John 2:1-12

10/12/08
John 2:1-12
Hudson UMC

Because of my unique situation as a student, I do not always stay as up to speed on the news as I would like to. However, even I am very aware of the economic crisis that is currently gripping our nation and, indeed, the world. The Dow Jones is down over thirty percent from where it was just a year ago. Times are tough and seeming to get tougher for everyone. You know, there was not a stock market in Jesus’ time, nor was there Wall Street, nor were there gigantic financial institutions that could collapse. We might wonder if the Scriptures have anything to say to us in this culture and time that is so far removed from that of Jesus and His disciples. However, we find that, though we find nothing in the Scriptures that address our very specific situation directly, we find that God does, in fact, still have a word for us, even in this well-known passage.

I would imagine that most of the people in this room have heard or read this passage before. It is very famous and is often referenced in wedding liturgies. It is a story of celebration, joy and abundance and the first of Jesus’ miracles. When we look to God for a word in these difficult times, it is not likely that we would come to a place like this first. And yet, as it turns out, this is a very appropriate text to consider in the midst of our financial difficulties because, in its own way, this is also a story of an economic crisis all those long years ago in Cana of Galilee.

If you have ever planned a wedding, one of the cardinal rules is, “Make sure you don’t run out of food and drink”. When Alli and I were planning our wedding, we wanted to make absolutely sure that we had enough food so we planned to feed about twenty percent more people than we actually expected would come, and we had a relatively simple wedding and reception. There are other people who spend tens of thousands of dollars to make sure everything is just right, especially making sure to have enough food. In ancient Israel, weddings were a very very big deal. They were extravagant celebrations in honor of the couple that could last, in its various activities, an entire week. At this particular wedding, the unthinkable happened, the wine gave out. To run out of wine at a wedding would completely damage the celebratory atmosphere. It would have been a source of intense shame for the hosts. Think about being at a lavish wedding, only to find out that you do not get to participate in the festivities because there was not enough for you. When there is not enough, people are left out and spirits drop dramatically.

Now, I was not there, and I do not live in the same culture as the one we are reading about, so I cannot know everything that this implied, but I want to speculate a bit about what this might mean. It seems to me that, if the parents of the couple did not have enough wine, it was not merely an oversight. Weddings call for celebration and in times of celebration, one does not count the cost, but does what is necessary to over-prepare. I do not believe that the parents were just trying to save a bit of money and take a chance, hoping that there would be enough. This is not how weddings are planned, especially in that time and place. Festivals were extremely important in the ancient Jewish culture. I think that, if they ran out of wine at the wedding it was because of some much bigger issue; I think it is entirely possible that the family simply could not afford enough wine. We need to always remember that the middle class is more or less an American invention. It is more than likely that the hosts of this wedding were among the rural poor. In a sense, their entire lives were a economic crisis.

At some point in the multiple day festival, the wine gives out. Mary, the mother of Jesus comes up to her son and tells Him, “They have no more wine”. Jesus, who has not done any miracles yet, who was still living in the low-key, persecution free time before His ministry really kicked off, responds in a way that is somewhat unexpected. He says to His mother, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” The Jesus we know is always ready to help people with their problems, He is willing to heal and work miracles on their behalf, even if they don’t quite understand who He really is. Why would He say something like this in the midst of such a social crisis to His own mother? It might be that He feels that the hosts need to be held accountable for their poor planning and that they need to fix the problem themselves, or He might not want to make the precedent that, any time we want anything, regardless of how little it relates to our relationship with God, that we can “just call good ole’ Jesus, He’s a good sport”. Whatever He might have been thinking, He seems to be resolved that, not only was He not going to solve the problem, but that He was not even remotely concerned about it.

But then we have Mary who, just like a mother, takes a different approach. When she realizes that she isn’t going to get anywhere directly, she simply tells the servants, “Do whatever He tells you”. We have all heard the story read, we all know what Jesus is going to do, but it all starts with the servants being told to “do whatever He tells you”. Jesus is about to ask the servants to do some pretty crazy things, things that would make them feel very foolish and be treated as such if something miraculous does not happen. They had no proof from earlier miracles that Jesus could or would do anything supernatural, but they listened to Mary and did whatever Jesus told them. Are we, as a church, willing to do whatever Jesus tells us? Sometimes, we feel a bit foolish when we do what Jesus tells us to do and we might wish we had a little more proof that He was trustworthy, but will we do what He tells us nonetheless? If we don’t, we can never know what He has in store for our lives and in the lives of those around us, but if we do, we can and we will see the miraculous happen.

So the servants, not sure what to do now that there is no wine, follow Jesus, if for no other reason, than that they have nothing else to trust in. Isn’t that how it is sometimes, that we wait to put our trust in God until there isn’t anything else, when we can no longer trust in ourselves? In any case, Jesus tells them to fill up these six stone jars full of between 120 and 180 gallons of water. Pretend that you don’t know how the story ends. What would you think that Jesus had in mind? Were the wedding guests going to have to drink water instead of wine? “Well, alright Jesus, but it isn’t quite the same. Toasting the happy couple just seems a bit different when we are drinking water instead of something a little stronger.” Jesus then tells them to draw a little bit of the water, and take it to the chief steward. Now, at this point, I know that I would feel a bit uncomfortable. I would have a hard time going up to the person who has much more authority than I do to give him a taste of this water as some kind of substitute beverage for the wine that was no more. And yet, the servant does it and somehow, a miracle takes place. At some point on the way from the water jars to the steward, a radical transformation took place, the water was water no more and had become the finest wine.

We read in our text that, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” This leader that they were following because they believed Him to be the Messiah, turned out to be not simply a charismatic leader, but was also a miracle worker. They had never seen anything like this before; or had they? Did you know that this is not the only time in all of history that God has transformed water into wine? Would you believe it if I told you that God works this same miracle every single year? Every year, rain falls on vineyards all over the world, the grapevines take that water into themselves and transform it into grape juice which is later pressed and fermented into wine. Though this is, in reality, no less miraculous than the event at the wedding in Cana, we don’t tend to notice it quite as much, do we? Why not? Is it not still the transformation of water into wine? Someone might object, “Oh, but this is the natural way that wine is made”. Is it somehow less miraculous because it is also natural? Is it less the work of God because it is done slowly and regularly rather than suddenly in a time of need? I do not think so. I often find myself saying that “familiarity breeds contempt”. The more we become accustomed to something, the less we appreciate it, the less we are awed by it. We see this in small children who want a new toy so badly, only to completely neglect it after only a week or two. We also see this in somewhat older people as well. We like our new cars until they are a few years old, then we want another one. We like our new job until it becomes a new daily grind. Our desire for the latest new thing all too often blinds us to the miraculous that is all around us.

In these times of financial worry, we are reminded of the saying among Christians that “God will provide” and we have all heard stories, even in this very church, of people who have had a need only to have God provide for it in completely unexpected ways. But, you know, God provides for our financial needs all the time. Every time you receive a paycheck, it is a gift from God. Did you know that? It doesn’t always feel like a gift from God, though, because we work for it; and because we work for it, it is all too tempting to believe that, in the end, we deserve it. However, as we as a nation are being reminded, financial security is not a given, it is not a guarantee. Sadly, it is sometimes only when we lose things that we realize that they were indeed gifts in the first place.

Jesus, in this miracle, takes something extremely ordinary and turns it into something extraordinary. The call went out for wine and there was none. In response to this, the servants could have started wringing their hands trying to figure out what they were going to do, how they were going to scrounge up the wine. Instead, they put their trust in Jesus, even a Jesus who had not yet proved Himself to them in the ways they might have liked, and He took their simple obedience and He radically transformed their situation. He opened doors that they did not even know were there and showed them a way that they did not have to be hopeless in a time of scarcity, but could celebrate even in the midst of difficult times.

Our national, and even global economic crisis in which we find ourselves is causing many people to ask the kinds of questions that could have been asked at that wedding in Cana. Why did this happen? Could it have been prevented? What can we do? I am not a market analyst, I cannot speak to the specific reasons why this crisis is happening at this particular time, but I have a few thoughts on our situation in general. You see, we live in a culture that is radically individualistic. We don’t need each other to survive. How we see ourselves is reflected in our foundational national documents. We believe that human beings are individuals of sacred worth and have unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We see ourselves as independent of our neighbors, we don’t see a need for community because we have been told all our lives that we need to look out for number one, that to be so proud that we cannot accept charity is a sign of strength, not weakness. We are all guaranteed the right to pursue happiness and pursue it we do, but we have never really sat down and figured out what it really means to be happy. And so, because of this, we all run our different directions, claiming to be our own, independent people, while we tend buy in to what our culture tells us we just need to have to be happy. When left to our own devices, we Americans have shown that, when we set out to pursue happiness, we set out to gain wealth. Though we have heard, and perhaps even said from time to time, that “money can’t buy happiness”, our actions show that we, at least as a nation, don’t really believe that bit of wisdom. Now that our economy is doing poorly, we feel like we’ve lost everything and cannot be happy. This economic crisis has brought out the “everyone for themselves” attitude that is latent in American culture.

We have been dominated by a perceived need to consume goods and services. We really seem to believe that the one who dies with the most toys wins. But this is not where true satisfaction is found. Our hope as Christians is not in the financial institutions, it is not in our government’s ability to bail Wall Street out, and to be perfectly honest, not in money at all. Our hope is in the fact that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that everyone who believes in Him might not perish but have everlasting life. Not the ones that have lots of money and have a solid stock portfolio, not the ones that have done more good than bad in this life, but those who believe in Jesus, those who put their whole trust in Him, who say, “The world is crashing down around me, I cannot trust in myself or in the things of this world. I cannot save myself, so I trust that you will save me, God, though I have done nothing to deserve it.” This is our hope and it is a hope with an unshakable foundation. No economic recession can change the fact that Christ has died for us; no personal mistakes can place us beyond the reach of the forgiveness and the love of God.

I believe that, though this economic crisis is by no means a good thing, our God, who is able to bring good out of the worst things and the greatest tragedies, can and will bring good out of this as well. Today, we hear the words of Mary, which were spoken to the servants in that time of scarcity in Cana, in our ears, “Do whatever He tells you”. I believe that if we dedicate ourselves to doing whatever the Son of God tells us, we will see God transform our situation by His Holy Spirit. Now, this might come in the form of dramatic and obviously miraculous financial provision, with an unexpected turnaround in New York or by other means. But it might come by other ways. It might be that God transforms our situation by teaching us to live without certain things. It might mean that we, as people who live in a culture that teaches us to be too busy to be Christians, might scale back some of our good recreational activities and spend more time reading our Bibles, praying to God, and in fellowship with the church, the body of Christ.

Though our economic crisis will impact each of us strongly in the days to come, I pray that we can learn some things and grow in the midst of it. To me, the collapse of Wall Street is just further evidence that any hope placed in humanity is doomed to failure. The only hope that can endure, indeed, the only hope that is even real at all, is one that is based on a complete trust in the life, death, and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though we might find our wallets a little lighter for a while, let us remember that our God still loves us and is watching over us. This will be easier for some people than for others. If you have never fully entrusted your life, including your finances, to God, now is the time. You, like the servants at the wedding, might have never experienced the miracles of Christ in your own lives, but I pray that each of us would walk in the faith we see in their actions. Jesus took the obedience of those who were willing to trust Him and brought about radical transformation; He will do it again today. He might not do it in the way we would expect, but will open doors that we never even knew existed and show us that we do not need to be hopeless in a time of scarcity, but can celebrate in the midst of difficult times. Let us pray.
Amen