“Weddings are accidents waiting to happen,” Robert M. Brearley notes. “Something almost always goes wrong at a service of holy matrimony[1].” What’s your favorite wedding mishap story? The week of my wedding started with Hurricane Sandy, complete with power outages and other delays. The flowers that we ordered had yet to arrive as of Friday night, sparking a local store scavenger hunt for replacements and family corsage and bouquet making party in the hotel after the rehearsal dinner. Oh, and our first dance? Right artist, but totally the wrong song. If you’re lucky, these incidents are momentary blips on the radar, destined to become humorous anecdotal stories as the years go by.
It’s an inevitable pattern that may even date back to the 1st century. In those days, weddings lasted a full seven days and were hosted by the groom’s family, who was responsible for all of the planning. Jesus, his mother and disciples are among the wedding guests at one celebration in Cana, a town otherwise unmentioned in the Bible, located about 9 miles north of Nazareth. As the story unfolds, the wedding experience seems to match what often happens. Something goes wrong.
Specifically, they are out of wine, on only the third day. Not even halfway through the festivities, and they are out of refreshments. Here, we read about another typical wedding fact– the incredible ability of a mother to get things done. Only here, it isn’t the mother of the bride or groom – it’s the mother of God. You can imagine it, can’t you? A light bulb going off over Mary’s head; she knows someone who can fix this. And so, as mothers do, she marches over to her son and informs him of the situation. The exchange between mother and son here is remarkable, even off-putting, and is rich with theological significance. Here, at the onset of Jesus’ ministry in John, Christ is insistent that this time has yet to come. It is no more his business than anyone else’s at the wedding. And yet, his mother’s instructions to the stewards, “do whatever he tells you,” seem to indicate a trust that something is going to happen. And indeed something does.
“The essence of any miracle is that it shatters the conventional explanations and expectations, and this miracle is no exception[2].” 6 stone jars stand empty, having been used for ritual purification. Jesus takes one look at those empty jars, and instructs the stewards to fill them with water. But what is tasted from these jars isn’t the water that was pour into them. It is fine wine, nicer than any other that has been served. Let that sink in for just a minute. What was just empty, is now 120-180 GALLONS of fine wine. Sure, it doesn’t have the urgency of some of the later miracles, with illnesses being healed and hunger being relieved, but it does speak to the transformational power and love of God through Jesus Christ.
In the great theological film, Talladega Nights, Ricky Bobby’s family and friends exchange how they imagine Jesus to be. Ricky’s friend Cal offers that he likes to think of Jesus as wearing a “tuxedo t-shirt, because it says I want to be formal, but I’m here to party.” Perhaps we should view this miracle as God saying, “I’m here to party.” Not because of the unlimited open bar Jesus creates, but because of what it symbolizes.
In the Old Testament, an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God’s new age[3]” The superabundance of wine indicates the unlimited gifts that Jesus makes available. “The miracle of the wine shatters the boundaries of their conventional world, and the disciples are willing to entertain the possibility that this boundary breaking marks the inbreaking of God[4].
God is here to party. That’s not something we think a lot about, is it? But it’s true. “The sign at Cana tells us that Jesus served a God who puts joy into life, who thinks it is worth a miracle to keep the party going as we celebrate people[5].” This is Jesus’ debut moment in John’s gospel, the first sign of his work as the Messiah. And he begins with a rich overwhelming symbol of God’s abundant grace and overwhelming love. In this moment, with jars filled to the brim with the finest wine, Christ demonstrates how lavish our God is, and how much God longs to connect with us on every level. Through the incarnation, God doesn’t just observe us from on high, but who lives among us, and yes, comes to our parties. This celebration, of course, climaxes with the good news of the resurrection, when God springs forth from the tomb, letting us know once and for all that the party will go on forever.
Sundays are our resurrection days, the time we gather as a community who celebrates the empty tomb week in and week out. “University of Chicago theologian Robert Hotchkins remarks that ‘Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian[6].” After all, “God does not want our religions to be too holy to be happy in[7].”
What does that say about our approach to worship? Perhaps we might do well to prepare for church the way some prepare for a wedding, with time, attention, and excitement. Consider how a checklist for getting ready for a wedding might apply:
- Do you make the date and time a priority, as if you’ve been sent a save the date?
- Are you quick to invite your “plus one,” a family member, significant other, or friend who you’d love to have join you in the fun?
- Do you look at the registry and carefully consider what gift you might bring?
- Have you read all of the information on the couple’s wedding website, brushing up on their story, or thinking about your own connections to them?
- Do you lay out your clothes the night before, or even try out several options?
- Will you make sure you arrive early to get a good seat?
There are, of course, MANY differences between weddings and worship, but you get the idea. Weddings, and other parties, are set apart as special occasions, ones that require thought and planning, and through those many steps and checklists heighten our anticipation of the joy that will be experienced. The same is true for worship, Sunday School, volunteering in service, and any other experiences we have that bring us closer to God. They are better when we take the time to prepare for them, when we make them a priority, and when we open ourselves to the possibility that they might be big moments in our lives, or at least little moments that shift something.
I believe God is calling us through this story, to step up in our lives of faith and RSVP to the party Christ is throwing. It is a big thing to ask, and for some, just coming to the party is difficult. We are like the ritual purification jars. At some point we were filled, but then we seem to get used up. We “burn out” of the “church stuff.” It becomes stale and dry, and we become empty. Perhaps we haven’t always gotten along with others we know are on the invite list. Just being in the same room with them is a challenge. Other times we just aren’t in the mood for celebration; when life has given us a slew of bad news and sad moments is overwhelming. Being around a bunch of happy celebrating people can be stomach turning. Maybe you have questions, or doubts, and if this were a wedding you’d be debating whether or not to speak up with your concerns, or be relegated to “forever hold your peace.” The wine has run out of our parties, and we’re not quite sure where to go from here.
Poet Tom Lane puts it this way,
If Jesus could transform common water into wedding wine, spit and dirt into new sight, troubled sea into a pathway, well water into living water, could Christ transform the waters of my life: shallow, murky, polluted, stagnant, sour, into a shower of blessing[8]?
The promise of our text today, though, is that Jesus comes to fill us, and fill us to the brim, with living water that is transformed into the fullness of celebration and joy. With grace and love that is lavish and abundant. With the promise of new life, and hope for restoration for all people. Jesus comes into our midst and celebrates with us wherever we are, however we are, and then leads us into an even deeper understanding of joy. The wine that Jesus provided in those once empty vessels wasn’t just cheap stuff to keep people happy for a little while; it was the finest of wines, usually what is put out first so that the guests are aware of the host’s good taste and hospitality. Its appearance at the end of this miracle story reminds us that the party will go on, and more than that, it won’t just wind down as people stumble home, it will continue and flourish. It only gets better from here.
May that be like our experience of worship, where we again are filled to the brim with the very best from God. May we continue to experience God’s abundant grace and love, and be energized by Christ, who is, here for the party, today, tomorrow, and forevermore. Amen.
~sermon by Rev. Elizabeth Lovell Milford, Heritage Presbyterian Church, January 20, 2019
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[1] Robert M. Brearley, “John 2:1-11, Pastoral Perspective.” Feasting on the Word: Year C, Volume 1, David L. Bartlett and Barbara Brown Taylor, editors. (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 260.
[2] Gail O’Day, “John.” The New Interpreter’s Bible, Volume IX. (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1995), 539.
[3] O’Day, 538.
[4] O’Day, 539.
[5] Brearley, 263.
[6] Brearley, 262-4.
[7] Brearley, 262.
[8] Tom Lane, “If Jesus Could,” Imaging the Word, Volume 1 (Cleveland, Ohio: United Church Press, 1994), 116.
