John 2:1-11 “Living in Abundance”
INTRODUCTION
It has been said that the world is alive with God. Some people have eyes to see and behold a multitude of miracles in their lives. To others God is invisible and they see nothing of miracles, only luck, fate, or happenstance.
This story of the wedding at Cana tells how Jesus revealed his godliness. This story is more than a quaint story of day gone by. It is a story that shows us how God moves in our lives and reveals himself in our world.
COMMON THINGS
When we look closely at this miracle, or as John identifies it—a sign, the fact that Jesus uses dirty water to reveal his glory catches our attention. In other gospel stories, Jesus uses spittle and mud to cure a blind man, loaves and fish to feed five thousand, and a wooden cross to save humankind.
God seems to take particular delight in using the common and ordinary to glorify himself and to accomplish his purpose. We know that this is true not only in the Bible, but also in our everyday lives.
There have been countless times in my life when I have felt that I should call some one and make phone contact with them. When I have followed my gut feeling, I have been surprised at the number of people who have responded positively to my call and said that it made a difference in their lives.
We as a congregation have witnessed how our small gifts can be used by the Lord to touch lives and minister to the needs of people. We saw this during the Christmas season with gifts to the Lopez family, and this fall with backpacks to the children of Pan de Vida Lutheran Church.
GOD MOVES ABUNDANTLY
Jesus used a lot of dirty water—one hundred to one hundred eighty gallons of water to answer Mary’s request, meet the need of the wedding host, and give the disciples a glimpse of who he truly was. When God moves, he moves in an abundant manner.
The wine steward comments that the wine that Jesus made from the water was the best wine of the celebration. When God moves, God gives good gifts. Second-hand and leftovers are not in God’s vocabulary when God deals with the creation. God is a God of abundance and not scarcity.
We know that God is a God of abundance not only from the pages of the Bible, but also from nature and from our lives.
• It takes only a few dandelion seeds to make a weedy lawn, but God provides hundreds of seeds from every plant.
• Our own lives are lives of abundance that are filled with blessings. We know this to be true when we take time to count our blessings, and stop looking at the other guy.
THE GIFT OF FAITH
The main miracle in this story is not the making of wine for a wedding celebration. Rather, it is the faith of the disciples. They saw the wine for what it was—a sign of Jesus’ godliness and divinity. The disciples saw and believed.
God hasn’t stopped moving to create faith in people today. We believe that Desert Streams is God’s congregation. We believe that God will use Desert Streams in ways beyond our wildest imagination. We will grow. We will reach out into the community and lives will be touched. We will grow as disciples of Jesus Christ and grow in our spiritually and in our level of commitment.
God will probably not bring these things about through a slight of hand or out of the air. God will take the common things that we give to God—our gifts, talents, time, treasures, commitment, perseverance, to name just a few, and God will do great and abundant things through them.
CONCLUSION
We face more than a mere shortage of wine. We need to increase our financial support of Desert Streams so that we become self-sustaining and do not need to rely upon the largesse of others. We want to move forward and pay off the land and build our first mission/worship center on the land. We want to grow to the position that we can help start other congregations in the same manner that congregations have helped us start.
We are confident that God will move, powerfully and abundantly to reveal his glory and to achieve his will. God will do this by using us.
Amen
