January 14, 2007
John 2:1-11
Prayers of the
People:
God of grace, whose presence makes all moments celebration, we give you thanks for these moments and the lives here represented; for the gifts and talents, the energies and wisdom; the vocations and the values that animate not just this service but also life in the community of which we are a part. And we give you thanks for our awareness of joy and abundance.
But not every day feels like a party. We are met with fears and struggles and obstacles and concern, and we lift them to your care, as well:
Ø
For the
larger church of which we are a part, and our General Minister and President
Sharon Watkins, Regional Minister Richard Guentert, and the shared ministry to
which we contribute our efforts;
Ø
For a new
Governor and those state legislators, both experienced and novice, beginning
their work together. Bless them with
wisdom, forbearance, courage and grace;
Ø
For
leaders in
Ø
For the
military men and women who put themselves at risk in our name, and the support
personnel who undergird them. Bless them
with discernment and safety; and those whose political efforts could make the
soldiers’ task obsolete: bless them with
wisdom and determination.
O God who changes water into wine, bless and transform our days too often flat and empty that we might know and celebrate your abundance and glory. Hear our prayers of joy and intercession, and receive them into your mercy. For we pray in the name of Christ. Amen.
Squandering the Good Stuff
After 25 years in ministry, the
bloom, for me, is pretty well off the wedding rose. Don’t get me wrong: I’m as big a fan of marriage as ever. It’s the wedding part that has dulled a bit over
time. That’s not to say that I haven’t
been privileged to participate in many, many beautiful experiences. I have – and funny ones. The maid of honor throwing up in one, and the
best man fainting during the singing of the Lord’s Prayer in another both come
to mind. But too often the proceedings
are all about imitating the magazines and living up to superficially faddish
expectations.
If you have been reading my blog (a
shameless bit of self-promotion) you perhaps read of the conversation I enjoyed
with the innkeeper of the place where Lori and I closed the old year out in
Vermont. Talking about the pickiness
with which they book weddings at their inn, he explained why they prefer
weddings of older couples. “Young brides
tend to be preoccupied with whether or not their dress matches the mashed
potatoes and whether the bridesmaid dresses clash with the table cloths.”
Too often,
in other words, it’s more about the production than the marriage; more about
the backdrop for the photos than the immensity of the act and the integrity of
the vows. And for a preacher more
interested in how the marriage turns
out than how the video turns out, that
can be wearing.
Which is to
say that when John benchmarks a wedding party as the official launch of Jesus’
ministry, I tend to grip the arms of my chair in apprehension. And then there is all the drama that
inevitably develops. Weddings just seem
to manufacture drama. A tux doesn’t fit
right. Someone lets drop an
ill-considered word. The florist is
late. The cake is damaged in
transport. The ring drops through the
heater register. But in the story from
John’s Gospel the big drama is around a shortage of wine. Like most weddings wouldn’t be better off
with a little less wine! Why does this
all start to feel a little childish? So
what if the party doesn’t make the society column? So what if the disc-jockey has to unplug
early? So what if everyone is forced to
go home shockingly, inexcusably sober?
The wine runs out: so what? Is it really the role of the messiah to get party
guests all liquored up?
I don’t get
enthused, in other words, by the way this story starts out. So, what happens? Beverage supplies, as we have already noticed,
run short. Who knows, maybe the hosts
were folks of humble means and though little, they provided all they
could. Or maybe guests brought
unexpected dates. Or maybe it was a hot
day and everyone came thirsty; or the band was bad and drunkenness was a
discreet way to leave – but stay. Maybe
it was simply an overindulgent crowd who stayed too long and dipped their cups
too often into the punchbowl. Who
knows? All we know is that the wine ran
out before the guests did, and Mary comes up with the bright idea that Jesus
can and should somehow come to the rescue.
It makes me think of the kid, fresh
from his or her first piano lesson, forced to the keyboard by Mom or Dad’s
pride to play for a roomful of guests.
Jesus initially waffled, but ultimately rolled up his sleeves. There are, as luck would have it, some empty
jars nearby – big ones, if you caught the details; each with a capacity of
something like 30 gallons. Six of them,
to be exact, used, under other circumstances, in the Jewish rite of purification. Jesus instructs the servants to fill the jars
with water. I’m not sure where they came
up with 180 gallons of water on such short notice in a house where there wasn’t
likely to be plumbing, but somehow they managed it (and, I might add, the party
managed to survive during the interim).
We don’t really know precisely what
happened next – maybe there was a simple pause; maybe Jesus prayed, or perhaps
he incanted, “Abra cadabra”. All we know
is that Jesus eventually instructed his able assistants to draw some of the
water-become-wine out of one of the jars and deliver it to the sommelier, who
after a taste, proclaims it to be the best wine of the party – which confuses
him, and rightly so. As any astute host
would know, there really is a logical protocol to stocking the refreshment
table. When serving wine to a crowd –
and certainly if you are going to be generous enough to offer something to
which Wine Spectator might give a
positive score – it only makes sense that you pop the corks on those good bottles
first, while people can actually enjoy and appreciate the vintage. It makes no sense whatsoever to get
everybody’s palettes anesthetized by the cheap stuff and then showcase the fruits of your cellar. The good stuff is squandered.
So what are we to make of this
peculiar and uncomfortable tale that narrates what John announces to be Jesus’ first sign?
It helps to notice that John doesn’t
simply drop the story into our laps out of thin air. It has a context – a connection – betrayed by
the simple introduction, “On the third day…” which also sounds suspiciously
like an Easter allusion. But taken at
face value, the reference connects nicely to the stories that have gone before,
each of which begins in similar sequence – “the next day…” and then “the next
day…” and so on. All of which seems to
suggest an artful job of connecting this wedding experience with the activities
of those earlier days. And what is going
on in them is discovery – discovery by first one disciple and then another of
someone – perhaps something – dramatically different in their midst. Something – someone – whose very presence transforms
everything.
Weddings, I
now remember, have often served as a biblical metaphor for the Kingdom of God,
and wine for the abundance of God’s
grace. Filling – refilling – that which
had become empty. Stretching,
enlivening, the overflowing generosity of God’s own presence and love. The
prophets loved to imagine it – Amos, for example, proclaimed, "The time is
surely coming, says the Lord, when...the mountains
shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it" (9:13). Second Baruch, one of the Jewish books written
around the same time as John, anticipates that "The earth shall yield its
fruit ten thousandfold; each vine shall have 1,000 branches, each branch 1,000
clusters, each cluster 1,000 grapes, and each grape about 120 gallons of
wine."
Abundance. Prodigal extravagance. Holy, overflowing grace.
Today, in the liturgical calendar,
we find ourselves returned to what is rather unpoetically referred to as
“Ordinary Time” – that expanse of mundane reality between the feast days and
festivals by which we prefer to mark time.
And “ordinary time” it is, isn’t it – Christmas is past, as is the New
Year’s celebration; Valentine’s Day isn’t that far away for all that’s worth,
but Easter – the next real benchmark – we won’t see for months. It’s ordinary time, when the nights are long,
the days are short, the pulse is steady, but routine, and the Christmas bills
are arriving. The jars, as it were, are
empty in more ways than one.
In the world, and perhaps in the
church, there might be discerned a feeling of “stuckness,” of walking in place;
flatness, like champagne opened and set out over night. But it strikes me that most experiences of
discovered wonder and joy emerge from precisely such a context; of some,
perhaps even inarticulate, expression of absence – “Something is missing.” For the guests at the party, the absence was
wine. For the Christians in persecution to
whom John wrote the Revelation, it was hope; for the victims of racial
discrimination and bigotry in the days of Martin Luther King, jr. it was
respect, acknowledged personhood, and equal opportunity; to some in the church
today whose lives feel aimless and drifting and absent enough buoyant spirit to
keep them afloat it is spiritual fire.
“Something is missing.” Maybe it is the energy of an earlier time now
dissipated; maybe it’s a comfortable momentum, stalled; maybe it is a
relational sizzle grown cold. “Something,”
said someone at the party-grown-quiet, “is missing.” The jars, as it were, were empty.
But as Jesus went on to demonstrate,
emptiness is also the same thing as readiness. And whatever had gone before pales when
compared with what might yet be when the transforming – even miraculous – joy
of the fullness of God’s own reign is present.
Absence is merely the cleared and
opportune space for a renewed and abundant presence made holy by the creating
and transforming presence of Christ – one deeper, richer, fuller than all that
has preceded it.
It is said that a curious Bible
student asked St. Jerome if the guests at Cana drank all the wine that Jesus
made. Jerome replied, "No, we are still drinking it." And so it is.
Our lives are still being blessed, enlivened, filled and transformed by
the abundance that God has brought into our midst. It’s much too late to say, then, “Let the
Party begin.” But with the table before
us and the church around us; with the spirit within us and the Christ uniting
and compelling us, even when the days seem ordinary and dry we can faithfully,
joyfully proclaim, “Let the party continue…in us.”