Sermon from last Sunday (2nd Sunday of Epiphany, 14 Jan 2007):

Readings: Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36:5-10, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

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John's Gospel is simultaneously the most earthy and physical of the gospels as well as the most symbolic. Taking today's reading as an example, Jesus' first miracle takes place at a very familiar, human, and celebratory occasion, the wedding feast.

The bride and bridegroom have just pronounced their lifelong devotion to one another in front of those people who mean the most to them in their lives - Jesus and Mary included - and they enter into the festive feast known today as the wedding reception. It is a time to display all the abundance of the lifetime of promise and hope lying before the newly married couple. A time to provide more food and wine than your guests can possibly consume as a demonstration of the abundance of life, love, and happiness inherent in this solemn and glorious occasion.

For the wedding I celebrated on the 10th of December, I helped the groom, one of my best friends, brew twenty-five gallons of beer [*I contributed one out of the five batches*]. To this was added about twelve cases of wine, two cases of Champagne just for the toast alone, and a seemingly endless supply of sodas and other non-alcoholic alternatives. By the end of the wedding, I was sent home with a full case of wine, two bottles of champagne, and two full cases of homebrew - this abundance was similarly shared with the best-man, the father of the bride, and the new couple also kept some for themselves. The food was in similar abundance - such that there was no possible way that the guests could have consumed it all.

It was not so for the couple in today's gospel reading. Somewhere over the course of the feast the supply of wine simply ran out. The new couple had not been able to provide enough. The guests would be at best embarrassed and disappointed, and at worst insulted - either way the new couple would be humiliated in front of all of their guests. Mary, having had some connection to the family that would make her privy to this information before it became common knowledge, tells her son - perhaps out of chagrin, perhaps out of hope - who basically says "what do you want me to do about it?"

While his response seems a bit terse to us today, it apparently gave Mary enough hope to simply believe that Jesus would do something and leave it up to him what was to be done. His response is to create such abundance of the finest quality wine - about 120-180 gallons worth - that it would take the guests months to drink it all.

On the surface, this is clearly a miracle of abundance. Christ demonstrating the abundance of the coming of God's kingdom becomes the hallmark of his ministry and teaching over the course of the next three years.

As I said earlier, John, while familiar, human, and earthy, is also the most symbolic of the gospels, so I'd like to spend a little time on some of the layers not as prominent in the symbolism of today's gospel. From the beginning of this particular story, we see undertones of messianic symbology. The opening of the story is "On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee." While it has been three days since Jesus was baptized, the greater importance of the statement is it's intention to draw listeners into an Easter mentality. Here the wine becomes the wine of the Eucharist, Jesus becomes the bridegroom - providing the wine - and the guests become the church in a wedding feast celebrating Christ's triumph over death and the reclaiming of humanity from the grasp of sin and death. Peeling back another layer, this is the promised feast of the coming of the messiah. Scarcity is turned into inexhaustible abundance, as the waters of purification are turned into messianic wine of the promised kingdom. It's no accident that the stone water jars, which are filled with water, are those used for Jewish rites of purification - John uses this as a symbol of the fulfilling of Jewish hope, promise, prophecy, faith, and law in the coming of Jesus. In essence, this wedding banquet is his own coming out party where the significance of the symbols changes the meaning of the feast to that promised messianic feast of the scriptures. As such, Jesus himself is the good wine that God has saved for last. The angelic visitations, the prophets, the law, these have all found their completion and satisfaction in Christ - the last which was first.

John closes this miraculous encounter by restating that this was the first of Jesus' signs - the first of seven that John will tell - which revealed Christ's Glory as God's manifested presence in the world.

But what does this mean for us today? While this glory is certainly good news in and of itself, what does it mean to me, in my everyday life in the world? For that answer, I turn to our reading from Corinthians.

Through Paul's words concerning spiritual gifts, I find a connection between the Gospel and us. Just as Christ was glorified by God's presence manifested in him, God glorifies us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit manifested in us. And just as Christ glorified God by revealing God to the world, so we continue to glorify God when we utilize the gifts we've been given.

While in John's reading, God's presence is revealed by Christ, we learn from Paul that we reveal God's presence in us through the gifts of the Holy Spirit that we share with the world around us.

As I look around the church this morning, I see that St. ECWIW's is filled with the gifts of the Spirit. I see teachers, doctors, counselors, artisans, lawyers, theologians, philosophers, homemakers, students, those gifted with eloquence, those gifted with deep listening and understanding. We are a community united in the gifts of the Spirit, mutually nurtured and strengthened by each others' myriad gifts, and we are also a community united in our intention to spread these gifts beyond the walls of St. ECWIW's through outreach, and even more so through our own lives lived in the world.

This is the good news of today! As we gather together each week to unite our gifts to the Glory of God, we strengthen each other in the bonds of community to go back out into the world revitalized, reinvigorated, renewed, refreshed, and reminded that it is through the gifts that God gives to us that we reveal God's glory in the world.

Jesus' miracles are not, in and of themselves, the good news of the Gospel, but rather are examples of the gospel in miniature. Put simply, the Good News is not just THAT the kingdom has come near, but that we have the power to bring it with every breath we breathe. In every moment in which we are faced with need, we have the power to bring the kingdom near. In every moment in which we are faced with suffering, pain, anger, fear, oppression - we have the opportunity to bring our own gifts - no matter how small we think they might be - to bear on this world, and thereby reveal God's glory and God's abundance to those around us.

Many of you have heard me talk about the friend who tricked me into going to his youth group during my senior year in high school... his name is Grasshopper.

Grasshopper and I have never lost contact. Through going to different schools, being half way across the world from each other, through difficult relationships when we couldn't be in touch [*okay 1, and it was mine*], through each of us getting married, and through the birth of his two children, we have phoned, emailed, and visited in person as often as we could. I invited Grasshopper to be one of my presenters for ordination last month and he recently shared with me his journal entry from that day. I may not quite put it the way he did, but he mentioned how many times over the years he's heard that story of his persistence in asking me to his youth group, and how small of a gesture he thought it was at the time. He just thought it would be cool if one of his new best friends could meet his other best friends and we could all hang out together at youth group. He couldn't imagine how that small gesture could some day result in his friend being ordained as a priest, and it made him pause to think of how many other small gestures every day of his life may have profound effects on those around him. He commented that it could be that his whole purpose in life may just have been to invite me to youth group... that he was pretty sure there was more to it than that, but what might have been different if he hadn't?

I love that Grasshopper reflected on this - especially in response to ordination! And I think it's a profoundly important lesson for each of us as we listen for the good news in today's lessons.

Our actions may seem small and even insignificant to us, but through God, they become the means through which lives are changed forever.

Let us join in the feast - bringing our gifts joyfully and carelessly to those around us, that God's glory might be revealed and the abundance of God's reign might be brought to everyone around us.

Amen.