A sermon based on John 2: 1-12.
Jesus and his disciples attend a wedding where the wine runs out before the party is over. This is the first story that the gospel writer John tells about Jesus’ ministry. Jesus has just finished beginning to recruit his disciples — Simon Peter, James, Philip and Nathanael are named. And then, ‘on the third day’, there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee.
You want to pay attention to what’s happening here, signals John, because this happens “on the third day”. Christians know what happens on the third day. “Early in the morning, on the third day . . . some women ventured to a sealed tomb and they found themselves in the midst of a new world, a world where Jesus is raised from the dead and God’s resurrection power is loose in the world.
God’s resurrection power is God bringing life where we can see only death; God making a new beginning where we think we’re up against a dead end; God pouring an abundance of grace into a world where we see only what we lack.
The story of the wedding in Cana of Galilee happens “on the third day”. “Pay attention!” says John. Whenever Jesus shows up, we are in a world filled to the brim with God’s resurrection power.
The story doesn’t begin with resurrection. The story begins the way the stories of God’s people often begin — with the cry ‘there isn’t enough’. At the wedding, the wine has run out but we have heard that complaint before.
For Abraham and Sarah, the cry is that there are ‘not enough’ children; or, even worse, for so many years, there were no children at all. That meant that there was no future for them.
In the days of the Hebrews’ wandering through the wilderness, there was not enough to eat, not enough to drink.
When the Babylonians had overrun Jerusalem and taken the Israelites into exile, there was not enough hope, not enough faith to ‘sing the Lord’s song in a strange land.’
“The wine has run out. There isn’t enough . . . not enough, not enough, not enough.” The cry echoes through our story.
Even though we live in one of the richest countries in the world, we know about living with “not enough”. Indeed, consumerism trains our hearts and souls to sing that song from our earliest days. Consumerism depends on us being discontented with what we have. There is always something more, something better that we need, that we deserve, that we strive for. That recurring refrain exerts a powerful force in our culture, shaping us to be anxious and fearful that we won’t have what we need. It pushes us to be selfish, to hoard what we have, to nurture our greed. Ultimately, it distances us from our neighbours; it undermines community.
The Bible counters our fear of not having enough with stories of God’s abundant generosity. The first chapter of Genesis tells the story of the creation of the world as a story of God’s abundant generosity. The refrain that echoes there is, “And God saw that it was good . . . good . . . good.” The Bible tells the story of the creation of our world as one of blessing upon blessing upon blessing.
Abraham and Sarah are promised children as many as the stars in the sky, descendants as numerous as the sand on the seashore.
The Hebrews in the wilderness receive gifts day after day — gifts of manna, of water, of meat.
The exiles learn how to sing in a strange land. They produce some of the greatest poetry and music of the world while they live in Babylon.
Today’s story carries those stories forward to a wedding in Cana in Galilee. What is significant is not just that it happens on the third day — resurrection time! What is significant is also that it is a wedding. Bible often uses the metaphor of a wedding to describe the relationship between God and us humans. In John’s gospel, Jesus begins his public ministry at a wedding. “Pay attention,” says John. “What we’re learning here is about our relationship with God.”
There will be times in that relationship with God when the wine will run out. God will not be as present we we think we need God to be. God will feel distant. God won’t answer our prayers the way we want them answered. We shall feel abandoned, unsure, full of doubts. In those times, we often do what Mary did. We turn to Jesus. We tell him, “The wine has run out”. Sometimes we are not that calm about it. Sometimes we cry with the Psalmist, “Save me, Lord, or I shall be lost,” or “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
In this story, John is training our hearts and minds to hold onto the promise that Jesus is the presence of God with us and for us in ways more abundant than we can imagine. Did you read the paragraph in the weekly email that lines out the significance of the six jars of water that become wine? The jars are there at the entrance to the wedding to be used for the ‘rite of purification’ at the beginning of worship. I envision it as something similar to Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics dipping their hands into the water in a baptismal font as they come into worship — a reminder of their baptism and of God’s gracious action to remove the stains of the world from their souls. You don’t need a lot of water, just a few drops. Six large jars, filled to the brim, would have had enough water for the whole world to participate in the rite of purification.
Jesus provides the wine of God’s presence and salvation, enough for the whole world. Jesus is God’s generosity and abundant grace, surprising us when we thought all was lost, when there was not enough.
In a consumer society, one of the most important things the Christian community can do is to tell the stories when we ourselves have experienced that abundant grace of God in our own lives. In a culture that breeds discontent and anxiety and fear, we get to be witnesses to the ways Jesus has turned our sense of ‘not enough’ into wonder and amazement at the generosity of our God.
We get to be a community that intentionally lives out of God’s generosity. That is among the best things you do as the church. A family experiences a fire and suffers terrible burns and you provide generous financial assistance without hesitating. A single mother is going through a season of struggling to provide for her children and you fill up the benevolent account with your donations so that she can be helped. At the end of the year, the church’s bank account is in the black and one of you asks, “Who shall we give our surplus to? The church is not meant to be sitting on a lot of extra money. It needs to be out there in the world, helping out those who need it.” The pandemic shuts down the yearly euchre parties and you find other creative ways to raise funds to send to the Canada Food Grains Bank so that people around the world who are crying “There is not enough” will have food.
You can add other stories of the ways you witness in this community and beyond to the goodness and grace and generous blessings that come to us from God through Jesus. When it looks like resources are in short supply, it is easy to be afraid. But that is not who we are. We are followers of Jesus who turned water into the best wine, enough to save the whole world. We are the flock of the Good Shepherd who makes a hungry crowd sit down on the green grass in the middle of a deserted place and takes five loaves and two fish, blesses them, breaks them open and gives them out to feed a crowd of thousands.
We are disciples of our Master who takes a handful of ordinary people and blesses them and breaks them open and gives them to the world to be a community of God’s abundant grace. It looks like a miracle. It’s simply the way God works when we live into and out of the power of Jesus’ resurrection. Thanks be to God.
Christine Jerrett 