JAN. 14, 2007 PASTOR SCOTT FULLER
IS 62:1-5; PS 36:5-10; I COR 12:1-11; JN 2:1-11
Prepare our hearts, Lord, to receive your Word. Silence in us any voice but your own that in hearing we may believe and in believing we may obey your will revealed to us in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear friends in Christ: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
I love how the Holy Spirit is able to inspire new insights as we read the old, old stories of Scripture. It happened again this week as I was studying the Gospel lesson. The wedding feast at Cana attended by Jesus and his mother has fascinated me for a number of reasons…here are few.
In the first place, it seems kind of odd to my Hollywood-hampered, sports- saturated, middle-aged, muddled mind that John and his community chose this water-into-wine miracle as the event to launch Jesus’ ministry. Don’t get me wrong…turning water into wine is no small feat – particularly if it’s good wine and especially if it turns out to be 180 gallons of the stuff…
After 61/2 years in my first call, our family moved back to Minnesota so that I could enter the Doctoral program at Luther Seminary in St. Paul. Like most other graduate students, we lived on a shoestring budget. Everything we bought was either cheap or on sale – including the wine that we would occasionally buy when we had the money to splurge.
One night our son, Mark, had his buddy over. When Matt’s parents came to pick him up the next evening, we invited them in to share a glass of wine. We had a very nice conversation and later offered a second glass – the wife accepted but the husband declined. As it turned out - Matt’s dad once owned his own vineyard - and we served him cheap wine out of a box!
But for the Gospel writer John to start Jesus’ ministry with the miracle of water into wine seems a little too…I don’t know, understated, unpretentious, unassuming. It’s like the beginning of some French or Indie film where the plot is, to quote Shakespeare, too clever to be understood.
Now, Matthew’s Gospel? Sure, we have to wade through a lot of teaching stuff to get to the action, but once you hit chapter 8 – Bam! Jesus steps up to the plate, points to center field, and hits a home run on his very first pitch.
1) He touches first base when he heals a man with leprosy.
2) He rounds second simply by speaking to heal a Roman soldier’s servant.
3) He makes it to third by stilling a storm at sea. And
4) he crosses the plate by freeing two people who are possessed by demons.
That’s what I’m talkin’ about – miracles for the rough and tumble sort – the kind of people who pride themselves in drinking cheap wine with a bite!
Speaking of cheap wine, Has anyone here ever tasted a glass of that Greek beverage called retsina? The story goes that a Greek vineyard owner put wine into some casks that weren’t properly aged. In storage, this fruit of the vine interacted with the sap in the wood and out came a yellow wine that smells and tastes like…oh, I don’t know – turpentine!
Back in college, I took a class for a month to Israel and Greece. The day we visited Corinth, it was about a hundred degrees. After many hot hours of prowling through ancient ruins, we stopped at a little grocery mart for a break. In their cooler were bottles of what looked like a nice light wine – so, many of us bought one. We went outside, twisted off the top, took a big swig…and spit it on the ground. Retsina! There was a lot of it…and it was cheap…but none of us thought it was good…
No, John’s Gospel is different from Matthew, Mark and Luke…and I’m thankful for that…which leads me to another reason why I’m fascinated by this lesson. It has to do with the Chief Steward’s response to Jesus’ incredible action. Says the man when he tastes the water-turned-to-wine, Everyone serves the good wine first, then the cheap stuff when it doesn’t matter – but you have kept the good wine until now!
Speaking of good wine, when I was studying at the Goethe Language Institute in Mannheim, Germany, I rented a room from a retired man who knew a little English. The very first day, after five hours in class, I was just starting on my pile of homework when there was a knock at the door. Herr Behagel had a full glass in hand and said in his broken English, Du muss try zis vine! I thanked him, but had to decline. Wine at 2:00 in the afternoon would have put me to sleep. I soon discovered that he enjoyed drinking a lot of wine. When I shared that with a classmate from New York, she smiled and said, The important question is, “Does he drink good wine?”
Another fascinating aspect of this text is the volume thing. I mean, 180 gallons of wine for a wedding reception?!?! That’s way beyond more than enough. And to appreciate the spiritual significance of this fact, you and I must step outside our pre-programmed Puritan perceptions, put aside our temperance-tending and tea-totalling, parsimonious and penny-pinching prejudices and concentrate on how this theme of more than enough reverberates throughout the pages of Scripture.
In the 23rd Psalm, we praise God with the words, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows…(Ps. 23:5).
Proverbs tells us, Honor the Lord with your substance and with the first fruits of all your produce; then your barns will be filled with plenty, and your vats will be bursting with wine (3:9,10).
The prophet Amos quotes God saying, The time is surely coming when…the mountains will drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it (9:13).
So in his first act as the One-who-was-promised-to-lead-the-world-into-a-brand-new-age, Jesus turns water into wine and it is more than enough to make our cups overflow. What happens to the disciples when they witness this amazing event? They get it, they connect the dots, the light goes on above their heads…and they believe (Jn. 2:11).
It’s a sign of God’s Kingdom bursting at the seams of our old ways of doing things, prying open our closed minds, and melting all our hardened hearts. The good news here is that as God has acted in the past, so God will act in the future: always and everywhere, personally and globally: the Lord promises to flood this world with more than enough grace, more than enough truth, more than enough life and love and freedom and faith.
Our challenge is to take Jesus at his Word, and trust that our needs will be met with more than enough of the good stuff to help us love God and our neighbors. It’s the beginning of a great story that we can feel blessed to tell and live so that all others might hear and see and believe. Thanks be to God. Amen.