Title: Empty Jars and Restless Hearts
Text: John 2:1-11
D.T.: Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee, O God.
- Can you think of your most memorable wedding besides your own? I can. I remember when I was a child, the girl next door got married. You know, I can’t even remember her name, much less the groom’s name. But to be honest I didn’t really care about the whole thing anyway. I just remember that when the wedding time rolled around, my mother forced me to change my play clothes and where some dress clothes that I despised. This was going to be the first wedding I had ever attended, so I didn’t know quite what to expect. I remember we all piled into the old green Buick Century, and drove on down to the Base Church. I also remember that it was a Catholic Wedding, which really didn’t mean anything to me, but it would. You see I don’t really remember any of the details of the wedding, except that I had no idea what was going on. But looking back, the one thing that sticks out is that it took forever. It had to be the longest most boring event of my life. Please no offense, to you who have Catholic backgrounds, but my goodness do Catholics have long weddings.
- Do you have any memorable weddings that come to mind? Why I remember another wedding I went to. It was my half-aunt’s. She was getting married to a rich lawyer in New York City. I remember that the wedding was one of those outdoor weddings. But not just any outdoor wedding, it was at a beautiful mansion in the rich parts of Long Island. All I could think while I was there is, Wow, I wonder how much this cost?
- And then there was the wedding that Stacey and I attended, it was for a couple named Jenny and Art. Jenny and Art are hard to explain, I guess you could say they are both on the bubbly, eccentric side. Well, after the official kiss, as the bride and groom were walking down the aisle, all of sudden the groom and his groomsmen put on some dark sunglasses and ZZ Top, "Everyones Crazy About a Sharped Dress Man." It was quite a memory!
- Weddings are a special time. They are a time of commitment, of celebration. I guess you can say that weddings symbolize an ushering in, to use a Bible word, an ushering in of a new covenant. The two shall become one.
- Perhaps the most memorable wedding in the Bible takes place in John 2.
- But before I read to you John 2, you need to erase all of your memories of weddings. You need to place them in a jar and put it on a shelf, because, if this was a typical Jewish wedding, which everything in the text indicates that it was, then it was much different than our idea of a wedding. It all started about 12 months before the occassion when the man and woman made the commitment to be betrothed. You’ll remember that that is the stage that Joseph and Mary were in when their journey began. It is during this time that the two are to fall deeper in love and a time for the families to learn more and more about each other. It is intended to be a glorious and innocent time.
- And when the day of the wedding arrives, the man and woman come together and walk through the streets of the city in a grand processional. And along each side of the road are the towns people singing, dancing, cheering, throwing flowers and celebrating with the couple. When the processional arrives at the towncourt, the man and woman drink from the cup and purify themselves. And then the party begins. It doesn’t just last for one night, but it lasts for seven days. Family and friends gathering together to celebrate the union of these two people. Jewish weddings were a grand and exciting event!
- Now listen to the wedding that Jesus attended, Read 2:1-11.
- Here we read that Jesus and a few of his disciples were invited to this wedding gala, where it seems that Mary his some what of a hostess. And midway through the celebration, the unthinkable happens, they run out of wine. It would be like running out of food at your wedding reception when only half the people have been fed. What a disgrace! So Mary goes to her son and asks if there is something, anything that he can do about it.
- Jesus gives a some what surprising response. He says, "Ma’am, what concern is this to me. It is not quite time to show the world who I am." Nevertheless, Jesus gives some sort of indication to his mother that he will take care of the situation. Maybe it was a wink or a smile, but Mary gives some pretty good advice, Do what he tells you to do.
- And then the miracle happens. They fill up the stone water jars with water and when the servant dips some out to take to the master of the ceremony. Lo and behold it is wine. Not just any wine, but we read later in the text that is choice, quality wine. The type of wine that is served at the beginning of the banquet. And it is not just a little, but they filled the jars to the brim, which means there is about 120 to 150 gallons of wine available which would be much more than was needed, it would be an abundance.
- Why is it that John tells us about this miracle? Well, he certainly wanted us to see that this miracle served as the inauguration of Jesus’ ministry. He has been baptized, he has called his first disciples and now he has performed his first miracle. But more than just an inauguration of ministry, I believe John wants us to see something more significant in this story. It is a declaration of his coming, of the the coming of the one who can fill our hearts the way he filled those stone jars.
- As St. Augustine said around 400 ad,
"Our hearts are restless until they find rest in Thee, O Lord."
- You see our hearts are much like those empty stone jars that were used for ceremonial washing. Jars that represented the Old Covenant, an Old Covenant that could only take us so close to God, but not close enough. And as a result, every man’s heart has an empty box inside it. A box that we desperately try to fill. Some turn to drugs and alcohol, some turn to church and family. Some turn to money and prestige, some turn to a spouse or to friends. Some turn to sex and earthly pleasures, other turn to a cause or a dream. Whatever it is, we all try and try to fill that empty box in our hearts, but all try unsuccessfully. The Jews tried the Old Covenant, the purification jars, but they tried unsuccessfully. But now the wine of fulfillment has come and has come in abundance and has come in the form of Jesus Christ.
- The Movie Illustration
- Young lady raped and impregnated
- Gives child up, Barbara Ann, for adoption
- Taken to foster home where she is raised by a lady who treats her like her own child. But at the age of 7, social services takes Barbara Ann and places her in another home half-way across the country, where she loses all contact with her foster mother.
- Barbara Ann was raised by a lady who did her best, but she never felt at home, never felt completed.
- The story moves to her adult years where she is married with 5 children. She begins searching for her birth mother and eventually does.
- In a touching scene, the birth mother and Barbara Ann make contact with one another, and after years of restlessness, years of feeling incomplete. The mother with tears flowing down her cheeks says to her daughter....
YOU FOUND ME, YOU FOUND ME.
- I think God might say the same thing when a lost soul has been found. And he wants to say it to you. Whether a Christian or not, it is easy to search every where else to fill that void in our heart. We search and we search for completeness, for fulfillment, but it is only when we turn to the one who changed water into wine. The one who turned death into life. The one who stands waiting, waiting to say with blood flowing down from his wrist and ankles, You found me, you found me.
