John 2:1-11
“Celebrate Good Times Come on!”
by: Rev. Ken Sauer, pastor of Grace UMC, Soddy Daisy, TN www.graceumcsd.org
This is a day of celebration!!!
This is a day of new beginnings!!!
We have spent the last month learning how to create a shared Vision for Grace United Methodist Church…
…this Church which we love…
…this Church which we want to see succeed, and not only succeed, but thrive beyond measure!!!
We want this Church, and through this Church—this community to be able to bask in the superabundance of Grace that Jesus Christ offers!!!
What better passage of Scripture, then, is there than John Chapter 2:1-11—where Jesus performs Jesus’ first miracle—which happens to be turning water into wine at a wedding celebration?
There are so many layers to this most famous event, it is difficult to know where to start.
So let’s start by reminding ourselves that a Vision is a solution to a problem.
In order for a Vision to stick it has to be memorable…
…people don’t embrace paragraphs, but sentences.
It’s better to have a Vision statement that is incomplete and memorable than to have one that is complete and forgettable.
And one thing I didn’t mention last month is that a Vision needs to be celebrated regularly.
In our case, this should be every Sunday—if not every day!!!
I’m a bit excited.
How about you?
This is God’s party.
We have been invited.
And here we are!!!
It’s exciting to go to partys is it not?
The church should be the most exciting place to be!
It should be like coming to a party!
The best party in town.
There are certain religious people who seem to shed gloom wherever they go.
They are suspicious of all joy and happiness.
To them, religion is a thing of black clothes, the lowered voice and lots and lots of rigid rules.
It’s good to know that Jesus never counted it a crime to be happy.
So why should Jesus’ followers do so?
We are to be a joyful, laughing, happy, festive people!
God did not create us, and redeem us to live in doom and gloom!
God created us to be part of God’s party!!!
So let’s celebrate these good times together, come on!!!
I don’t think it’s any accident that Jesus’ first recorded miracle is at a party where Jesus turns plain old water into a superabundance of wine!!!
Through this, I believe God is saying to us, “cheer up!!!
I am not a kill-joy!!!
Actually, I am the complete opposite.
Don’t be hard on yourselves; don’t be hard on one another.
Instead, enjoy!!!
Enjoy!!!
Enjoy!!!”
I’d imagine that Jesus, His disciples and Jesus’ mother were pretty excited to have been invited to this raucous wedding party!!!
Who doesn’t want to have fun?
But when Jesus and his group get to the party, the wedding guests are already drunk…but the wine was gone.
The party was about to become a drag.
The master of the banquet was about to be embarrassed, everything was soon to come to an end.
Doom and gloom was already beginning to set in…
…until, until…
…Jesus showed up.
And isn’t that how it is in our lives as well?
Doom and gloom come to our doorsteps—threatening to ruin our party…
…and then Jesus comes by to change all that—miraculously change all that!!!
And in a radical way, indeed!!!
The best is yet to come for this church—because Jesus is coming by to work miracles in and through your lives!!!
Great things, sign and wonders will happen at Grace United Methodist Church!!!
This family of faith is about to experience a joy and happiness…
…a contentment and superabundance of God’s grace more than we ever thought possible!!!
You want Grace to Rock?
Jesus wants this even more!!!
It will happen.
And creating a shared Vision is just the beginning!
It’s just the beginning of the good and new!
So Jesus gets to this party and the wine is gone.
It’s kind of like walking into a church where the joy is gone, and a deadness and sad feeling is creeping in that everyone is soon going to have to fold up things and go home.
But Jesus is saying “No! The good stuff hasn’t even begun to happen yet.
The party has yet to begin!
The best is yet to come.
You all have been drinking on the cheap wine—check out the new wine I will give you.
You will party till I return, yes, till I return!!!”
For a church to be effective, it must have a celebratory tone.
And for a Jewish feast, wine was essential!
“Without wine,” said the Rabbis, “There is no joy.”
There was no more wine at this wedding party, but “nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.”
That’s a lot of water!!!
These jars were there to provide water for the purifying ceremonies of the Jews.
First, it was required for cleansing the feet on entry to a house.
Also, strict Jews washed their hands before a meal and between each course.
So Jesus speaks to the servants at the party, “Fill the jars with water’; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.”
Wow.
Here, Jesus is at a party where all the participants are already drunk…
…and Jesus, finding that there is no more wine for the revelers to drink…turns 180 gallons of water into 180 gallons of wine!!!
No wedding party on earth could drink 180 gallons of wine!
In the same way, no need on earth can exhaust the grace of Jesus Christ; there is a superabundance in it!!!
There is more than enough!!!
Remember, a Vision is a solution to a need!!!
There is much more than enough of God’s grace to meet these needs and then some…and then some…
…and then a lot—on into eternity!!!
Celebrate!!!
After tasting the wine, the master of the banquet, not knowing where this amazing wine had come from called the bridegroom aside and said, “Every one brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
Jesus has saved the best till now for Grace United Methodist Church!!!
What better time to be a part of this community of faith!!!
I’d imagine the bridegroom had bought the best wine he could find for this most important event, but the wine of the world or the wine of our own making can never come close to comparing to the wine of Jesus the Christ!!!
It’s good that we are celebrating Holy Communion today, for, like I said, this event has so many layers.
The superabundance of this good wine is an eschatological symbol.
It’s a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age!
It is also an inaugural event.
Jesus inaugurates His ministry with a vivid enactment of the gift He has to offer!!!
It reveals the glory of Jesus and anticipates His ultimate moment of glorification, His death, resurrection, and ascension!!!
And it has a Eucharistic or Holy Communion theme that the new birth—the forgiveness of sins—the new beginning comes through the shed blood of Christ!
It is the gift of grace that is available to all through Jesus!!!
The extravagance of Jesus’ first miracle, gives us a glimpse of the unlimited gifts Jesus makes available to us—Christ’s Church!
Remember that as we begin casting the shared Vision!!!
There is more than enough to take care of all the problems which face us and which face our community and our world!!!
We are to share into the wonder of this miracle!!!
We are invited to enter God’s joyous celebration made possible through Jesus’ gift!!!
We are invited to see what the disciples see, that in the abundance and graciousness of Jesus’ gift, one catches a glimpse of the identity and character of God!!!
It’s no wonder that the early Church confessed, “from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace”!
May it be so for this church!
May it be so!!!
