This week, in fact, next Sunday, Gene and I will celebrate our 29th anniversary….now grant it it isn’t as long as Marion and Mary Sue have been married but none the less it is still an amazing achievement considering….well enough said.
When we got married, we had a small simple ceremony at my parents home. Beautiful….mom burned a hole in my veil….the phone ringing.
It doesn’t matter whose wedding or who planned it whether it was your best friends mother’s sister on her father’s side or if it is a professional wedding planner. Sooner or later something is going to go wrong. That shouldn’t surprise us nor should it embarrass us. I mean after all we are only human and glitches simply disclose our humanity to the world.
This wedding was no different. The wedding takes place in Cana of Galilee. Today, Cana is a West bank town, populated largely by Arabs. As communities go, it is quite small and more than a little impoverished. Which is, pretty much how it was then. A wedding feast is going on but something has gone wrong. There’s a glitch. On the surface of things it doesn’t seem to be that bad thought it would have been a quite embarrassing to the groom and his family. You remember what has happened. They have run out of wine.
To run out of wine at a wedding in biblical times, though, was a tragedy. It was a horrible insult of hospitality, a horrible omen upon the blessedness of marriage for wine was seen as joy. It there was no wine at a wedding there was no joy in the union. It was so serious it was virtually punishable by law. It meant terrible things – this was a very real tragedy in the ancient world.
Jesus is at the wedding. He, like most men, doesn’t notice what’s going on… but his mother does! Mary is distraught something must be done to save this wedding from tragedy. “Jesus, son, we’ve got a big problem they have run out of wine. Can’t you just see Jesus rolling his eye, Mom…Woman, what does that have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.
Now I know I always say we should follow the example that Jesus has set for us in the Bible; but I don’t suggest to any of our youth here to use this response at home with your own mothers. Take out the trash. Woman, what does that have to do with me. My hour has not yet come… Make your bed. Woman…. Clear the table…Woman…if you do try this you may soon discover that your hour has come sooner than you had anticipated.
They have run out of wine. Woman what does that have to do with me. My hour has not yet come.
If you have read or studied John’s Gospel very much you begin to realize that whenever Jesus shows up in the story nothing is ever quite a it seems. There are always to levels to John’s stories. Ther is a right now level that deals withteh surface of things and there is an “obscure and subterranean” level that deals with the hidden meaning of things. With that in mind let’s take a closer look at this morning’s story.
Jesus’ mother says: "Look, son, they have run out of wine" (an observation that is readily available on the surface of things).
To which Jesus could have said: "So they have" ... or "We’ve had enough to drink anyway" ... or "We’re in luck, Mother, because we just passed a Merchant of Vino a couple of miles back." All of these would be appropriate "surface" responses.
But Jesus doesn’t say any of these things. Instead, he dips several layers below the surface and says: "Woman, what has this concern of yours to do with me? My time has not yet come." Which is strange, is it not? I mean it almost sounds like Jesus is irritated at her. Jesus does not call her "Mother" or "Mary." He calls her "woman." Suddenly it appears as if Jesus she is depersonalizing her. Suddenly she becomes nameless. Or is it that suddenly, at some deeper level, she is generalized? She is no longer one woman. She is every woman, man and child.
But it is also strange from the standpoint of "time." Why does Jesus say “time is not yet right." What does that have to do with anything? For John this is not a story about weddings ... about water ... or about wine. This is a story about time. John’s Gospel is constructed on two layers of time ... which are perceived as being the same time. There is ordinary time ... the time on your watch. And there is God’s time ... eternal time, heavenly kingdom time. It is as if you need two watches to understand John’s message, God’s word.
We see the same thing throughout the Bible. We have earthly ordinary time, the way things are right now, while we have God’s time the way things will be someday. You know how it goes. The Bible says: "You are hungry now" (earthly ordinary time). But the Bible also says: "You shall enjoy a great banquet someday” eternal time. The Bible says: "You are sad and sorrowing now" (ordinary time). But the Bible also says: "You shall have every tear wiped away someday" (eternal time). The Bible says: "You suffer the ravages of warfare now" (clock time). But the Bible also says: "Swords shall be beaten into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks someday" (eternal time).
But John is going even deeper. He is saying something different. John is saying that if you look really carefully ... and if you pay very close attention to things ... you will see places where God’s time (eternal time) is breaking into ordinary time (clock time). Which means that the implied question threading its way throughout John’s Gospel is: "What time is it? Can’t you see God’s time peeking through our ordinary earthly time?
The wedding is taking place on "the third day." And on the third day Jesus rose from the dead. The wedding day, earthly ordinary time…the third day, the resurrection day godly eternal time.
Or consider this strange little reference to six stone water jars. Do you know how much water you can get in six stone jars? The answer is 120 gallons. Why 120 gallons? I’ll answer that one, too. There was a consistent Old Testament prophecy (Amos 9:13, Hosea 14:7, Jeremiah 31:12) suggesting that when the final days come, there will be great joy and an abundance of wine. Wine becomes a symbol of the new kingdom of God’s eternal kingdom. And in a non-biblical Jewish legend (written at the same time as the Gospel of John), we read: "In the final days, each vine shall have 1000 branches ... each branch, 1000 clusters ... each cluster, 1000 grapes ... and each grape shall yield 120 gallons of wine."
Don’t you see it? On the one hand, Jesus is saying: "Woman, don’t bug me. My time is not yet. My time is in the future. My time is still hidden ... not yet revealed." But Mary can see that this moment is pregnant with possibilities. So she says to the servants: "Listen to him. (It is time to) Do whatever he tells you."
Six jars are filled with water. One hundred twenty gallons of water are turned into wine…wine which is the symbol of the kingdom of God. God’s eternal heavenly time is breaking through earthly ordinary time. There is a new way of looking at things…a new way of experiencing things…a new way of telling time…the future Kingdom of God is not “out there” The kingdom of God is “right here, right now.”
All of which raises some questions. What if we really could see two kinds of reality at the same time? What if we could learn to tell time with two watches one for earthly ordinary time and for the eternal heavenly time of God? What if we began to see time as the beginning of God’s time instead of seeing thing the way they have always been? What if …we began to see that it was time for all us to be God’s eternal heavenly Kingdom time on earth? What if we began to see our time as God’s time? Would we respond to Mary’s words, Listen to him. (IT is time to) do whatever he tells you.” I believe it would change the world, change our community, change our church and change our homes. I believe we would no longer define our lives by the clock or by our circumstances but by the eternal values of God.
Tom Long, professor of Homiletics at Candler School of Theology tells the story of striking up a conversation with a man on a plane. He said they shared the normal kind of nice chit chat, sharing what they each did for a living and sharing pictures of their families. When the man began to share with him this story:
He and his wife were parents of a 30 year old son who when he was a teenager had been in an auto accident and who for 30 years has lived in a nursing home in a vegetative state. And to tell you the truth, he said, my wife and I had stopped loving him, it is hard thing to say, I know, but love is a responsive thing and he no longer respond to us. We still visited him, we still cared for him but we no longer loved him.
The day that changed he said was the day we went to visit him, an ordinary day, a nothing special kind of day, when we opened the door to his room to visit him we found a stranger sitting beside his bed. This stranger was wearing a clerical color. We knew he must be some kind of minister or priest. As it turns out he was the pastor of a the little Lutheran church from down the street who simply made rounds everyday in the nursing facility. When we went into the room he said this man was reading to our son a Psalm and I thought you fool he can’t hear you. Then he took my son’s hand and he had a prayer with my son and I thought you idiot he can’t feel that touch, he can’t hear that prayer don’t you know he’s just a vegetable and then I realized of course he knows but he is viewing my son already in the glory of god, viewing my son as already healed, viewing my son as worth the love of Christ. He was seeing my son through eternal heavenly lens of faith. And it was then he said that we began to able to love our son again….
What time is it in your life?
Note: This sermon is largely based on a sermon given by Dr. Tom Long, professor of Homiletics at Emory Candler School of Theology.
