George A. Mason Second Sunday after Epiphany Wilshire Baptist Church 20 January 2013 Dallas, Texas John 2:1-11 In my thirty-odd years of ministry, I have seen some embarrassing things happen at weddings and receptions. My inlaws, for instance, were mortified that when we showed up at our wedding reception at the Riviera Country Club in Coral Gables, Florida, thirty-three years ago, the band didn t. With no music to distract the guests, they went straight to the buffet table and the bar. The food was gone lickety-split, and the guests were gone soon thereafter. On top of that, the wedding photographer lost almost all of our pictures. He did give us a free album for our trouble trouble was, there were no pictures in it. No worries, we learned early that the marriage was more important than the wedding. Last fall I did a wedding in the beautiful courtyard of the Dallas Museum of Art. At least I think it was beautiful. See, we couldn t see. It was a 7:00 wedding, and the powers that be had failed to note the time change. We did the wedding in total darkness. No lights even. Oh, and the sound guy failed to connect my microphone to the speakers. So no one could see in the dark or hear over the gentle roar of the cascading water sculpture nearby. Weddings. Things go wrong, no matter how carefully you plan. And just that is what happened at the beginning of Jesus ministry in the little Galilean town of Cana, just nine miles from where Jesus grew up. Weddings in Jesus day were weeklong affairs. People came and stayed. They ate and drank, and drank and drank. Weddings, though, were more than just a public excuse for a hangover. They symbolized to Jews the age to come, when God would consummate God s courtship with the world. A weeklong wedding celebration was a Sabbath week that pointed to God s future when work would lose its toil, and rest would be more than just a nap. Pointing is very much how we should understand this story. It s a sign that points. The wine itself points, too. A never-ending flow of wine is an Old Testament image of what life is going to be
like when God is finished doing what God is doing in the midst of creation. In the end, our greatest fears of scarcity will be replaced by our greatest hopes of overflowing abundance. So the miracle is a sign that points to something big that God is up to that we can now and then and here and there only catch a glimpse of. It s an epiphany, don t you know?! And it s right here in this story. So hang on as we see it together. Now, the host of this wedding in this case the bridegroom himself, apparently would have been shamed by his failure to provide enough wine. What a nightmare. Hospitality was the highest social virtue in that time and culture. He would have failed right at the beginning. He would have brought shame on himself and his family. He would start his married life with a big failure. If he couldn t even provide for his wedding guests, how would he provide for his new bride forever after? Jesus mother sees the problem. She goes to Jesus and tells him to do something. I love that she knows he can. Doesn t it make you wonder how she knew he could? Had he been practicing in the family home for a moment like this? Who knows? But she believes in him. And don t you know how big that is to have a mother who believes in you big even for Jesus. She doesn t tell him what to do, but she tells him to do his thing. I have a mother like that. Since she s a member of our church, she sees and hears things with a protective ear. While we were talking recently, she asked me something along the lines of whether I have anyone I answer to about a certain matter of scheduling. I wanted to say, Yes, God. But she s my mother, and even if she d buy that at some level, she wasn t about to let me off the hook that easily. So she proceeded to tell me what I needed to do in order to help the church. Thank you, Mom. Well, Jesus mother is doing that. She feels for the host. She wants to cover for him. And that s a key point here. Jesus mother is not looking to advance Jesus career here; she is interested in preventing the shame that would befall the host if this wasn t worked out. It s like intercessory prayer. She asks Jesus to intervene not for herself, not even for him, but so that the host and the community would be 2
well. That s what we ought to care about, too. When we go to Jesus to fix something, it ought to be out of compassion for those who are on the brink and can t help themselves. Jesus initially pushes her away with the comment, Woman, what concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come. This is subtle but important. Sometimes the dialogue reveals what Jesus really thinks. Sometimes it reveals what we really think, in order to get us to think differently. In fact, this does concern her and Jesus. Anyone who loves cares. There s none of this It s none of my business business. If someone you know is in a crisis even if that person is at fault and you can do something about it, make it your business. What s about to happen shows that God cares about these everyday things. God is involved in our lives. But Jesus also says that his hour has not yet come. His hour is the hour of the big reveal. It s the pouring out of himself as an offering for the sins of the world on the cross. It s the hour of his death, resurrection, and ascension on high that reveals the full glory of God. That s yet to come. Jesus is right. But this is a moment, too. And this moment points to that hour. It will be a sign, a hint, and a pointer that will make that final hour make all the more sense. Jesus mother isn t named here. We know she is Mary, but John doesn t name her. In the seven signs that Jesus does in John s Gospel, none of the people involved are named. It s as if John is telling us that they could be anybody even you and me. Everything has a kind of presenttenseness about it in these stories, so that you can imagine that Jesus is present to you in your moments of embarrassment or shame or loss or failure or whatever. He s present to you in a way that fills you with amazing grace how sweet the sound! Jesus mother will show up only one more time in John s Gospel, at the foot of the cross, when the glory of God that this first sign pointed toward will be seen for all it s worth. For now, she insists that the time has come. She tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to. In other words, she gets it: she shifts her request from his having to obey her to his free action that is not subject to human control. What s about to 3
happen then will be credited to God and Jesus, not to her. Jesus tells the servants to fill the six empty stone jars sitting nearby, filled with water. These 20- to 30-gallon jars were used to hold water for the men to wash their hands before eating in order to be ritually clean, according to Jewish custom. This is good. Notice that Jesus doesn t wave a magic wand, and presto, a hundred cases of wine appear out of nowhere. He employs the vessels of Jewish tradition and transforms them into something new. Sometimes people read this as showing that Christ came to replace an empty Judaism with a more spiritually alive Christianity. But that isn t what this points to. He uses the purification vessels to show how God is doing a new thing in and through Judaism. In other words, Jesus directs us to look into our circumstances, not just at them. He will work his wonders right in the middle of what is. He finds what is possible there by his grace. I was in Atlanta this week to announce that the search committee I have chaired for the past year has recommended Suzii Paynter to be our new executive coordinator for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship. I will interview her here in worship next week. Suzii will be the first woman and the first layperson to lead a major Baptist organization. Our committee did not set out to name a woman or a layperson. It just turns out that she is both, and also the best candidate for the job. I love that. The seeds were planted for this twenty-one years ago, when CBF made clear that women and laypersons were equal partners with men and clergy in our group. These things were controversial at the time. People said we were moving too fast, that we were messing with tradition, that we were limiting our growth. I remember that the same things were said about us as a church when we started ordaining women as deacons and ministers. Some people left our church as a result. Many more came. Today we don t even think about it, because it has become who we are. But those decisions were signs that pointed beyond themselves to something bigger about how we viewed the future that God was at work to bring about. We couldn t imagine a future in which God s ultimate 4
goal for the world would be separation, segregation, and subordination. We believed that all of this was the truest truth of our Baptist tradition. Sowing and watering those values over two decades have produced this moment when this can be embraced now as a showing forth of God s work among us. It s an epiphany. When the servants filled the water jugs to the brim, Jesus told them to take some out and show them to the chief steward. So they went and found a man named Carson, I suppose (sorry, a little Downton Abbey reference there). When he tasted it, he made the astonished comment that the bridegroom must have saved the best wine for last. Now see what this means? Jesus miracle was about quantity and quality. There s no reason to believe they would have needed 150 gallons of wine. But Jesus is saying that God is not stingy. God s grace is abundant. God gives us more than we need. Jesus could have showed us the God we expect a God who measures things out prudently, gives us just enough so that we will remember our failure and be more responsible the next time. But that isn t the God that Jesus shows us. This God is shamelessly extravagant. This God overdoes it with mercy. This God will not allow even a hint of question about whether there is enough. And then quality. Most hosts would have brought out the boxed wine last, after the guests have stopped noticing. This wine would have had to age a good while to be as good as it was. But there again, part of the miracle is accelerated time. We get a taste now of the good stuff that is coming. What we can expect when God is finished with us is only the best. I don t know what kind of shame you are living with. Most of us have some. We have sinned. We ve messed up. We re scared to death. In the middle of all that, God shows up in Jesus to tell us the truest truth about God s shameless extravagance. You are forgiven. You are loved. The best is yet to come. And John says, His disciples believed in him. That s the only right thing for us to do. 5