tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

 

There is a moment in the Tragedy of Macbeth, where it is becoming clear that the future he and Lady Macbeth had tried to grasp will be ripped from his hand, and when he has just been informed that his wife has ended her own life with violence, where Shakespeare gives Macbeth this amazing soliloquy:

“She should have died hereafter;
There would have been a time for such a word.
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
To the last syllable of recorded time,
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.

Three times in the opening chapter of the Gospel According to John, the biographer John writes: the next day, the next day, the next day.

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow.

Building a sense of inevitability. A player stepping out on the stage. A tale told. But when his hour comes, this poor player will not be forgotten. The telling of this tale is not sound and fury, signifying nothing, but signs and passion, that the heater might believe for themselves.

[Bonus trivia connection: Macbeth act 5 scene 5 continues with Macbeth threatening a messenger:

“If thou speak’st false,
Upon the next tree shalt thou hang alive,
Till famine cling thee:”]

John breaks the petty pace pattern of the next day, the next day, the next day at the start of chapter 2, declaring: On the third day ...

... an image he will carry through chapter 2 when Jesus moves from a wedding at Cana (On the third day) to the temple in Jerusalem, where when he is challenged to justify his driving out the animals, both the sheep and the cattle [note, contrary to those who use this incident to justify violence, the whip is not used against fellow humans, as if Jesus was an Egyptian overseer of Hebrew slaves, but as a practical means of directing livestock], he replies with an enigmatic statement his apprentices later understand as a prediction of his death [parched, hanging on a tree, charged with and declared guilty of false speech] and resurrection (in three days).

The difference between Macbeth, who was not only a literary character but also an historical king of Scotland for seventeen years, and Jesus, who is not only an historical person but also a literary character, is that Jesus does not despise the way to dusty death as the way of fools; he is the Way, and in walking the way faithfully – keeping faith with frail humanity – transforms dusty death into the door to life; a candle – the light of life – extinguished, briefly, only to reignite.

But before we get to the temple, and long before we get to the foretold death and resurrection, On the third day John takes us to a wedding in Cana of Galilee, where six stone jars that had held water are refilled with water, which is transformed into wine.

The point is not that the wine is better than the water. This is not Jesus superseding Judaism. The wine is the water, transformed, not replaced. The detail John notes is the instruction to fill the jars to the brim. That is, the water that was already in the jars has been depleted: you cannot fill a full jar. First depletion, then filling, then transformation. We must embrace loss, the impact of death, if we are to experience gain, the promise of life.

This is what Macbeth failed to grasp, and what we so often fail to grasp.