conflict they’ve had with each other.

The team and the machines measure 20 different emotions – disgust, contempt, anger, defensiveness, whining, sadness, stonewalling, neutral, etc.

Afterwards Gottman and his team study the film. They study facial expressions, heart rate, movement, shifting, sweating, temperature, and they put everything into a complex mathematical code.

John Gottman, the Washington State psychologist, has written a book, The Mathematics of Divorce. I don’t intend to buy that book, but I’m glad I bought and am reading Blink.

John Gottman said he can sit at a restaurant and watch a couple at another restaurant and figure out the state of that marriage.

I found myself saying, “Is he married? If he is, how is the state of his marriage? If he was in a restaurant with his wife, would he be looking at her or concentrating on the next table? How would that make his wife feel?”

He’s been doing this marriage research for over 15 years with machines and cameras.

He has found out – now here comes the tie in I’m going to make with today’s gospel – that if he focuses on what he calls the Four Horsemen: defensiveness, stonewalling, criticism and contempt, he will come up with what he wants to know.

And if he had to pick one of the four, it would be contempt.

Gottman considers this the single most important sign that a marriage is in trouble.

Listen to this excerpt from the book: “You would think that criticism would be the worse,” Gottman says, “because criticism is a global condemnation of a person’s character. Yet contempt is qualitatively different from criticism. With criticism I might say to my wife, ‘You never listen, you are really selfish and insensitive.’ Well, she’s going to respond defensively to that. That’s not very good for our problem solving and interaction. But if I speak from a superior plane, that’s far more damaging, and contempt is any statement made from a higher level. A lot of the time it’s an insult” ‘You’re a b…. You’re s….’ It’s trying to put that person on a lower plane than you. It’s hierarchical.”

Contempt!

I said to myself I have to do a lot of homework on what contempt means.

I would assume that’s what a good book does. It challenges us with one good insight – at least one good question.

That last word in Gottman’s comment that I quoted hit me, the word, “hierarchical”. Here I am up here in a pulpit – above you. What kind of body language do I give off? Do people turn off priests in a blink?

The only sure body language sign I spot in church is the look at the watch – sometimes done quite dramatically. I also know that watches for some have disappeared and folks tell time with their cell phones. Is that why people look down from time to time?

Could they video and then do a study of the faces and body language of people at Mass?

So I have to ask myself: What signals and messages do I give off? What are the inner thoughts I have down deep inside me? And then the big question: is there any contempt in this big jar called “me”?

There’s a lot more – and in a second or two you’ll be giving me signals, “Enough already.” And then, “Boring!” or “Interesting.” Whatever. So I would recommend the book called, “Blink.”

THE GOSPEL

I would say the challenge is to bring oneself to Jesus in deep prayer and face with him what’s inside me.

Like water becoming wine, we need to change contempt into humility. Better work with Jesus to change contempt into humility – to change vinegar into wine. Tough stuff.

CONCLUSION: TODAY’S SECOND READING

I also think today’s second reading [1 Corinthians 12: 4-11] would really help. A couple, a family, a job site, each individual has to realize I have only so many gifts and I have so many weaknesses – and others have so many strengths and gifts – as well as weaknesses – so we better together if we expect the marriage, the family, the work place to work.





Painting on top, Marriage Feast At Cana by Juan de Flandes, 1465-1519. It was painted in 1500. It is oil on wood. It is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

(1) Gregory F.A. Pierce, Spirituality at Work, 10 Ways to Balance Your Life on the Job, Loyola Press, Chicago, 2001.


(2) Malcolm Gladwell, Blink, The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, Back Bay Books, Little, Brown and Company, New York, Boston, London, 2005