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What to Do
when the Wine Runs Out
by the Rev. Rich Smith
January 14, 2007
John 2:1-11
I used to think that there were basically two kinds of
people in the world: those who habitually see the glass as half-full,
and those who see it as half-empty. As I have gotten older, I have
realized that there are a lot more choices than that, more than two
ways of looking at it. There is the way represented by your mother, who
asks, “Is there a coaster under the glass?” There is the way
represented by people we all know, though surely none of us here, that
asks, “Who’s been drinking out of my glass?” And then there’s Jesus.
One of the very first stories the Gospel of John tells us is about the
time that Jesus and his mother attended a wedding – a wedding
reception, actually. Weddings in his time were not just casual affairs
that you could fit in between other obligations – they usually lasted
about a whole week! The entire village stopped and partied. It was on
the third day in that disaster struck – the wine supply ran out.
Whether it was poor planning or extra exuberance on the part of the
guests, it was no longer a matter of the glass being half full or half
empty – it was completely dry! A social faux pas of a huge magnitude –
how can you continue to party for another four days with the wine
already gone? Extremely embarrassing for the groom!
So Jesus’ mother turns to him and says, “They’re out of wine....” Now
whether she was just making an observation or a subtle suggestion, I
don’t know, but it’s as if she were saying, “You know, you could fix
this!” Maybe Jesus has been practicing miracles around the house, and
Mary has this sense that he could put his power to good use and save
the day. At first, Jesus seems a bit exasperated – “Woman, what it is
with you and me? It’s not my time yet!” The Gospel of John makes a big
thing out of “Jesus’ time” – meaning the time in which he would come
into his glory, be lifted up on the cross, be fully revealed as the
Word of God made flesh.
Nevertheless, Mary ignores the reply and calls the servants over,
saying, “Whatever he tells you, do it.” So, pointing to six stone water
jars, jars that usually held water used for hand washing, each holding
twenty-five to thirty gallons, Jesus says to the servants, “Fill them
with water.” And they fill them to the brim – another drop and they
would have started to spill. Then he says, “Now dip some out and take
it to the caterer.” When the caterer tastes it, now changed into wine,
he is astonished and calls over the groom – This is really good stuff!
Why have you been holding it back? After all, common practice was to
serve the best wine first, and roll out the cheap stuff when the guests
were impaired enough that they couldn’t tell the difference. But this
was different, unexpected. And John reports: This was Jesus’ first
miracle, at Cana in Galilee. It displayed his glory, and his disciples
believed in him.
There is a story told about a minister who had been to a party, drank a
bit too much, and ended up with an empty bottle of wine in the back
seat. Sure enough, on the way home he was pulled over by a police
officer, who upon smelling the aroma, asked him, “What have you been
drinking?” “Just water,” replied the minister. Seeing the empty wine
bottle, the policeman asked, “And what is this?” “Good Lord!” exclaimed
the minister, “He’s done it again!”
The question about a miracle is not “Did it really happen?” but “Does
it happen?” And in my experience this one does. He does it again all
the time!
You see, the big thing here is not so much that Jesus turned water into
wine. It is a miracle, to be sure, but one that is actually rather
commonplace. Making wine isn’t all that difficult. Okay, making really
good wine takes some talent, and some patience, and the right
combination of rain and sunshine, but we can do it. No, to me the
really significant thing here is not that Jesus turned water into wine
but that he made so much of it! Six jars, holding up to thirty gallons
– that’s 180 gallons of vintage wine, about 800 bottles – way more than
enough for any wedding reception, even a first-century Middle Eastern
party lasting a whole week! It’s ridiculously extravagant!
Now, I’ve never quite succeeded at turning water into wine, but I did
turn a whole lake into Holy Water once. Our family was at a church camp
up in Canada, and we became friends with another family, so good that
they asked me to baptize their five year old daughter, right there. The
camp was on the shores of a hundred-mile long lake, and we gathered
there on the last morning of the camp for the ritual. Part of the
baptismal liturgy involves the blessing of the water, so I turned to
the lake, held my hand out over it and asked God to bless it, so that
the water that I would sprinkle on this young girl would wash her with
God’s love, and be a sign of the covenant between her and her parents
and the Giver of Life itself. It was a poignant moment, and only later
did I realize – “I turned an entire hundred-mile-long lake into holy
water!” That was overkill, extravagance. I only needed a few drops. But
that is what God does.
We keep doing this, by the way. We have a whole freezer full of cookies
we baked for our Christmas open house. We were pleased with how many of
you were able to come, but really, we could have served ten times as
many! I hope those of you who come to our spring open house don’t mind
cookies that look like Christmas trees and wreathes....
Anyway, that’s what really strikes me about this story of Jesus and the
Wedding Reception at Cana. It was a miracle, to be sure, but it was
primarily a miracle of extravagance, a miracle of abundance!
And this kind of thing keeps happening throughout the Bible! Just a few
chapters later, John tells the story of the loaves and fishes. You know
the story – a crowd of thousands has gathered to hear Jesus preach, and
when he was done, they were hungry. “Where are we going to get enough
bread to feed this mob?” ask the disciples. “We don’t even have enough
money to send out to the bakery.” “Well,” Andrew reported, “There is a
lad here who has five loaves of barely bread and two fish, but I can’t
see that that’s gonna do much.” Jesus simply said, “Have them sit
down.” And he took the loaves, gave thanks, broke them and passed them
around to the crowd along with the fish, and all of them had as much as
they wanted. And afterwards the disciples gathered up twelve baskets of
leftovers. Again, the miracle is in the extravagance, the abundance of
what was given and shared.
While this idea of God’s abundance is emphasized in John, it actually
pervades the entire Bible. Right there on the very first page, the
abundance of God’s gifts in creation is celebrated. When God gives
manna to the Hebrews in the wilderness, there is far more than needed.
The Psalmist celebrates the cup that runneth over. Jesus, again, tells
his disciples in the Gospel of Luke, “Don’t worry about your life –
what you will eat or what you will wear. Think about the birds – they
don’t plant or harvest, they don’t have storerooms or barns, and yet
God feeds them....You’re worth a lot more than the birds. Think about
the lilies – they neither toil nor spin, and yet Solomon is all his
glory was never decked out like one of these. If God so clothes the
grass in the field that isn’t here for long at all, then surely God
will take care of you. So don’t worry.”
But of course we do worry. We worry that we aren’t being responsible
enough, not prudent enough. We worry that there just isn’t enough to go
around, and so we’d better get what is ours and protect it, lock it up
and hang on to it. We’re like the humming birds that come to the
bird-feeder at our cabin. The feeder has room for four birds to dine at
once, and there is an unlimited supply of nectar, because my mother
will see to that. But there are a couple of birdbrains that haven’t
figured it out – they literally gorge themselves, and then they sit on
a branch nearby guarding the feeder, and run off any other bird who
would dare to come and drink. Their orientation is one of scarcity.
We’re often like those hummingbbirds, and we’re also like the quite
wealthy woman I used to call on who lived so frugally that she felt
guilty if she spent a penny on anything that wasn’t absolutely
necessary. She hoarded everything she could; I wouldn’t have been
surprised to find a drawer labeled, “string too short to use.” In a
futile attempt to get her to loosen up I said, “You know Mrs. J., you
have enough money to last till you’re 110.” “And then what will I do?”
she asked. I might add that she is not unlike some churches I have
heard about, the ones who haven’t figured out what it means that most
churches that close, do so with plenty of money in the bank! Like them,
and this woman, we buy into the myth of scarcity rather than celebrate
the fact of God’s abundance. Whether the glass is half-full or
half-empty isn’t the point. Keep that glass away from anyone else who
might want a drink!
For Jesus, the glass is not half-full or half-empty – it’s filled to
the brim and overflowing. There’s more than enough to go around – if we
simply learn to share!
The God that Jesus reveals at Cana acts with extravagance. This God is
recklessly lavish. The amount of wine was astounding. The guests could
drink enough to be completely satisfied and there'd still be enough
left over to fill the hot tub.
That’s the kind of God Jesus reveals through this miracle – a God who
upsets conventional expectations, a God who thinks not in terms of
scarcity - but who asserts that there is more than enough, there is an
abundance of resources, of love, of mercy and joy, of time and
treasure. This God who is revealed to us by Jesus promises that there
is more than we'll ever need in the economy of God's kingdom.
Martin Luther King understood this. There is enough. Freedom and
opportunity for African-Americans does not diminish freedom and
opportunity for whites. Justice for the oppressed does not mean
injustice for the rest of us. It’s not a zero-sum game! The “beloved
community” of which King dreamed and spoke does not have limited
membership; there’s room for anyone who wants to join. And today, by
the same token, we could say that the right of gay people to marry does
not mean there is less respect or value for heterosexual marriage.
There is enough love and commitment to go around . Or as former
President Carter reminds us, there is enough land for Israel and
Palestine to live in peace. Are there enough soldiers to bring
stability to Iraq? Maybe that’s not the right question. Is there enough
good will to win the peace with bread not bombs, with multi–lateral
diplomacy? Are there enough good ideas worth exploring? (I urge you to
read the statement on this matter issued by our UCC President, John
Thomas – either pick up a copy in the narthex or see it at
www.ucc.org.)
Now, I’m not arguing for fiscal irresponsibility. This is the day of
our annual budget hearing, after all! But I have never encountered a
church as abundantly blessed as ours, with resources of talent and
treasure (if not time!); we cannot plead poor! And in the larger sense,
I am asking each of us to think about how we view the world. Is it a
world of scarcity, or of abundance? Is there enough to go around, if we
learn to share? Is God an extravagant giver who created a universe
brimming with all that we need and far, far more? After all, I read
somewhere that 99.9999999 % of the sun's energy output gets wasted on
the vacuum of space, an incredible extravagance, a not very intelligent
design. And yet this solar furnace provides 80-90 % of your home
heating, even if you live in a place where they actually have winter.
And as one writer points out, “our Solar System is surrounded by a
great cloud of comets, packed full of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and
nitrogen – the basic ingredients of steak and potatoes and Guinness
Stout. Enough to feed trillions of people.” One of these days we'll
figure out how to farm them. But in the meantime we have the resources,
if not the will, to feed every single hungry person right here on
earth. For God has created an abundant universe. Do you believe that?
It’s like the question once asked by one time Yale Professor Halford
Lucock, a question repeated in countless sermons, I am sure. Referring
to Jesus’ parable of the Good Samaritan, he asked: is your attitude
that of the thief, that of the Levite, or that of the Samaritan? The
thief’s was: “What’s yours is mine, I’ll take it.” The Levite said,
“What’s mine is mine, I’ll keep it.” The Samaritan said, “What’s mine
is God’s, I’ll share it!” I heard that in a sermon as a teenager, and
have been haunted by it ever since, trying to live a good answer – and
to live this message of a lavish, loving God who says, "You have
enough. You are beloved. Upon you I have poured this blessing." So wake
up and notice it. Believe it and proclaim it. And live out your own
gospel of abundance. As Albert Einstein once noted: "There are two ways
to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is
as though everything is." So maybe there are two kinds of people in the
world after all. Which kind are you?
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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