Today's Sermon

 

“Wedding Day: Miracles 3"

 

Wedding Day: Miracles 3

            If I said to you, “Today is the big day!” how many occasions would we associate with that phrase before we arrived at a wedding? Weddings are big, even small ones. The first miracle Jesus performs, at least in the Gospel of John, is at a wedding. Hear the account as we continue our series exploring the miracles in scripture as a way for learning to discern God’s activity in the world and join with it.

            John 2:1-11
            2 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. 9 When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom 10 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.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

            Remember our scholarly companion for this series, Luke Timothy Johnson invites us to consider what these miracles stories are trying to teach us. Stories about the seemingly impossible are meant to invite us to create a different world. What is this miracle trying to show us? It gets off to a rough start. Jesus sounds a bit snippy with his mother, but I caution you that Jesus’ addressing mother, “Woman” did not carry the disrespectful connotation it does to us.

            Like all miracles, this wedding miracle is pregnant with meaning: saving of the best wine for last, a clear offering of hope for a people awaiting a better world to materialize. John’s gospel was written 60-70 years after Jesus’ death. Things had been difficult, and it was unclear how this unfolding kingdom of God would take place and when. “Keep the faith,” this miracle and the entire gospel says, “the good stuff is coming and, in fact, the good stuff is right here.” Similarly, Jesus’ claim to his mother, “My hour has not come,” an assurance about a greater timeline at work. Hang in there.

            The imagery of water into wine is rich, the ordinary into the extraordinary, the functional yet tasteless into the delicious and intoxicating. Not even all of us drink, but we can all get the metaphor. The most basic and readily available (in certain contexts) of elements can be transformed into something refined and valuable, something that has to be fermented over time. Living in a purity culture, Jesus was always muddying the water between what was profane and what was holy. He violated purity laws when he healed on the sabbath, making contact with a menstruating, touching the sick or dead. God doesn’t only dwell among the clean; God makes things clean. God does not reside solely within the confines and constructs of the those in charge; God is on the loose, permeating this world.

            Do we recognize the presence and possibility of the divine in the created order all around us? The first I our miracle series was about God revealing God’s ineffable self in the divinely burning bush and the old saying is that the miracle was that Moses noticed because in reality every bush is burning with the fire of God. Maybe Jesus was revealing the potential to become wine in the water.

            Julian of Norwich, the medieval mystic spoke of the infinity contained in the finite when recounting a divine vision:

And in this [sight], he showed a little thing the quantity of a hazelnut, lying in the palm of my hand as it seemed to me, and it was as round as any ball. I looked therein with the eye of my understanding, and thought: “What may this be?” And it was answered generally thus: “It is all that is made.” I marveled how it might last, for it seemed to me it might suddenly have fallen into nought for its littleness. And I was answered in my understanding: “It lasteth and ever shall, because God loveth it. And so hath all things being by the love of God.[1]

All things flow from the love of God and thus all things are infused with the love of God. I have not had the kind of vivid revelations Julian describes, but I have seen divine revelations. Lately because of illness, I haven’t been able to run as much, so I’ve taken to some lighter hiking, which has been a delightful grace. On one such hike, I found myself walking along a path, listening to a podcast as I often do, when I was totally overwhelmed by the voices I’d piped into my ears. It was like in an instant I had hit my fill. It suddenly was as if they were all yelling at me, even though the subject was trivial. I all but ripped my air pods out of my ears. Then my senses became awash with the natural beauty of the day. The sun on the grasses and shrubbery of the hillside. The sound of my feet against the earth on the path. Two my left, a single wildflower. Utter miracle. It contained everything.

            Many have asked if during this series we would cover miracles we have experienced. Our focus has been miracles of the Bible, but yes, of course, if we believed our ancestors experienced God then we must as well. You might take a moment right now and draw to mind something you experienced of God at work in the world. It could be a miraculous turn of events, a healing, a moment of being overwhelmed by beauty, maybe a time when you felt God having been at work in your life perhaps over a great period of time coming to fruition, the “unseen hand” as Steve Dennison used to put it. Write that on your bulletin or just bring it up in silent prayer. Consider sharing this with someone else later. The church should be a place where we tell such stories without fear of rebuke or ridicule. I’ll leave you a few moments to do that.

            -Silence-
            Johnson says the miracle stories help prime us to recognize God’s activity in the world that we might join it. Once you recognize the flower, including in the weed, you treat it differently. Once you see the face of Christ in the other, you honor it. What you honor you won’t cavalierly degrade, exploit, or hurt. There is a reason the ancient Greeks, among others, knew aesthetics and morality to be deeply intertwined, the beautiful and the good, the beautiful and God, not superficial beauty, but true beauty where the supernatural and natural come together.

            When we bring forth beauty out of the ordinary, we are engaging in divine activity. It just so happens today marks the beginning of an art show at the church. This magnificent event was born of the wonderful noticing of one of our confirmation mentors, Meme Hurd, of one of our confirmands, Maggie Bray. Meme noticed what a gifted artist Maggie. She saw the beauty that was in her and that was her and wanted to find a way to share it with the church. Any sharing of a gift is a sharing of God.

            Since the invitation went out art has poured in from members I had no idea were artists. Well, you’re all artists. Mary Mosteller brought something in the other day. Pamela Dueck submitted a number of paintings. Birdhouses from Randy Krings. Barbara Rowe has been holding out on us with stunning works. Marybeth Culler. The Elizabeths – Atkinson and Merriman. They are teaching us that beauty and ordinary, even beauty and ugly go together, and if beauty then God, and if God then…love.

            The artist takes the mundane and ordinary and recognizes it as extraordinary and divine. Mary Jean Irion was a writer and teacher, married to a Presbyterian minister for what it’s worth, wrote:

            A normal day! Holding it in my hand this one last moment, I have come to see it as more than an ordinary rock, it is a gem, a jewel. In time of war, in peril of death, people have dug their hands and faces into the earth and remembered this. In time of sickness and pain, people have buried their faces in pillows and wept for this. In time of loneliness and separation, people have stretched themselves taut and waited for this. In time of hunger, homelessness, and wants, people have raised bony hands to the skies and stayed alive for this.

            Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, savor you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it will not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky, and want more than all the world your return. And then I will know what now I am guessing: that you are, indeed, a common rock and not a jewel, but that a common rock made of the very mass substance of the earth in all its strength and plenty puts a gem to shame.[2]

            Similarly, Jesus sees the divine in what he encounters on earth. We say he is God made flesh. Where was I recently where the teaching was, “You are where heaven and earth meet”? The miracle of the Wedding at Cana is a masterpiece for it brings together what we like to hold separate. It’s no coincidence that the setting of the miracle is a wedding, where symbolically two become one. We live in a world where expediency leads us to compartmentalize, but with that efficiency comes fragmentation and disintegration of the whole. When we carve up our lives, our selves, into work self, home self, lover self, parent self, vacation self and on and on, we lose any center and coherent role. This is not about wearing different hats and taking on different roles in different moments; it’s about abandoning a moral compass, a set of inviolable virtues, giving ourselves permission to go against everything we’re for in one realm to be the opposite in another.

            It’s the so-called Christian who attends on Sunday morning, but establishes brutal working conditions for their workers Monday-Friday. It’s the person who claims to have taken Jesus into their heart, but is all too quick to hate neighbor who Jesus commanded we love. It’s the person who says they love their neighbor but is far too comfortable with killing as an acceptable tool of justice. It’s the person who has stated honorable values, but will follow the cruel if they think it will give them a leg up. A severed life allows you to excuse that. The Wedding at Cana says, to paraphrase Jesus elsewhere, What God has brought together no one shall render asunder (Mark 10:9, Matthew 19:6). The root of the word integrity is “undivided,” meaning you don’t get to cut yourself off your heart or your mind or your morality. The Wedding at Cana wants to make us whole, one, and to see the fullness, wholeness of all that is around us. You might throw out a glass of water, but a glass of wine?

            The final irony of this miracle story is while it’s about what we would call “a big day,” in the sense of the kind that only comes once in a lifetime, or for some twice or more. But Jesus shows us the water is always about to be turned into wine. When we go from this place look for every occasion to make every day “the big day” when we can taste and share the cup of heaven in every cup.

            Amen.

[1] https://www.juliansvoice.com/veronicas-blog/julian-and-the-hazelnut

[2] From Yes, World: A Mosaic of Meditation, (R.W. Baron Publishing Company, 1970).