Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 17, 2010

Sermon by Rev. Dr. Marcus Pera

The Holy Gospel according to St. John. (John 2:1‑11)

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from though the servants who had drawn the water knew, the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

The Gospel of Our Lord.

In the name of Jesus, sisters and brothers, grace, mercy, and peace be unto you. Amen.

I am quite certain that nobody here would want to invite a bunch of people over for dinner and then run out of food in the middle. I am sure probably nobody here would want to host a party and run out of drink. I’m sure that probably nobody here would want to sponsor an event in which there were reserved seats and then not have enough seats for everyone. It would be embarrassing; it would be insulting. It might even be an offense. Now, there’s a flip side of that, and the flip side of that is one that has gifts to excess and works with gifts in excess.

My brother likes to still tell the story that happened close to 40 years ago. Now as my wife Nancy, we had just been married and were living in Bellville, Illinois, right across the river from St. Louis. And my brother and his wife were visiting, and I think my parents were with them. They came by, we were going to meet in a park, and Nan said she was going to prepare some chicken for the picnic. We got there, and she came out with a roaster about this big and it was just heaped full of chicken. And he still laughs about it. There were six of us, and she had food definitely for twenty.

Giving to excess is also part of this. Both of these extremes are in this Gospel lesson for today. On the one hand, there is the situation that says they have no wine, and then they have to deal with that. On the other hand, it is wine that ends up to be a part of the celebration, and it’s wine that is filled to the brim. We want to try to make sense out of that today, and make sense out of it by also remembering that wine is going to be used symbolically here as well, as I begin to unfold the text from the perspective that I am speaking this day.

We look first at that, and it’s not a miracle in John. We talk about the first miracle of Jesus in Cana, turning water into wine. But John never uses that word. John always uses the word “sign,” sign like symbol; it points to something behind it. It’s like the steward didn’t get it. There was simply good wine there after it had been done. But the servants got it. They knew what had happened; they knew what was behind it. And they caught it and experienced it and believed. These are why Jesus gave signs.

At any rate, they were in the celebration of the wedding. And weddings were quite different then. We have our weddings, as you realize, not more than a day, or the latter part of a day and into the evening. Weddings then lasted a whole week. In the celebration of a whole week, they were in the halfway point and ran out of wine. It was an embarrassing situation. And so Jesus’ mother comes to him and says, “They have no wine.”

Karl Barth, a great Swiss theologian, I think is the one that said that preachers should do this: they should preach with the newspaper in one hand and the Bible in the other hand, and to do so especially during this time is significant. And I will attempt to do that as well. When I was writing the pastoral report for the annual-report meeting that’s coming up, I was realizing that we had finished a decade and we are moving into a new decade. And I glanced at the article or the cover story of Time magazine at the end of December, and in that it talked about “the decade from hell.” And then it mentioned that we are in bookends. The bookends of the decade were 9-11 on the one hand and the financial collapse on the other hand, with Katrina in the middle. And it said that it was probably the most dispirited and disillusioning decade since World War II.

This week, holding on to the newspaper, was an incredible news week as well. Obviously around here, it started with at least one dramatic scene, and that was the shooting in South Minneapolis, in which it involved international people. It involved two Somalis and one Ethiopian, in a senseless shooting that involved two teenaged people, seventeen year olds, simply trying to do a low‑grade robbery that would help them get their car out of the pound. And obviously, the earthquake in Haiti has not only shaken Haiti but has shaken the whole world. It’s like Haiti can’t get a break, the country that is the most impoverished in the Western Hemisphere; a country where something like 70% of the people live under less than two dollars a day; a country that has had corruption in government; a country that has fought unusual disease; a country that was ravaged also by a hurricane a couple years ago. And now this earthquake. Over a hundred thousand, probably a hundred and fifty thousand, they will never know an exact count of people who have lost their lives. Another million to three million people in drastic need of water, need of clothing, and need of shelter. They have no wine. They have no wine with which to celebrate.

And it is, as often things go, that this comes closer to home as well. I was talking to a member of the congregation on Wednesday evening. She had gone to school with some people at St. Olaf, who are now at Wartburg Seminary, and she mentioned to me on Wednesday evening that they had just landed in Haiti. But the word that they had at that point is that they were fine. She sent me an email on Thursday morning and said that wasn’t an accurate message; one of them had lost their life. That person was Ben Larson. Both his parents are E.L.C.A. pastors in Duluth. Ben Larson, a son of April Larson. And if you recognize that name, she was a Bishop in the La Crosse area synod for two terms. What a tragic loss. These people also have no wine.

And when we look at those kinds of devastations, our own kind of situations and problems kind of fade in the midst of all of that. But they become and are, nonetheless, real as well. Different points in our life, different pressures, different challenges, different things that we have to face, that have us down, that have us in a situation where we, too, feel that there is no wine; there is no capability to be able to live in celebration.

What do we do with all of that? In the first instance, in those lessons for today, it’s not just that there isn’t any wine, but there certainly is a role of advocacy that happens. And I want to turn to that First Lesson in Isaiah. That First Lesson there out of Isaiah is at a time where the situation in Israel, even though they were returning from exile were still facing incredible challenges. And in that lesson the prophet is saying, “I will continue to speak, and I will not rest until Israel and Jerusalem are vindicated.” “I will continue to speak and I will not rest.” That can be translated in two different ways. On the one hand, the prophet could be simply talking for God, who says situations will change. But on the other hand, it could be the prophet speaking to God, arm-wrestling, so to speak, with God, saying “I’m not going to let go until . . . . And I will continue to speak and I will not rest until there be vindication and there be change.” “I will not stop speaking and I will not rest until there is transformation that happens in Haiti.” “I will not rest and I will not stop speaking until there is a better and a fuller abundant life in Tanzania and in Guatemala.” “I will not stop speaking and I will not rest until there is healing that comes to brokenness within our world.”

Yes, the advocacy happens also on the part of Mary in relationship to Jesus. She comes to Jesus and says, “They have no wine.” He has a rather strange response to her. First of all, Mary isn’t mentioned by name; and, secondly, he just says, “woman.” There is a way maybe to see Mary as kind of a corporate woman, a woman of all, women of all society who are in need of healing and response and compassion. But he says to her, “What have I to do with you? Why does that make any difference to me?” And then he says, “My hour has not yet come.” I’m going to come back to that phrase in a little bit and leave it for right now, but it seems certainly a strange response. But then she tells the servants, “Do what he tells you to do.” She has the confidence in who he is, the confidence in his grace and compassion that there will be a response. And, sure enough, finally the water jars are turned into wine.

There is advocacy that is also called for on our part—and here I want to turn to the Second Lesson for today—and these are the gifts that are given to all of God’s people, to you and to me. All of us have gifts. I like to use the phrase “A gift‑based ministry”; a gift‑based ministry in which we look at ourselves, and hear other people affirm us in certain areas, and understand that we have a gift here, that we need to claim the gifts that we have, we need to own them, and then we need to look at ways in which we can act upon them and exercise them in the world for the good of all. To some have been given a gift of organization, and they put things together and they are able to activate action on the basis of that. To others are given the gifts of compassion and hospitality, and they are able to bring healing and embrace to people who are in need of comfort and strength. To others have been given the gift of teaching, and they are able to bring insight into problems and situations and bring correction through these particular gifts. To each has been given gifts. It’s what our vocation is. It’s understanding, as Frederick Beekner said, that our great joy—what gives us our most enthusiasm and satisfaction—and the world’s great need come together. At that point we are exercising our gifts for the good of all.

It’s what Martin Luther King on this weekend certainly was doing in advocacy for the African-American people in this country, doing the advocacy that had a dream that said he looked forward to the day when all people would not be judged on the color of their skin but on the content of that character. It’s that kind of advocacy that we are called to do on behalf of those who are in need as well. But does it stop there and is that it? No. The jars did end of getting filled, did they not? The jars were filled and were filled all the way to the brim.

Jesus said, “My hour has not yet come.” Why did he say that? In the Gospel of John, at the latter part of the Gospel of John, we finally get the clue when he says that, “The hour has come.” And what was the hour that had come? That was when he would be glorified fully, meaning that when he would offer his life on the cross. And it was Jesus who needed to go to the full extent of his solidarity with us and with the human condition in allowing his life to be broken in order that he might embrace and encompass all of us. And it is on the other side of that, on the resurrection side, that the abundant life is what is promised and given fulfillment. And Jesus, in the meantime though, responds out of his compassion, out of the generosity of God’s grace, out of the in breaking of the kingdom that says here is another glimpse of the glory and the beauty and the love and the grace of God. And he turns the water into wine, and they are able to continue with the celebration.

In our situations, sometimes we feel there is no wine. We look around the world and happenings and we say, “Is there any wine?” But we do have some wine. We do have some wine here today, and we receive it. “Take, eat, this is my body. Take, drink, this is my blood.”

And it is enough wine. It is enough wine for now. It is enough wine to give us confidence. It is enough wine to empower us for carrying out our gifts. It is enough wine to give us the confidence that there is hope in the abundance and generous grace and gifts of God. We say it so nicely in the offertory hymn:

“Let the vineyards be fruitful, Lord,

and fill to the brim our cup of blessing.

Gather a harvest from the seeds that were sown,

that we may be fed with the bread of life.

Gather the hopes and dreams of all;

unite them with the prayers we offer.

Grace our table with your presence,

and give us a foretaste of the feast to come.”

In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.