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You know
about Murphy's Law, of course. That is the law that says that
which is most unlikely and most undesirable will happen at
the most inopportune time, right? Have you ever noticed that
the law seems to be especially applicable at weddings? You
know - the dress that doesn't fit, the cummerbund that is
missing, the usher that forgot to try on the trousers that
are too short, the upper tier on the cake that collapses,
the photographer that forgets to put film in the camera, the
pastor who forgot to check his day planner, the cipher on
the organ, the soloist who shows up with laryngitis, the fainting
groom, the bride who loses her lunch - the list is really
quite lengthy.
Now, for
those of you who may be planning weddings, I hasten to add
that none of those things have ever happened here.
(Although I did use my ring for a ceremony not long ago.)
But you have heard about them, right? Well, Murphy's Law and
weddings is not a new phenomena. At the wedding that Jesus
attended, they ran out of wine. That may not seem like a big
deal compared to what could have happened. I read about a
double wedding in India in which two heavily veiled brides
were united to the wrong grooms. That one sounded a little
suspicious to me. Either in addition to the grooms not being
able to see behind the veil, the brides could not see through
the veil - or the two women had gotten together ahead of time
and agreed to the swap. Anyway, compared to that, running
out of wine shouldn't be a problem; let them eat cake!
But hospitality
in the East carries a weight that we have difficulty really
appreciating; and in the culture of Jesus' day, running out
of wine at a wedding was serious business. It would seem the
height of discourtesy, a failure to provide adequately for
the guests. The bride and groom, and the bride's family especially,
would have been utterly humiliated. And so, back to our story
and how Jesus comes to the rescue and turns water into wine.
Some readers
have been a bit shocked at this story. I don't mean Methodists
concerned about a report of Jesus making wine, but the apparent
rudeness of Jesus to his mother: "Woman, what have you
to do with me? My hour has not yet come." But scholars
point out that this was really not as harsh as it sounds to
us, but a colloquial expression the equivalent to "That
isn't our problem." Obviously, Mary did not feel offended;
she immediately told the servants to do whatever Jesus told
them to do.
Then comes
the filling of the water jars by the servants, the tasting
and the astonishment of the head steward that the best wine
had been saved until last. It is an intriguing story and one
that, when preached, often focuses on the symbolism involved
in the miracle and how Jesus meets life's inadequacies and
changes the plain and tasteless into joy.
While
some may try to preach around the miracle with this approach,
you need to understand that this is not a far fetched application
of the meaning of the parable, and is probably the symbolism
that John had in mind in choosing this event as one to report
for his readers. Jesus did and does change plainness into
joy. And while John clearly believed in the miracle, he also
clearly treats the miracle as a symbol. John uses several
incidents in Jesus' life as symbols. He tells us as much in
the manner in which he refers to them. He labels this and
other events as "signs." This, he tells us, was
"the first sign that Jesus did."
What I
would like us to notice this morning, however, is not the
symbolism of the miracle, but the methodology of it. In fact,
the methodology of not only this miracle, but of many of the
miracles that are reported in the gospels.
Specifically,
I would have us note that the miracle was not a solo act by
Jesus. John tells us that Jesus told the servants to fill
the water jars with water. Big deal, you say. What is so important
about that? Anybody can do that; they did it all the time
in those days. We do it, too; a lot more did it getting ready
for Y2K. We used juice containers at our house. How about
you?
But the
point is: why bother to have them do that? If the aim was
to make an impression, why didn't Jesus go the whole nine
yards and just wave his hand and "poof," there it
was - empty jars one minute, brimming with Mogendavid the
next? After all, these were big jars. John even makes a point
of telling us that they held fifteen to twenty five gallons
apiece. Filling them wasn't a matter of sticking a hose in
the top and turning on the faucet, you know. The servants
had to go to the village well and draw or dip the water up
in containers of a size they could carry, and that would have
meant several trips. Why all the extra work?
And then
I began to think of some of the reports on other miracles.
On one occasion Jesus made a poultice of mud and put it on
a blind man's eyes, and then told him to go wash in a pool
- not just any pool, mind you, but the pool of Siloam. Why
does that matter? Well, I'm not sure, but the blind man was
in one part of town and the pool of Siloam was in another,
all the way on the other side of Jerusalem. It is difficult
enough to find your way through the narrow, twisting streets
of old Jerusalem today when you can see! The Jerusalem of
Jesus' day would not have been any better, and probably much
worse, given the greater number of animals in those days than
what you find there today. Can you imagine that poor man -
stumbling along, feeling the walls and doorways of the shops,
listening to the sounds to try to determine where he was,
being a man and not wanting to ask directions, probably being
shouted at for knocking into things in a clumsiness worsened
by haste; finally asking some stranger if he was at the place
he where he needed to be; taking care that he didn't fall
into the pool when he got there; and all the time looking
like a nut, with mud all over his face!? Why make the poor
man do the obstacle course?
Then I
remembered that in accounts of Jesus feeding the five thousand
we are told that he started with a few loaves and two pieces
of fish - not even a biggie fries to go along with them. As
the disciples candidly asked, "What are these among so
many?"
So what
does Jesus do? He has the disciples divide the people into
groups. You ever try to do that with five thousand people?
"But
I want to sit with Jamie."
"I
came with the people over there."
"I
want to sit in the shade of that tree."
"Who
are you to boss us around this way?"
"What
do you mean we can only have fifty in our group?"
And a
good time was had by all. Right!
And then
Jesus orders the passing around those few pitiful broken pieces
of bread and fish. What would you feel like being told to
start that basket down your aisle to feed a multitude like
that? It is bad enough to be at a table for six when there
are only five rolls left in the basket, but for 5000? Talk
about a time when you would like to supersize it! But why
bother with the pittance that the boy brought? Why insist
on some seating arrangement?
Another
event comes to mind. Luke tells us that Jesus once met a group
of lepers along the highway, and when they asked him to heal
them, he told them to go show themselves to the priest. You
need to understand the context here. Lepers were required
to live in exile, outside of the villages; when they traveled
the roadways and saw people coming towards them, they were
to cry out "Unclean! Unclean!" so the travelers
would know to keep their distance lest they become contaminated.
The law also said that before they could return to their homes,
they had to be examined by a priest and declared healthy again.
But read the story carefully: these men had not been healed
yet! Luke doesn't say that Jesus healed them and then told
them to go show themselves for inspection. He told them to
go look up a priest while they were still the way they
were! We are told that they are healed as they went on
their way, but they were not healed before they started out.
One more
instance. A group of Pharisees once asked Jesus about paying
the temple tax. And what does Jesus do? Does he pull a coin
out of the questioner's ear, or out of a crack in the wall,
or appear to snatch it out of the air? No. There is a fish
in the Sea of Galilee that belongs to a species they call
"mouth breeders." When its young are first born,
it takes them into its mouth at the least sign of danger and
keeps them there until the danger is past - being very careful
not to swallow or sneeze, of course. It is said that after
the little ones go off to school, so to speak, the mother
fish evidently misses them and will often carry around a pebble
or some other object from the bottom of the lake as some sort
of consolation. It is said that these days, fishermen sometimes
catch them with bottle caps in their mouth. Jesus told Simon
Peter to go catch one of those fish and tells him there will
be a coin in its mouth with which to pay their tax. A miracle;
but Peter had to go fishing first.
Are you
getting the pattern here? Many of Jesus' miracles were not
solo events; they invited participation. Time and again, this
is the pattern. Fill the water jars; go wash; stand up; sit
down; pass the baskets; take up your bed; go fish. The mighty
actions of God are often tied to the simple actions of human
beings.
I want
to suggest that miracles still often happen that way. Surely
one of the areas in which that is true is in healing. The
suggestion that health and healing involves more than medicine
is as old as illness itself. Long before chemotherapy and
radium implants, prior to snake oil and bleeding the patient
(from the veins, that is), older than mysterious potions and
elixirs, there has been the recognition that the attitude
and expectations within the patient have more to do with health
and healing than pharmaceutical companies might like to admit.
For many
generations, the art of healing had little to offer in the
way of medicines; at least little in the way of medicine that
modern research can determine would have provided physical
reasons for effecting change. Medicine men and witch doctors
sprinkled powders and mumbled words and walked through the
smoke and stirred strange mixtures, but mostly they helped
the patient because the patient expected them to help. In
the case of voodoo and witchcraft bent on harm, we were looking
primarily at the reverse side of the same coin, with a few
drugs thrown in for good measure. As often as not, the body
heals itself with a bit of encouragement from medicine and
caring hands.
Understand
that none of these comments are intended to discredit the
healing professions or the contributions of modern medicine;
nor are they to suggest that you don't really need to take
your blood pressure medicine or that a brain tumor or a ruptured
appendix or a broken bone will go away if we laugh a lot.
After all, I did have hernia surgery a couple of months ago.
But I would insist that our participation in our healing,
our attitude about it, is as important as any pills we swallow
or any treatments we take. And before we make that statement
about laughing too absolute, you might want to read Norman
Cousins' Anatomy Of An Illness.
If you
do not know his story, briefly, Norman Cousins was, for thirty
years, the editor of the Saturday Review Of Literature.
In 1979 he published the account of his recovery from an inflammation
of the connective tissue between the joints of the spine.
It was a chronic, progressive disease and he was told that
his chances for recovery were about one in five hundred. His
doctor admitted that he himself did not know of anyone who
had recovered. As he discussed and reviewed his illness, a
major cause seemed to be stress. He asked himself the question:
If negative emotions could cause illness, was it possible
that positive emotions could result in healing? If stress
had made him ill, could relaxation make him well?
At any
rate, with the blessing of his doctor, he went off all his
prescribed medications, checked into a motel room so his laughter
from the Candid Camera and Laurel and Hardy movies he rented
would not disturb other patients, took massive doses of Vitamin
C, and proceeded to laugh - and get well. His recovery was
not described as a complete return to a "no problem"
status, but he was able to return to work and his condition
was far removed from the continued degeneration that had been
expected. Could it be that part of our problem with miracles
is that we tend to define them away? That is, we seem to think
that if you can find some contributing cause, then it really
isn't a miracle. That is nonsense! If much healing comes from
within us, how about the miracle that this is how we are made?
Why is it less a miracle because we participate in it? If
you find a hundred dollar bill on the sidewalk, is it any
less valuable because you have to bend over and pick it up?
Please
understand that I am not saying that God has nothing to do
with it. Understand, too, that I am not proposing a "blame
the patient" approach that implies that every time healing
doesn't happen, it is because the patient did not have the
right attitude. I don't pretend to know all the reasons why
some healings happen and others do not. Neither am I trying
to suggest that everything that happens has some naturalistic
explanation behind it. I am saying that the ministry of Jesus
teaches us that miracles are not always solo events and that
we are often called to participate in them.
We are
talking more than healing here. The miracles of transformation
and change in our world demand participation, too. William
Willimon, in writing on this text, tells of going back home
to Greenville, South Carolina, which he remembered as a city
where racial injustice was sort of ingrained and taken for
granted. In the Greenville that he remembered, signs on buses
reading "SC Law: White patrons sit from the front. Colored
patrons sit from the rear" had been regarded as simply
the way it was, the way it was supposed to be.
When Dr.
Willimon went back to Greenville some years later, he went
to a town meeting called because of some community crisis.
The crisis was a racial incident, and Dr. Willimon says that
he sat at the meeting, stupefied and amazed at what was happening
before his eyes. It was clear that this was not a "we"
and "them" situation any more. White people and
black people were talking together and working together to
solve the problem. "For me," he writes, "that
night was a sign, a sign that we had not been left to our
own devices, that God's good grace had intruded among us.
It was a miracle; it was a miracle."
But part
of that miracle was a man by the name of Martin Luther King,
Jr. And part of that miracle was the actions of hundreds,
thousands of people who began to stand up (or in the case
of Rosa Parks, to sit down) and to go places and do things
that they were led by the spirit of Christ to do. In one memorable
instance that Donna Britt wrote about in the Free Press
a few weeks ago, one of the participators in the miracle was
a young girl named Minnijean Brown who, with eight others,
went to Central High School in Little Rock in the face of
national guardsmen and in defiance of an order by the governor.
On November 9 of last year, President Clinton gave Minnijean
and her friends Congressional Medals of Honor for their part
in a miracle. Minnijean Brown often speaks to youth today,
and one of the things she tells them is that they have the
potential within them to be heroes, that there are lots of
places, a million ways that they can serve.
About
three weeks ago, Bill Ritter handed me an article from the
Central Texas United Methodist Reporter about Africa University,
because I work with our Mission Ministry and he knew A.U.
was one of our projects. But Bill didn't know what I was preaching
on today. The title of the article was "I See Miracles."
How about that? James Salley, Associate Vice Chancellor for
Development, points to a vision that started in General Conference
in 1988. Four years later, there were 42 students in the two
initial degree programs - theology and agriculture - and then,
he says the miracles began. Today there are 220 graduates
and nearly twenty completed buildings and everything is paid
for. When other financial officers ask him the secret of his
success, he smiles and replies, "It's a miracle!"
It's what God and the people of God can do when they decide
to be the church in the world.
Ask the
people of the Tonjibe tribe in Costa Rica if they believe
in miracles and they will tell you that they do, especially
a couple of weeks from now after Christians from this church
and other United Methodist Churches serving as volunteers
in missions have been among them again, as they have for the
past few years; and they will show some of the buildings that
the miracles have produced.
How about
it - have you ever been invited to take part in a miracle?
I would like to suggest to you this morning that there are
a lot of miracles waiting to happen - in our lives, in our
church, in our community, in our world. But we need to do
something about participating in them. God is calling us to
help them happen. It may even be a call to walk somewhat blindly
for a while towards a certain goal, but there is a part for
us.
So don't
go away today looking for a miracle; go looking for some water
jars to fill or what ever else Christ tells you to do - and
God will do the rest.
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