When I was six, I was ring bearer in my aunt’s wedding. I was proud as a peacock as I marched down the aisle carrying my silk cushion and its two rings. Weddings were magical affairs to my young imagination.
So I find it striking that Jesus’ first miracle in the Gospel of John takes place at a wedding. Scholars speculate that the wedding couple may have been related to Jesus’ family.
His mother, Mary, for example, is more pre-occupied with the wedding arrangements than we would expect a normal guest to be. The bride or the bridegroom may have been a niece or a nephew.
Jewish weddings in Jesus’ time were drawn-out happenings. First there was the festive procession as the bridegroom brought his bride from her father’s house to his. Then the young married couple would open their new home to family and neighbors for a marriage banquet that might go as long as a week. You wanted to have plenty of food and drink on hand.
The wedding couple in this story is caught in an embarrassing situation. Sometime during those seven days of feasting, the supply of wine ran out. By ancient standards of hospitality, that would be a humiliation to the brand new family.
Maybe that’s why Mary steps in. She wants to spare her relatives the shame that will befall their reputation. So she goes to her son, apparently hoping he will come to the couple’s rescue.
Jesus comes across as somewhat put out. He says his hour has not yet come. Yet he does intervene. He tells the servants to fill the stone jars reserved for foot and hand washing with water. This was water set aside for the humblest of uses.
Then he tells them to draw some of it and carry it to the maitre d’ of the feast. Behold, the water has turned into wine, wine of superior quality.
We see in this story that Jesus was no puritan or ascetic. He enjoyed a good dinner and a good drink. In fact, in one of the other gospels, his critics charge that he is a glutton and a drunkard. Presumably that’s because of how often Jesus sat at dinner with people, and all too often with the wrong people in society’s eyes.
When I was in college, I had a good friend who grew up in a Baptist church, just as I did. He told me that his pastor once preached on this text. Beating his hand on the pulpit, the preacher said that when the text says Jesus turned the water into wine, we should understand it was not real wine. Just grape juice. So much for a literal reading of the Bible.
It is important to remember that Jesus was one who enjoyed a glass of good wine. And so can we as Christians.
Life in God’s kingdom is never described in the Bible as one of gloom and deprivation. Instead it is described in the image of a joyful feast.
I reaffirm that image every time I celebrate the Lord’s Supper. When I open up the service of the sacrament, I like to do so with the words, “Friends, this is the joyful feast of God.” For it is.
I don’t want to discount the danger of alcoholism. Asceticism and denial have their place in the Christian life, especially when we have made the gifts of God into addictions.
The gift becomes a prison. The only way to break out of that prison may be a time, even sometimes a lifetime, of abstention.
But when we practice abstention, let us be careful not to defame God’s good gifts. Because of our addictions, we may have to abstain from eating, drinking alcohol, or even compulsive playing of video games or shopping. But when we do, it is not because the activity itself is evil, but because we are letting it control our life.
John, the gospel writer, says this miracle is a sign. It reveals something about Jesus’ glory. This comment signals to us that John wants us to see in this story more than an extraordinary miracle. It reveals something about the very essence of Jesus’ mission.
When you read the commentaries, as I did when I was preparing this sermon, you find this story contains layers upon layers of symbolism. I won’t tire you with unpacking them all. They are there nonetheless.
What captures my attention, however, is the essence of the miracle. It transforms something as base and common as water into the delicacy of superior wine.
This brings to mind the ancient quest of alchemy, that dream of ancient scientists to find a chemical agent to transform lead into gold.
In a sense Jesus comes across in this story as the one truly successful alchemist. Instead of turning lead into gold, he turns water into wine—something equally difficult to do.
And this is a revelation of what Jesus’ whole life, death, and resurrection are about.
We can say, for example, that his mission is to turn base, sinful humanity into glorious children of God.
His mission is to turn our mortal life in the flesh into eternal life.
His mission is to turn the tragic and painful happenings of our lives into happenings that deepen rather than destroy our lives, that lead us into deeper wisdom and compassion, that usher us into a richer experience of the presence of God in our lives.
In a sense, Christ’s mission is to turn the grains of tragic sand in our lives into glistening pearls, to turn the dreary routines of our daily lives into glorious opportunities to be with God.
My favorite example of that is a man named Nicholas Hermann. He was a humble soldier and footman in 17th century France. Later he entered a monastery where he was given the name Lawrence, and assigned duties as a cook in the monastery kitchen.
It is easy to think that kitchen duties have nothing to do with the religious life. But Brother Lawrence, as we know him today, did not agree. He decided to make the daily routines of his kitchen an opportunity to engage in a constant conversation with God.
As he would go about this work, he would periodically utter short prayers to God. Nothing elaborate, just short little sentence prayers that lifted whatever he was doing into God’s presence.
He did this for years on end. The result was something like alchemy in his own life. He developed a deep sense of God’s constant presence with him in everything he did.
He also developed a spiritual maturity that made him sought out as a spiritual counselor. His simple advice to others was collected and published in a short book, called The Practice of the Presence of God. It has been a classic on the spiritual life ever since.
What I always like about his experience is something he says in that book. “I decided to sacrifice my life with all its pleasures to God,” he says. “But He greatly disappointed me in this idea, for I have met nothing but satisfaction in giving over my life to Him.”
The base water of his daily existence had been turned into the delicate wine of close intimacy with God.
It is easy to see the spiritual alchemy of Christ at work in the lives of extraordinary Christians, like Brother Lawrence, who so exemplify the peace and compassion of Christ.
It is harder to see this spiritual alchemy at work when we turn our sight to our own lives. When we look at ourselves honestly, we recognize we are very much mixed bags of faithfulness and faithlessness. It gets even harder when we turn our attention to our church communities.
How many of churches today resemble the church the apostle Paul was addressing in our epistle reading this morning. The church in Corinth was tearing itself apart through dissension and internal rivalries.
Different theological and social factions were competing with each other. Each faction claimed its own special gifts and skills from God. Each seemed to think these gifts were given to enhance their own personal stature and prestige.
Emphatically not, says Paul. You have your gifts for the purpose of building up the whole community of faith. Paul wants them to turn the base competition of their rivalries into the gold of cooperation and community unity.
One important stage in that transformation is coming to realize that unity does not mean uniformity. That has been a great delusion in both Christian and secular history—this belief that a community can only be unified when everyone believes, worships, and acts the same. But such uniformity is not life-enhancing. It leads instead to a bland and lifeless dullness.
What Paul offers up is an alternative vision. One in which unity has a place for a rich diversity of social statuses, theological viewpoints, and ethnic identities. What holds these diversities together is a shared commitment to Jesus Christ as Lord.
This unity Paul espouses also requires each one of us to give second priority to our individual self-interest and give first priority to the community’s interest. In another place in the gospels, Jesus calls that denying ourselves, taking up our cross and following him.
In today’s gospel when Mary asks Jesus to do something about the depleted wine, he says, “Woman, my hour has not yet come.” A strange and puzzling response.
In the gospel of John, the hour of Jesus always means one thing: the hour of his crucifixion. The transforming power of Jesus is not fully released until he undergoes his death in obedience to God’s call.
Maybe the power of Jesus to transform our own lives cannot be fully released until we too have experienced the depths of despair and of frustration and of death. It is a basic principle of Alcoholics Anonymous that no one can really begin the road to sobriety until they have hit bottom.
I think this is also a repeated experience in our spiritual journey towards wholeness. In the times of despair and frustration, times of soul-shaking tragedy when we hit bottom as well, we realize we cannot go on as we have been. God is going to need to lead us through our desert into a new experience of his life-giving presence. And God can and does.
That is one of the messages of good news that John wants us to hear in the story of the miracle at Cana. When I read it with its promise of transformation, of turning water into wine, I find myself saying, “O God, let it be true!” That prayer reflects something of the faithlessness that still resides in my heart.
Then in the story, I hear Mary tell the servants to do whatever her son tells them to do. Maybe this is the key to how this amazing transforming power of Jesus enters our lives. We must develop the spiritual sensitivity to listen for what Jesus is telling us to do and then do it.
Turning water into wine. That is what Jesus came to do. Will we work with him in his mission or work against him? That is the question I leave with you today. Thanks be to God. Amen.
preached January 17, 2016, by the Rev. Gordon Lindsey
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