January 20, 2013 – John 2:1-11
John 2:1-11
The Wedding Planner
Second Sunday after Epiphany – January 20, 2013
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
In the ancient world, a wedding was a big deal: a really big deal.
The celebration could last a week and it required a lot of wine.
Guests would bring wine along with them to ensure that there would be enough to last.
If you ran out of wine it was kind of embarrassing,
because it meant you didn’t have many friends.
Well, the host of the wedding today finds out he’s got a real good friend in Jesus:
a real good friend.
Jesus brings a lot of wine to this wedding.
Reminds me of the story of the pastor who’s on his way to a wedding reception and
gets pulled over by a cop for weavily driving down the road.
The police officer comes up, leans her head in the car, smells wine on the pastor’s breath and
says, “Been drinking already, pastor?”
And the pastor replies, “Just water.”
So the police officer says,
“Then what’s that empty wine bottle doing rolling around on the floor?”
The pastor looks down at it and exclaims, “Well look at that: he’s done it again!”
In any case, Jesus brings a lot of wine to this wedding: a lot of wine.
An abundance of wine. A superfluity of wine. A plethora of wine.
These are big stone jars that he has filled with water which he then turns into wine.
Each of these stone jars held between 25 and 30 gallons, so we’re talking about
150 to 180 gallons of wine.
That’s the equivalent of about six big old fashioned claw foot bathtubs filled with wine.
That’s a lot of wine.
And what you need to know is that in the Old Testament,
an abundance of wine at a wedding feast was sign that God’s New Age of
abundance and sharing and peace and mercy was about to being.
It was a celebration sign that God’s intentions for creation were about to be fulfilled.
An abundance of wine marked the beginning of a party to celebrate
God’s will and God’s people’s will becoming one, as in a marriage.
Isaiah pointed to it this morning, right?
You shall be called My Delight is in Her, and your land shall be called Married.
For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you,
And as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.
When God and God’s people finally share one will and one heart,
when the people’s hearts are finally turned to God’s ways of manna-sharing and
mercy-giving and justice-doing and peace-making it will be marked by
a great celebration not unlike a wedding.
It will be a time marked by God’s lavish extravagant abundance being shared
equitably by all peoples.
In Jesus, the story invites us to consider, this new age has begun.
God’s wedding to creation and to human beings has begun.
And one day, what has begun will be fulfilled, which John points to in the Book of Revelation,
When the marriage of the Lamb [Jesus] will come,
when blessed will be those invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:7,9).
Marriage at its best implies mutuality and oneness and unity of purpose.
It implies at its best having a common purpose and a common will.
At its best it involves working together for a common goal.
Jesus implies this morning that, in the wedding of God’s will with our will,
that common purpose has something to do with sharing God’s abundance.
And as Paul tells us explicitly this morning,
that sharing has to do with the common good of all people.
God is abundantly generous, much more lavishly generous than we frequently imagine.
Close to the heart of God’s character is lavish generosity.
I mean you just need to ask: why so much wine, Jesus?
For one thing, Jesus does seem to be a little annoyed when his mother asks him to do this,
and at first he seems to refuse, right?
And then it seems like he changes his mind and thinks, Okay: you want wine? I’ll give you wine!
Maybe there’s a little of that going on.
But really: isn’t that just like Jesus?
We have come to know him here at First Lutheran as an exceptionally extravagant person.
I mean Jesus is the guy who tells us God is like a manager who
pays a worker a full day’s wage for a single hour of work!
He’s the guy who tells us that God is like a father who welcomes home a wayward son
with a ring, a robe, and a party (Dan Clendenin at http://www.journeywithjesus.net/Essays/20130114JJ.shtml).
In the Old Testament you are called to love your neighbours,
but Jesus extravagantly instructs you to love your enemies.
In the Old Testament you are invited to consider that an appropriate response to violence is
“an eye for an eye” but Jesus instructs you to offer the other cheek.
Jesus is an extravagant and over the top dude: many called him excessive.
He turns water into six bathtubs full of the finest wine: you want wine? I’ll give you wine. . . .
There is an extravagance here to Jesus and that Jesus reveals to be at the heart of God that
is hard to understand.
And you’re not the first ones to have a hard time understanding the full implications of this.
Amy Frykholm is a Christian writer I admire and on her blog last week she tells a story from
a book she’s been reading by a 6th century wandering monk named John Moschos.
A man works for a Christian charitable association in Antioch.
He helps to gather supplies and give them to people in need.
Once he bought some linen undergarments from Egypt and handed them out to those in need.
One really poor man got in line, received his undergarments,
then got in line again and received another set, and then got in line again for a third set.
Finally, on his fourth time through, the man distributing the undergarments said,
Look, I haven’t said anything so far, but I don’t want you coming through the line again.
there are others who are in need too.
So the poor man went away in shame.
That night the man distributing the garments had a dream.
In the dream, Jesus came toward him and took off his robe.
And underneath the robe, the man could see that Jesus was wearing . . .
four pairs of linen undergarments from Egypt!
“Forgive me my faintheartedness,” the man said to Jesus. “For I reckoned this matter in human terms.” From then on, the story says, “he gave to all who asked with simplicity and joy.”
(http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2013-01/reading-weird-monk-joke-about-underwear)
I don’t know exactly what this story means, but I do know this:
I know that at the very least it has to do with the abundant generosity of God toward us,
and our often less than stellar generosity toward others.
The great 19th century Lutheran writer Soren Kierkegaard said this:
Christ turned water into wine, but the church has succeeded in turning wine into water.
In other words, Kierkegaard clearly saw that the church has often turned
the flood of grace into a trickle, the abundance of Jesus into meanness,
lavish forgiveness into the need to earn a spot at the table.
Even though we have often turned Jesus’s extravagant wine into water,
this morning we’re going to ask that Jesus once again turn our water into wine.
And we can ask because Jesus is an excessive guy.
We are often empty – we come here, holding nothing in our hands, we pray,
yearning for the healing and the holding, the accepting and the forgiving,
that Christ alone can offer.
We are often empty, but, as Daniel Clendenin writes, Jesus offers excess for our emptiness.
I would add that Jesus offers forgiveness in exchange for sinfulness,
peace in exchange for violence,
and love in exchange for cruelty.
He takes our emptiness, our sinfulness, our cruelty, and our violence and there, on the cross,
he gives us instead – he puts inside us – excess, forgiveness, peace, and love.
At the table is where this wedding of wills takes place, so that his excess becomes ours,
his forgiveness becomes ours, his peace becomes ours, his love becomes ours.
So that we can share them extravagantly and remember never to turn his wine to water.
The stone jars were about the size of a human being: Jesus can transform what is inside us.
Jesus can make sinners saints, poured out for the common good of all.
In the wedding at Cana, Jesus sees that a wedding is always more than a wedding.
A marriage isn’t just symbolic of God’s intention for God’s relationship with us.
A marriage at its best can participate in God’s intention for us:
A good marriage – like all our relationships – can be alittle sign pointing to what
God’s reign of justice and peace is actually like.
Marriage – indeed all our relationships – can be a sign of God’s reign, says John.
And Jesus performs other signs of God’s reign.
He’ll do six more in John’s Gospel, besides many others not written the book, says John.
He did one this week at Food Bank.
Food Bank is always a little sign pointing to the fullness of God’s reign, where you can see
the New Age of God’s reign has begun, even though it’s not yet complete.
We didn’t give out any underwear this week, but we shared a lot food with a lot of people.
And it wasn’t just any food: Penny made a beautiful home-made stew chalk-full of beef that
made the people happy: it was a bit of a party.
Penny was there and Terry, with Tom and Norma and John, all long-time members.
Carolyn and Gaelene were there, brand-new members.
Kelly was there, a member of another Lutheran congregation,
and Sean and Christine were there too, who are members of no congregation at all.
Yet, there we were, a diversity of people with a common purpose,
wedded to Jesus’ will for the common good of all people.
I had an amazing feeling on Wednesday, like we were all in this mission together.
That it wasn’t my mission, but that it was ours.
That I wasn’t alone in working for that day long promised when creation will fulfill its promise.
And when that happens, the party will be like the biggest wedding feast in history.
I felt like I was part of some large purpose that every single one of you is behind as
Members of First Lutheran Church, that you were all there in spirit,
and that together we were part of a purpose that behind all of us God is behind.
It was an extraordinary feeling at an event that looks rather mundane, rather like I imagine,
a small wedding in Cana long ago.
A small celebration of abundance and abundant sharing that points to a much much larger one
On this day, as the church has long prayed, may we become what we receive.
May we become fine abundant bread shared abundantly with all,
and may we become the finest wine shared liberally with others.
May our water be turned to wine.
May our anxiousness be turned to calm.
May our loneliness be turned into community.
May our death be turned into life.
May our reluctance be turned into love.
May our tears of water be turned into the wine of joy.
May Jesus take from us what is not helpful to the common good,
and give us extravagantly what is.
May our will be wedded to his will.
And wedded to his will, may we become agents of the divine, filled with his life,
filled with his forgiveness, filled with his bread, filled with his wine.
May this Holy Communion be a sign of God’s reign among us.
And may we in turn become the signs that point to God’s abundance.
So together let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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