Who Would Have Thought?

 CUC 1-16-22, HPC 1-19-25 (Ordinary 2C)

Isaiah 62:1-5; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

 

Who Would Have Thought?

 

          Have you ever taken the time to listen to people talk about their wedding?  There are almost always a few good stories that are bound to come up once people start reminiscing, and they often end up revealing some amount of the chaos that was happening behind the scenes while the guests were being ushered into their seats or the church was being prepared for the big day.  We share together in moments that we can easily laugh about as we look back on them, but which threatened to ruin the entire wedding on the day in which we actually had to deal with them - the florist who brought the wrong order and had to go back, the groomsman who arrives ten minutes before the ceremony is supposed to start because his GPS took him in every possible wrong direction, the flower-girl who decides that the day of your wedding is the day that she wants to have a meltdown because she wants to wear a ballerina outfit instead of the pretty dress her mother hand-picked for her to wear.

          But who would have thought that the story they’d end up telling over and over again about their wedding was the one about the time Jesus, his mother, and his disciples came to celebrate with them, much less that Jesus performed a miracle while he was there?  It started out much like any other wedding - the ceremony was beautiful and so the newly wed couple invite everyone to begin the celebration together - but it only took a few moments for everything to suddenly be thrown into uncertainty.  You couldn’t have scripted a better scene for a bridal reality show.  Among the Hebrew people of Jesus’ time, a wedding reception was an extravagant affair that lasted upwards of seven days, but it seems as if whoever had been in charge of planning this event didn’t plan as well as they needed to.  Perhaps they had more guests than they had expected - an entire side of one family or another who came unexpectedly, or some members of the community who came to crash the festivities.  Whatever the situation may have been, the wine started to run low - and in first century Palestine, this would have been about as bad as it could get.  It would have meant shame and embarrassment to the couple and their families.  People would have walked away shaking their heads and talking about what a disappointing reception it had been - it didn’t even last a whole day, let alone seven.

          It would have been a quiet catastrophe in the making - the servant staff in the household trying not to let anyone see the low level of the wine in the jars, to hear the scrape of the cups against the bottom of the vats.  But Mary sees what’s going on - she notices the nervous look on the servants’ faces.  She recognizes what’s about to happen and she pushes Jesus to take action, even despite his own somewhat cryptic objections.  And yet, because of Mary’s own persistence, Jesus goes over to the massive stone water jugs used for the purification rituals, commands the servants to fill them with water, and almost in the blink of an eye there are something close to 180 gallons of what was possibly the finest wine anyone had ever tasted - or at least, I’d have to assume that divinely created wine would taste that way.

          Who would have thought that this would be the first action Jesus performs in his ministry according to John, let alone the first miracle?  It goes against the grain of what the other gospels portray, for sure - this isn’t the Jesus who immediately goes out and begins the business of preaching, teaching, healing and casting out demons that we’ve come to expect from Matthew, Mark and Luke - this is a Jesus who starts his ministry by transforming wash water into Dom Perignon!  Who would have thought that Jesus would utilize his powers for something so seemingly unimportant as a party, especially when there are so many sick, hurting, possessed and yearning people out there who need his ministry that much more?  What difference should it make whether a wedding banquet continues to have wine to drink?  Even Jesus seems to doubt his mother’s request, at first: “What concern is that to you and to me?  My hour has not yet come.”

          And yet it mattered to the married couple.  It mattered to the servants and disciples who saw Jesus turn the water into wine and believed.  It mattered to Mary, who outright ignored Jesus’ comment, walked over to the servants and instructed them to do whatever Jesus told them.  It mattered to them that Jesus cared enough to take a situation of embarrassment and scarcity and turn it into an opportunity to continue in celebration, blessing, glory, and abundance.  It mattered that Jesus revealed his glory in an act of divine hospitality and compassion, even though there were other things equally demanding of his attention and power.  And it mattered to John’s community, to whom this Gospel was uniquely tailored - it mattered to them to hear that even the most mundane expressions of human need are heard and recognized by God.

          It matters just as much to us today, particularly when taken in combination with the encouragement that Paul writes to the Corinthians and the language of transformation and redemption that we hear in the Isaiah passage.  After all, who would have thought that God would call such broken and unworthy people as us?  And who would have thought that not only would God call us, but that God would equip us and gift us to perform in God’s own service? Who would think that God would still claim us after all our unfaithfulness, after all the times we’ve wandered and chased after other masters, easily distracted and drawn away to worship idols of our own creation, our own choosing?  We each have our own struggles, our own needs, our own things that still threaten to pull us away from our calling.  Why would God choose us in a world where holier men and women like Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Teresa, and Mister Rogers have stood as far greater examples of the faith than we could ever hope to live up to?

          And yet this is exactly what God has done - Paul writes that there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit; varieties of services, but the same Lord.  Isaiah tells the people of Israel that God has promised them a new name, a new identity and renewed value.  God redeems and calls each of us, gifting us with Their own Spirit - not because of any merit we have on our own, any special quality that sets us above and beyond anyone else, but “for the common good.”  Because God chooses to call us.  God chooses to love us.  And God chooses to use us to go out into the world, led by the power of God’s own Spirit, and show that same love to others.

          We do our best to explain the miraculous, to figure out some logical reason for why God would choose to do something as odd as turning water into wine - we claim the miracle as proof that God isn’t against celebrating and having a good time.  We claim it as an example of God’s constant willingness to take our situations of scarcity and transform them into situations of abundance and grace.  But at the end of the day, we have to recognize that it still contains some element of mystery - we don’t know for sure what causes Jesus to decide to act to save the wedding feast.  We don’t know what causes God to gift us in the Spirit in the unique and individual ways that God has chosen to gift us.  At the end of the day, perhaps all we can do is to stand in the place of the bridegroom as the steward approaches him to express his astonishment that the groom serves the best wine later - and as we stand in wonderment, awe, and perhaps even a touch of gratitude, we ask ourselves: Who would have thought?  To God be the Glory.  Amen.