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Just last
week, Bridget and I celebrated our seventh wedding
anniversary. To help us mark our time together, we have
developed a simple ritual. Around the time of our anniversary,
we go through all of the pictures we have taken that year. We
select the ones that best tell the story of the places we’ve
been and the people who have touched our lives during the past
twelve months. Then, with the help of our computer, we set
those images to music, to a song that also captures the spirit
of the year gone by. This year’s song is by one of our
favorite local singer/songwriters, Kitty Donahoe. It is called
“Do What You Love,” and as it plays, the images of this
past year fill the screen—images of gatherings with family
and friends, new babies, trips to Lake Michigan and Florida,
candlelight vigils, new friends in Prague, missions to Memphis
and, for the first time, there are pictures of you. This is
the year that the people of this church entered our lives. Forever when we look back on the sixth year of our marriage,
it will be the year that the kind people of First Church
welcomed us into their midst. No matter where the future road
will take us, we can look back on this year and remember the
blessing that you have all been to us.
After we
have compiled the “year in review,” we rewind the tape and
play it from the beginning.
We watch the soundtrack of our lives together unfold
before our eyes. We see people we have lost touch with but
whose impact on our lives is still felt. There are the people
who are now gone from this earth but whose presence in our
lives we still carry with us. While we play the tape, we laugh
a little and we cry a little. But at the end, we both agree
that as the journey of our lives continues to progress, our
joy continues to multiply.
That
is one of the major lessons of today’s Gospel reading: the
goodness of God’s grace is abundantly available as we
journey through its paths. It even gets better late into the
party. “Everyone
serves the good wine first, then later, when no one is
supposed to know the difference, they bring out the cheap
stuff. But you have saved the best for last.” In our
reading, the disciples are perplexed by the sudden and
unexpected appearance of such high-quality wine at the wedding
feast. From ordinary water came extraordinary wine, robust,
full and savory. Those
who recorded the events describe the change as a sign of
God’s presence in their midst, as a transformation made
possible by the grace of God. It suggests that ordinary lives,
infused with God’s grace, become extraordinarily full of
meaning and beauty. The joy continues to overflow. The good wine is served even late into the party. We can
bring the empty vessels of our lives to Christ and they can be
filled with grace. So tonight, let us examine this story, as
well as examine our own story, to see how we can experience
this truth.
It is
important to note that this is where all the action begins in
John’s gospel. This scene, the wedding at Cana, is where
John begins Jesus’ public ministry. An interesting way to
get it started, when you think about it. It begins by saving a
party. And while the changing of water into wine is indeed
miraculous, it does lack some of the dramatic appeal of so
many of the other stories from the public life of the anointed
one from Nazareth. There are no blind that now see.
No deaf that now hear. No lame that now walk. No loaves
or fishes that are multiplied a thousand times over. There
aren’t even any Pharisees that get rebuked. Just Jesus
making sure that the party does not fizzle out.
So what is
going on here? What is this story trying to tell us? Well, the
fact that it is taking place at a wedding reception is
instructive. In the first century, a typical wedding feast
lasted at least seven days. This wedding feast was only in its
third day. Therefore, the party isn’t over—there are a
number of days left for celebrating. And the fact that this
party is taking place in Cana, which is (and was) a small town
in Israel’s West Bank, suggests something of the nature of
this event.
I
don’t know how many of you grew up in a small town. I did.
And there is something special about small town weddings. Just
last weekend, I was at my cousin’s wedding in Bloomer,
Wisconsin. (Yes, this is the fictional hometown of Ros from
TV’s Fraser—it is a real place.)
When you get married in a place like Bloomer (where you
have to take three hours between the ceremony and the dinner
so the cows can get milked), there is no need to send out
invitations. You
just run an announcement in the paper telling when and where
the party is (and what polka band will be playing) and the
whole town just shows up. It’s a community event and
everyone is invited.
This is
what it was probably like at this wedding reception in Cana.
It, too, probably involved the whole town. Jesus’ first act
of public ministry in John takes place at a party where
everyone is invited.
So what
does that mean for us? I believe that John starts his gospel
at this wedding feast to remind us that in the person of Jesus
and in the movement that he initiated, heaven and earth have
forever been wedded. Just as a man and a woman are joined
together as one at a wedding, so too, in the person of Jesus
Christ, God and humanity have become one. Heaven and earth
have touched, the spirit and the flesh are now married, and
the eternal and the temporal united forever.
In the movement Jesus initiated, the one that you and I
claim to be a part of, we are forever reminded that God is
with us, that God is for us and, for better or worse, for
richer or poorer, in sickness and in health and even unto
death, God will not part from us.
And just as
it was in Cana, this celebration of the union between God and
humanity that Christ represents is a celebration that everyone
is welcome to partake in. No need to wait for an invitation.
The marriage has already taken place, the party is in full
swing. Just show up, grab a plate, fill your cup and partake
in this ongoing celebration.
With the
stage set, we can better understand the dilemma that suddenly
occurs—a dilemma that threatens to cut this celebration
short. We discover that the feast is about to run out of wine.
And while it was customary for guests to bring wine to the
reception, it was the groom’s responsibility to see that
there was enough wine to last throughout the festivities. So
there was about to be a real social disaster here. The party
was about to be cut short. It was going to end long before it
was supposed to.
Isn’t
that the case with our lives and our journeys? I
am sure that each of us, in our own way, has come to moments
where life’s goodness seemed to be ending long before it was
supposed to. Those
times when the well has run dry, times when the good wine
seems nowhere to be found.
We have all gone through these trying times, times when
we longed for earlier days when life’s party just seemed to
flow along so much easier. Life has a way of changing,
doesn’t it, a way of moving from joy to sorrow, from
security to vulnerability. Sometimes it seems like life just
throws you one challenge after another.
We all know
those dry times. The ups and downs of the economy have left
many in our midst feeling at risk. Our relationships can go
through difficult periods where the joy that once kindled our
friendships or marriages seems to be suddenly lost. Illness,
depression, addiction, difficult times with your parents,
difficult times with your teenager, the anxiety of trying to
find your path after college—all of these can feel as if we
are walking through the valley of the shadow of death itself.
There appears to be no light at the end of tunnel, no apparent
end to the dryness we sometimes experience. And sometimes when
the good wine seems to be all gone, we find ourselves just
wishing that the party would end early.
That is why
tonight’s story is so hopeful for us. It has something to
say about how we come out of these dry times. The Gospel tells
us that near Jesus there were six stone water jars, each
capable of holding twenty to thirty gallons. Jesus instructs
the servants to fill them. They fill them to the very top.
Then he says, “Now draw some out and take it to the master
of the wedding.” The master of the wedding, the guy in
charge of all arrangements, the forerunner of the modern-day
wedding coordinator if you will, tastes the wine and is simply
amazed. He runs over to the groom and says, “This is not
normal. Everybody knows you bring the best wine out first.
Then when things get rolling and nobody knows the difference,
that’s when you bring out the cheap stuff. But it seems that
you have saved the best for last.”
Perhaps the
story is trying to tell us something about our expectations. I
am always amazed that the guests at the wedding expected the
quality of wine to decrease as the celebration went on.
The best came in the first days of the party and it was
simply all down hill from there. If you didn’t make it to
the party’s end, you really weren’t missing that much
anyway. You expected to be disappointed the longer you hung
around.
We can live
our lives like that sometimes. We can act as if the best parts
of our lives came early on…and are now long past. We often
hearken back to the “good ol’ days.” We say to
ourselves, “You better drink up early because after the
kids, the mortgage, the ups and downs of sharing your life
with a partner or after years of being on your own, coupled
with the inevitable aches and pains of an aging body, who has
the energy to stay until the last dance of the evening,
anyway?” Like the partygoers in John’s gospel, we don’t
exactly expect the final stages of the party to be all that
much fun, anyhow.
But
today’s story suggests that Jesus intervenes in the midst of
the party to ensure that the wine will get better. It suggests
somehow that the life which faith will bring us through all of
these ups and downs, and the longer we stay in it, the sweeter
it is supposed to get. The Gospel proposes that God’s grace
continues to be available to us even as the party gets later.
It further suggests that the very best wine will come at the
end…when this great wedding reception, celebrating the
marriage between God and humanity, the party that Christ has
invited us all to, comes to its rightful finish, and in the
last days we join God in eternal rest.
The best is
yet come. That is the promise of the Gospel. As I have watched
the images flash by on the video from the past seven years of
my life, I have realized the truth of today’s message. So
far, the joy of life continues to increase the longer I have
been at the party.
But as I
reflected and prayed about today’s message, I realized that
to stand up here and tell you that the wine will be there for
you later in the party might seem a little bold. After all, I
haven’t really been at the party all that long. And while I
have had some struggles and hardships, for the most part, my
life has been pretty smooth sailing. You might be saying to
yourself, “Wait and see if you stand up there and say all
that stuff about the good wine coming later when you have a
little more experience under your belt. Wait until life throws
a few curveballs your way. Maybe you’ll change your tune.”
It is true
that I haven’t had enough age under my belt to tell from
experience that this promise of the Gospel will ring true. But
it is my hope, and I am choosing to live my life as if it were
so. But I’ll
tell you what I have done. I spent some time this week with
some members who have been in the party a little longer than I
have. I wanted to know from them if they have experienced the
promise of the wedding at Cana. Is it true that the best is
yet to come? This is what they had to tell me. The sermon
ends with a video of church elders recounting how they have
experienced this truth from the wedding at Cana:
the good was available late into the party and that the
best has been saved for last.
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