Our sermon text for the 2nd Sunday after Epiphany was the first 11 verses of John, Chapter 2:
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, 2 and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
4 “Woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
6 Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim. 8 Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.” They did so, 9 and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.
Then he called the bridegroom aside 10 and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
11 What Jesus did here in Cana of Galilee was the first of the signs through which he revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.On Sunday we talked about how important this text is for our church at this particular time, with our Annual Meeting/Potluck coming up next Sunday following worship. If you know anything about the Gospel of John (as opposed to his friends Matthew, Mark, and Luke) you'll know that what actually happens is less than half the story. John is all about what events symbolize and mean. An otherwise simple story about a wedding being saved by the miracle of water to win carries plenty of significance for us today.
You know John is starting out big when the event happens "on the third day". On the third day of what, exactly? He doesn't say specifically--likely the week--but it hardly matters. You just need to remember that other thing that happened on the third day: Jesus rising again to announce our salvation and a new beginning. Jesus' first miracle--this wedding event--is the sign of a new creation, a new time, the beginning of the world changing.
We, too, stand at that time as a church. We've spent the last few years gathering energy and confidence, getting to know each other, exploring the Spirit. We've done well, I think. But it's time to start looking forward instead of just backwards or inwards. We have this energy, creativity, this wonderful, percolating community. What are we to do? This is our third day.
If we shy away from that journey in favor of staying safe--slinking away from the wedding, so to speak--we'll not be able to preserve what we've discovered. Turned inwards, that energy dissipates. It becomes more about us as individuals--our generation of church members or whatever--than it does about the space between us and the ideas and service that happen in that place. In scientific terms, the potential energy of of church needs to become kinetic energy, expended in service to God and community.
But note that Jesus' first miracle didn't begin with a bang. It began with an, "Awwwww...we're out of wine." Every change happens this way. We perceive a need, a lack, and we have a choice how to act. Like the Israelites in their wilderness journey we can complain or we can move.
The natural response to the shortcoming at the Cana wedding would have been grumbling. Wine prices are too high, nobody can get enough anymore. The steward should have planned better. The bridegroom is too cheap. The bride invited too many people. We deal with life's imperfections by finding someone to blame for them and then moving on.
Instead Mary and the servants called upon God and laid out their issue. He said, "Trust me and fill up those jars." Then he made it better. We are called to see shortcomings in our life--individual or communal--as an opportunity and/or challenge. Otherwise we never see God's miracles even when they occur. They're drown out by the chorus of moans. (17 kids, most of which aren't associated with our church, show up for an impromptu youth event, for instance, and we complain about the snow tracked onto the entryway carpet. And so on.) Shortcomings aren't a cause for complaint, they're a sign we need to move.
And notice that the move in John's gospel here is forward, not backwards. The jars in which Jesus worked his miracle were meant for a specific purpose: the ritual of transformation. That was set in stone...literally! (The jars were stone, you see. Ha ha? Never mind.) Jesus did his thing and all of a sudden they became the world's biggest wine decanters. How in the world did they even pour the stuff anyway? Did they have to get wooden buckets? Something else to complain about, I suppose...
Our human instinct tells us to look backwards for answers. Whenever creativity is called for in a church setting the first answers our of our mouths always involve, "Well, we used to..." That's great, actually! We used to do many wonderful things! But the implication of this kind of answer is that our former community had nothing to do with the people participating in it, its time, its culture, the surrounding circumstances. The whole reason things used to be good was this awesome trick we used to employ, some program or method which made everything perfect just because it existed.
Obviously this was not the case. Those "used to" ideas really were great...probably the best ideas possible at the time. It's not like newfangled ideas are automatically better. They're just different. And they're different because all of those other factors--people, relationships, culture, needs, circumstances--are also different. Programs and ideas don't work because they're magical or even right. They work because they fit with the environment in which they operate. Something that was absolutely proper--ideal, even--30 or 10 or 5 years ago may not be right anymore. That's why we're called to look forward in our vision, considering our goals and who we're serving today instead of looking backwards at all the successes we used to have in a completely different environment.
There was nothing wrong with those stone jars, nor with the ritual of purification. It was just time to put them to a new use.
What's more, this new thing turned the expectations of the world upside-down. Note the steward saying, "Everybody serves the good wine first, then the inferior when the palate is dulled, but you've done it backwards!" This was probably not a real practice. Likely it's in the story to make this very point. If you just go by your own expectations or those of your society you will not be led to the same place that trust in God will lead you. In fact sometimes trust in God means doing the opposite of what "makes sense".
Naturally all of this evokes fear and nervousness in us. And for good reason! These miracles are not without cost. If the transformation into WINE--foreshadowing Jesus' own blood poured out on the cross and through communion--isn't enough for you, note his response to Mary's request: "My hour has not yet come." When John says, "my hour" he means his death, his crucifixion. Note the famous prayer in John 17 which begins, "Father, the hour has come..." The very next thing that happened to him was his arrest.
The emphasis in his statement here falls on the "yet". He knows his hour is coming. He knows these steps forward lead into sacrifice and cost greater than anyone could imagine. That's what moving forward means and that's why we fear it. But he also knows that this is God's calling. To refuse the miracle in order to keep himself feeling safe and secure would be unthinkable, a retreat into a slow, inertial death in order to avoid the sacrifice that leads to new life. So Jesus follows God, pays the cost, takes the chance, performs the miracle.
Plenty of churches end up like those Olympic show horses, running just fine until they get to the bar they have to jump. Then they balk, shy away, and their rider goes flying. Sometimes we'd rather get God off our back (and out of our church) than change. This will not do. Yes, steps forward involve cost and sacrifice...sometimes great sacrifice. But they're not optional if we're to fulfill our calling. We, too, pay the cost, take the chance, follow God, and live out the miracle.
We do this because we know how the story ends. This particular story in John ends with the wedding going on, not just with a few cups of wine but with somewhere around 150 gallons of the best wine imaginable! THAT is a party! God gives us more than we ever anticipated. We also know that Jesus' own story didn't end in death but in life everlasting and the redemption of the world. That's the ironic thing about the show horse refusing to jump. The other side of the bar holds wonders so great as to make this side look like a wilderness desert. Being human, we're always tempted to hold onto the desert we know instead of finding the lush valley we can only see through trust. But that's a temptation we must resist.
It's time to run. It's time to jump. It's time to journey onward to our next incarnation of the promised land in Genesee. The annual meeting begins after worship next Sunday. There will be a potluck and plenty of news and excitement. Please come and begin to explore your part in the next big thing at the Genesee Lutheran Parish. See you there!
--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)
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