January 14, 2007
John 2:1-11
Grace and peace to you from God the Creator and the Lord Jesus. Amen.
Pastor Susan and I preside over quite a few weddings here at Advent, so I was interested to see a series of articles in the on-line magazine Slate.com about unusual wedding gifts people had received over the years. These were gifts that revealed people’s imaginations rather than common sense, gifts that no one really needs, like ashtrays from Bali and clocks from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. I’m sure we could all supply a list of strange and unusual gifts that we’ve received and, perhaps, given.
Slate even ran a contest for the most incomprehensible gift of all, and then published a photo of the winner. It’s hard to describe. It was a kind of bowl that was perched on what looked like three animal legs. Turns out it was a gourd used for the brewing of yerba mate. I’m not sure what yerba mate is – I suspect it’s a kind of tea – but it’s hard to imagine a more trivial gift, even for the couple who has everything.
Jesus brings a gift to this wedding at Cana this morning, and it is far from trivial. In fact, it turns out to be the most essential gift of all.
Jesus; his mother, Mary; and his disciples have been invited to a wedding in the little village of Cana, about 9 miles north of Jesus’ hometown of Nazareth. A wedding invitation was a major event at that time and in that culture, because a wedding invitation carried with it certain expectations. The primary expectation was that those who were invited would help provide the resources for the wedding celebration. And wedding celebrations, remember, were a full week long; so this was no small matter. Most guests took care of this responsibility by sending on ahead of time plenty of food and wine for the festivities.
So when Mary notices that the wine has run out, this is a real crisis. Everyone’s honor is at stake! The host family faces a loss of honor because a lack of wine indicates a lack of financial resources to buy it; or, worse yet, a lack of friends to help supply it. All the guests face a loss of honor because a lack of wine means they failed to live up to their rightful responsibility to help provide it. Clearly, something needs to be done! And that’s when Jesus steps in and turns water into wine.
But you’ll notice that he doesn’t just turn some water into some wine. Six jars at 30 gallons each; 180 gallons! That is a lot of cabernet! It’s far more than a wedding celebration in a small place like Cana would have needed, and far more than anyone who was there would have imagined.
Which is, of course, the point. We are to be impressed in this story not so much by the specific volume as by the idea of extravagant abundance.
This is, after all, the season of Epiphany, the season in which the Church celebrates the revealing of Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One of God. According to the writer of John’s Gospel, from the moment Jesus stepped onto the scene the glory of God bloomed, poured forth, overflowed. We’re told that this miracle at Cana was the first of several signs that Jesus performed in order to show forth his glory and inspire faith. And this sign – changing water into wine – is certainly impressive enough. But the other signs: healing a sick child, walking on water, the miraculous feeding of 5,000 people, giving sight to someone who had been born blind, and the final sign in John’s Gospel – raising his dead friend Lazarus back to life – with all of these signs the glory and majesty of God flow in extravagant, unreasonable abundance.
And that’s precisely the point at which we tend to feel the distance between ourselves and Jesus. We modern North Americans tend to lead pretty careful, measured, restrained lives. We don’t make sudden, big moves in life; we like to manage our changes whenever possible. We love our structure. And that is not an altogether bad thing. Structure is good for us: We’ve known for a long time that infants and young children thrive within a healthy structure because such a structure gives them a sense of security and predictability about life.
But when we transfer our love of limits onto our faith lives, that’s where we find ourselves in trouble. Because then we start to think that faith is something that we generate, that we manage and control. Over the years a number of people have come to me with the fear, “Pastor, I think I’m losing my faith.” Something has happened, some crisis has come along and knocked them off balance, and they think that if they can just muster up enough faith they can get on top of this crisis and master it, or at least manage it. And when it doesn’t work out that way, the question comes: “I feel like I’m losing my faith. What can I do to hold onto the little faith I have instead of letting it just run through my fingers?”
But what if this story is true? What if faith – if trust in God and love for God – is a gift of God and not a product of our own determination? What if this story is true, and when we need it most God is there, ready and able to give us all the faith, trust and love we need? What if the Apostle Paul is right in his letter to the Corinthians, that God has given each of us spiritual gifts to be used, not for our own enjoyment but so that we might serve as God’s hands in this world? And what if in the course of serving as God’s hands in the world we find that our own issues – anger, frustration, grieving, disappointment, pride, whatever our issues might be – end up getting worked out in the process?
Sounds like the key ingredient of an abundant life, doesn’t it?
I recently heard of a college professor who was invited to speak at a military installation last month, December. He was picked up at the airport by a soldier, a man named Ralph. After they introduced themselves, they headed down the concourse toward baggage claim. And as they walked the professor noticed that every once in a while Ralph would disappear. Once he walked over to help an elderly woman whose suitcase had just popped open; another time he went to hold up two toddlers so they could see Santa; another time he went to give directions to a man who was obviously lost in the airport. And the professor noticed that every time Ralph rejoined him for their walk toward baggage claim, he had a huge smile on his face; he was beaming.
“Where did you learn that?” the professor asked Ralph.
“Learn what?”
“Learn how to live like that?”
“Oh,” Ralph said, “that was during the Vietnam War.” And then Ralph told the professor his story.
It seems that during the war, Ralph’s job was clearing minefields. It was, Ralph said, a career with a very uncertain future. “I never knew if the next step I took would be my last. After a while it seemed like the time between when I picked up my foot and then put it down again was a whole new world. And so I promised myself that if I ever got out of there I would pack as much life and living as I could into each and every day.
“It’s my own philosophy of life,” Ralph said. “I call it, Living between the steps.”
Ralph called it Living between the steps. We might call it grace, the grace of God, the key ingredient in a life of true abundance.
You see, this story isn’t really about Jesus changing water into wine. It’s about the promise of God to give us all we need, and more, to live as God’s faithful people; and not for our own enjoyment, but so that we can show forth the glory of God in this world that God loves.
May God give each of us the strength and the courage to live into that promise. Amen.
