Waterwine

A Sermon Preached by

The Rev. Paul Debenport

January 17, 2010

There are signs and there are “signs”.   Some signs give instructions:

“do this, don’t do that.”  Other signs, though, point the way to something else, to a deeper truth.

Today’s lectionary Gospel lesson from John 2: 1—11

 is the “first of Jesus’ signs and revealed his glory.”

Hear the Word of God:

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 had come 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 Word of the Lord.  Thanks be to God.

+     +     +

          OK—first things first.  First, there’s just a lot of static in our culture that makes it more difficult for many people today to hear this text addressing us with God’s good Word—beginning with the alcohol abuse issue in our culture.  In our society and our state in which alcoholism cripples and sometimes destroys so many individuals and families, and alcohol-related accidents kill or maim so many, how can changing water into wine, especially into so much wine, be a good thing to hold up in church?  Especially since some have used this text to justify or rationalize excessive drinking, which, of course, is a total misuse of the passage.

          Another bit of cultural static is that our modern, scientific mind set makes it very difficult for many to see miracles as credible.  And one last small textual issue that gets in some peoples’ way is the sentence that Jesus addresses his mother as “Woman.”  In Jesus’ culture, this is the customary, even polite way to address all of one’s adult, female family members and friends in public.  It’s not nearly as brusque as we tend to hear it.  In the content of his statements to Mary, however, Jesus is distancing himself from her request.  This is John’s way of showing that Jesus’ grace-filled actions are not controlled by anyone but the will of God.[1]

          This whole passage is a “sign,” which—like the sacraments—is something material that points to something else, something deeply and spiritually true; thus, the wine, the wedding, the interactions, and the miracle are not to be focused on so literally.  This is no ordinary story about a wedding; it is an event that serves a higher purpose in a larger divine plan that is still unfolding and that will culminate in the revealed glory of the Son of God.[2]  To tune in clearly to the good news of this passage, then, we must imagine a situation in which there are no screaming headlines about DUI mayhem and suspend any skepticism about the possibility of miracles, and listen expectantly to the Good News John is proclaiming.  Only on the surface is this a story about turning water into wine.  Underneath, it is about the glorious nature of God revealed in Jesus Christ, through which at least some people [here, the disciples] begin to see Jesus for who he really is.[3]   

          So first of all, this passage is about the very nature of God in Jesus as Christ.  Wine, then and now, is the symbol for life, for love, for joy.  And here Jesus is revealed as providing life and love and joy, excessively, extravagantly [120 to a 180 gallons in the literal story].  In this passage, Jesus gives flesh to Isaiah’s proclamation we heard earlier _{[see Is. 62: 1—5],} that God delights in us.  Here Jesus is proclaiming that we can expect to find the extraordinary in the ordinary.  We can expect to discover the holy in the mundane.  We can expect to glimpse God and God’s excessive grace even when disaster happens and we are empty and powerless in ourselves.  God is excessively good, God is gracious in the extreme, both in this life and in the life to come.[4]  Already now, in the midst of all that is ordinary, God’s new creation marked by Christ’s resurrection breaks in upon us, new life is begun in Christ, the ordinary becomes sacred, emptiness becomes abundance.  That’s what this story is really about.

          But I would be foolish to think this is easy to hear and believe this in today’s context.  Catastrophic tragedy has shaken and shattered a whole country, devastating hundreds of thousands, even millions of people.  Just hearing about it and watching the searing images on TV, we, too, are shaken and shattered, seeing no grace, no abundance, no new life.  This passages’ proclamation is also a hard sell for those experiencing financial meltdown and foreclosures and job losses.  Always, too, it’s hard to believe the truth of today’s text for those experiencing divorce and death and other deep losses.  So, for many this day, it may seem like the best wine came first, and for some, literally, not even water is within reach.

                    But these are exactly the people to whom Jesus is revealing his sign—not people who have everything, but people who have run out of what they need to celebrate.  To all who have or shall experience this kind of loss, Christ comes, sent by God, still working miracles that act as “signs” of God’s abundant love and abiding care, both now and in the life to come. 

          The miracle that Jesus worked at Cana produced more than enough for what was needed then, but at some distant future time, for some other difficulty, more grace would be needed in some form.  So just like in the miracle of the waterwine, the miracles that we look for in this life are generally not of the happy-ever-after, everything-is-made-better-forever variety.  Rather, they are of the sort of “signs” that mark a new age already begun in the midst of the old—joy in the midst of hardship, kindness in the midst of despair, love in the midst of personal or even catastrophic rubble, and others.[5]  Most of the time, like most of the people at the wedding at Cana, we don’t even notice the signs of God’s presence.  But sometimes, like the disciples here,

we see God’s “sign” in the people and events of our lives and recognize the One of God to whom it points, and begin to believe again, begin to trust Him again.

          Another truth we can receive from Jesus in today’s story becomes more poignant to me the older I get:  the promise that God saves the best for last.  I know this is true in the life beyond this life, but it also holds “waterwine” in this life.  With the passing of each stage of life, yes, we all experience losses—the innocence of childhood, the freedom of young adulthood, the passion of first love, well functioning bodies, but each new stage also brings new wine, older, more mature wine, deeper and even more fulfilling.  God’s good truth is that even when we think the wine has run out, the party’s not over.

+     +     +

          Since in John, Jesus’ first “sign” is set at a wedding, I’ll end this sermon with weddings.  I know weddings.  I know about the joy of my own wedding and those of my daughters and the two or three hundred weddings at which I’ve officiated.  All had true joy.  But of all the weddings I’ve done, two stand out as the most joyous, the most as “signs” of God promises.  One was a couple in the middle of life marrying after having lost their spouses a few years earlier—one to painful divorce, the other to tragic cancer.   The second couple was in their late eighties, both having lost spouses decades earlier.  They had all known joy and sorrow, plenty, and in recent years, plenty of want.  But the unexpected, unanticipated, and almost unimaginable had happened long after they ever thought possible.  They were rather giddy in their gladness.  Their skin was wrinkled, not youthfully fresh and smooth, and their steps were slower.  But their eyes, and their smiles, and their need to keep holding hands, were “signs” that no one could miss.  Joy was there.  Life was there.  Love was there.  Jesus was there—turning the water into wine.

Amen.