Second Sunday after Epiphany January 14, 2001
John 2:1-11, 1 Cor. 12:1-11 Trinity Lutheran Church
“The Best for Next”
Dear Friends in Christ, Grace and Peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
For me, January is kind of an “in-between” time. The busy-ness of Advent and Christmas is now past, and the hectic pace of Lent and Easter is yet a ways off. For most of us, January is kind of a “back to the grind of winter” month, and the promise of summer seems an impossibly long ways away. So, I always try to put a little summer in my January. No, I don’t head down to Florida or Arizona (an act of sheer mutiny and desertion for true Minnesotans!) Nope. I help plan weddings.
This next week I will spend some of my time meeting with couples who are planning weddings for this coming summer. Actually, it’s not so much “wedding” planning that I do with these folks, but “marriage” planning, if such a thing as sharing one’s life totally with another can ever be planned. Trying to plan a marriage is like trying to plan a six-year-old’s birthday party. Anything can happen, and usually does! But we try to talk about it, anyway.
A pastor by the name of G.H. Gerberding wrote a book about 90 years ago entitled “The Lutheran Pastor,” in which he seeks to give advice to would-be clergy. On the subject of marriage he says, “We have two remnants of Eden left to us. One is a sacred seventh day, fraught with rest and refreshment for body and soul. The other is marriage, with its Christian home. These are relics of paradise. The beauty and blessing of Eden ought to be allied with matrimony. But, in our fallen world, it is only too often the opposite of this. It has been truly and forcibly said that the bonds of matrimony may be the golden cords to draw us to heaven or the iron chains to drag us to hell. What momentous issues hang on the choosing and accepting of a life-companion. It is the making or the marring of peace and blessedness for the life that now is, and often also for that which is to come. How carefully this plant from the garden of Eden should be fostered and guarded.” Indeed.
So, we meet... I and these wedding would-be’s... and we talk about marriage stuff. If, after our time together discussing communication, conflict resolution, money, sex, children, work expectations and inlaws, they haven’t been scared out of it, then we talk about the wedding itself. This little purgatory with me is only the beginning of the price they pay!
Did you know that the average wedding reception in this country costs about $7000, and the average spent on an engagement ring is about $3000? That’s ten grand right off the bat! Add in the invitations, a photographer, flowers, dresses and tuxes, gifts for the wedding party, etc., and pretty soon you’ve got a small fortune invested in this thing!
I guess this is just a long way of saying that, from the pre-marital work with me all the way down to writing the checks for the party, a wedding is no small thing! And it shouldn’t be. It’s one of the all-too-few moments in life that are purely celebrative... a party for the best of reasons.... the love of two people.
In nearly every culture around the world, a wedding is an incredibly big deal. In fact, it seems that the poorer the community in terms of monetary resources, the bigger deal it is! Maybe that’s because parties become pretty scarce when life is hard. That was certainly the case in Jesus’ day.
A wedding in first century Palestine was no small occasion. The festivities usually lasted for more than one day. The wedding ceremony itself was conducted in the evening, after a big meal. After the ceremony the young couple were carried to their new home. By that time it would be dark, and they were carried through the streets by the light of flaming torches and with a canopy over their heads. They were usually taken by as long a road as possible so that everyone could have the opportunity to see them and wish them well. And they didn’t go away on a honeymoon! They got to stay at home and be waited on hand-and- foot for a whole week by their families and neighbors! In a culture that was really very poor and the work very hard, this week for these newlyweds was no doubt one of life’s best and most memorable occasions!
This was the kind of occasion that Jesus and his mother attended in Cana, shortly after Jesus’ baptism by John. We don’t often think of Jesus as simply a friend or a relative or another name on a guest list, but that’s how we meet him in this story. He wasn’t there to preach, or teach, or recruit disciples. He was there to party with the rest of his community, along with his mom and some friends.
But what we learn in this story is that Jesus can’t help being Jesus, no matter where he goes, any more than his mother can help being a mother, wherever she goes!
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 you and to me? My hour has not yet come." {5} His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." (John 2:1-5)
This particular wedding appears to be going fine, until disaster strikes. The wine runs out. This party is in serious trouble.
In college, I used to belong to a fraternity... Sigma Chi. I’m still not sure why, but I did. Without going into detail, suffice it to say that we enjoyed our parties. We would have a party for the least of reasons. Someone on the floor passed a test... we had a party. Someone finished a paper... we had a party. Someone finally got a date... we had a party. Now, if the refreshments ever ran out at one of our parties, that was it. It was over. You walked down to the Kum and Go desperately hoping they hadn’t sold out of day-old donuts yet, and then you went back to the dorm and to bed. Nothing could end a party quicker than a dry cup.
But those parties were of no real consequence, other than getting our minds off our studies for a moment. This wedding party at Cana was another matter. It would have been no small source of shame for the bride and groom, to say nothing of their parents, if the party had to break up because they hadn’t planned well enough! It may not have been a life-threatening situation by any means, but to a young couple starting their life together, it would have been a tremendously embarrassing thing and maybe even regarded by others as a bad omen for their life together.
And so Mary, upon becoming aware of this predicament, tells Jesus, in kind of an off-hand way, that maybe he’d better do something about it. And Jesus, like a typical son, tells his mom that maybe it’s none of their business and they ought to keep their nose out of it. And then Mary, being the lovely mother and woman of faith that she is, ignores Jesus’ reluctance and tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do, because he will, by God, do something here! I love it!
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 chief steward." So they took it. {9} When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward 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." (John 2:6-11 NRSV)
What I love about this story, more than the fact that the first of Jesus’ miracles happens at a simple wedding, more than the entertaining exchange between Jesus and his mother, is the simple reality it communicates: that wherever Jesus is present, happiness is given back. Jesus goes about the work of simply being him, one in whom and through whom God is busy at work healing things that are sick, repairing things that are broken, finding things that are lost and redeeming situations that appear hopeless. What’s even more beautiful is the fact that the bride and the groom probably were not even aware of what had happened. While disaster loomed over their party, Jesus quietly kept it going. I wonder how many times we’ve been blessed by God, working behind the scenes of our lives, working through people who love us and care for us and serve us... not for their own acclaim or for any sort of payback, but simply because God has gifted them with the heart of a servant?
I think we’re left with two basic things from this wedding story:
1. A picture of our God in Jesus as one who is intimately involved in all of our life, in all its celebrations as well as its times or sorrow... a God who is constantly surprising us with new blessings, overflowing, more than we could ever imagine ourselves deserving. But given to us just the same, because God just can’t help himself when it comes to wanting joy for His children. Always saving the best for next.
and...
2. We’re left here with a challenge. Jesus’ miracles, like this first one in Cana, are never just entities in and of themselves. They are always signs pointing us to a greater reality. This sign points two ways: to God’s overflowing grace, and right back at the needs and opportunities all around us to be bringers of that same joy and that same grace! Look around you, folks. There are too many places in this world, even right here in this community, where the party is in trouble. The wine is giving out! Someone is aching with loneliness. Someone is desperate with hunger. Someone can’t pay their heating bill and the creditors are knocking at the door. Someone is drowning in their own wealth and it’s suffocating them. Someone’s kids are running wild with no one to mentor them. Some child right now is being beaten, sexually abused, or simply ignored. Someone is losing their life and everything once important to them, right now, to alcohol or drugs. Someone is watching a loved one die. Someone needs you, because the wine is running out.
And you, though you might not think it, are the one with the gift to turn that water into wine. The Holy Spirit is yours to take what is flat and bitter and dull and transform it into something that is effervescent and sweet and sparkingling, because you have Jesus of Nazareth as your Lord, and he has no other hands but your hands... no other tongue but your tongue... and no heart of compassion on this earth today but your heart. You are called to be the life of the party, and in letting the Holy Spirit use your unique gifts and abilities, however ordinary or mundane they may seem to you, for someone... your next act of kindness to them in Jesus name will be your best. Amen!
