John
2:1-11 – Weddings and Walls
We hear a lot about walls these days.
Walls that should be erected, walls that should come down, physical walls and
virtual walls, and both the costs and opportunities walls may represent.
No, I am not going to talk about THAT wall – this is
not a political speech, although we
will talk about commonalities in all the walls that exist in our lives, and how
in Jesus Christ those walls crumble and fall.
Walls are nothing new – that much is obvious. The
oldest wall discovered so far was built about 11,500 years ago in Mesopotamia,
modern-day Turkey. The Great Wall of China is considered one of the world’s
greatest architectural feats, the first sections of which were built in the 7th
century, B.C., with the bulk of it being constructed during the Ming Dynasty in
the roughly three centuries beginning in 1368.
Robert Frost once wrote in one of his poems that “good
walls make good neighbors.” Too often,
that is just how we view the barriers that we put up – as being only good.
Martin Luther King, Jr., whose work we celebrate in a
national holiday tomorrow said in speeches delivered in 1964 to both West and
East German audiences, “For here on either side of the wall” and of course, he
was referring to the Berlin Wall, “are God’s children, and no man-made barrier
can obliterate that fact.” Those are words to remind us that regardless of what
kind of walls we are facing, God is with us and God can remove our need for the
walls we put up, and bless us in our relationships with people, for, “In Christ
There is No East or West, in him no north or south!” as sung in an old African
American spiritual found in our hymnal.
And yet, there still exist all kinds of walls in our
lives. Some are composed of bricks and mortar, some of stone, some of computer-generated
protective layers of technology we call firewalls. Perhaps the most damaging of
all walls are those of heart and mind. What I would like to talk about is what
lies behind our building of walls and how it relates to our gospel today.
Often we use that word – “wall” – to refer not only to
the physical walls in the world, but to the limits of what we think we are
capable of, or the threshold of our patience or endurance, or the
externally-imposed restrictions on our movement or freedom, even our progress
in something challenging.
The thing that most often comprises or causes walls to
go up is fear.
I can recall times in my life when I definitely felt
like I had hit a wall. I can also identify the fear that drove me to the wall.
It was often the fear of failure of some kind – like the time I took a two-week
intensive in biblical Greek, in what was called “Greek Boot Camp” at the
beginning of seminary and as the mid-term arrived I was sure I would fail.
It was fear of not being good enough, smart enough, or
spiritual enough that kept me – for way more years than I like to admit – from
answering God’s call to ordained ministry in the first place.
Then there were the times as our children grew up and
they were struggling with profound difficulties; I feared not being able to
help them in ways that would make a lasting difference in their lives.
It was fear of being judged and fear of being incapable
of being on my own that kept me for too long in an abusive first marriage.
Walls, built by fear, and fear is often driven by the
principle of scarcity the guides the world. It’s the principle of the “not
enough.”
This is the deep conviction that we aren’t enough, or we don’t
have enough, or that there is not
enough to go around. The principle of scarcity leads to protectionism – we
protect ourselves from the embarrassment of not “being enough” by simply not
engaging; we protect ourselves from our fear of not “having enough” of what we
need or want by holding tightly to what is ours; and we protect ourselves from
the fear of there not enough by grasping at what we fear will not be available
later if we don’t get it now. All of this fear drives us to the wall. We can’t
get over it, we can’t get around it, but we can – and do – hide behind it.
Of what are you afraid today? What kinds of walls
might you be erecting around yourself because of fear? What fear-driven
barriers do you need help overcoming? Jesus is here to break the tight hold of
fear and offer us a life of abundance beyond our imaging.
Jesus came to conquer our fear and to break down the
walls that divide us as people. Jesus came to eradicate the walls that keep us
from being the people God created us to be. If we doubt that Jesus is capable
of penetrating our well-constructed walls, we have only to look at the gospel
today to see how God, through Jesus, is revealed to be our “enough.”
Imagine, if you will, that you were throwing a big
party – perhaps even a wedding reception for your son or daughter, like the
friends of Mary and Jesus were throwing in our gospel lesson. Imagine what it
would be like if, just an hour or so into the reception the dessert bar was
empty and the drinks bar had run out of wine and liquor. The humiliation!
Imagine living in an honor/shame society where keeping
face and maintaining your good standing on the honor side of things was of
supreme importance - the shame you would suffer from such misstep would be
enormous. The embarrassment! Your fear
of not being a good enough host or hostess or of being judged as not having
enough resources to afford feeding all your guests just got reinforced.
Given the fact that wedding feasts typically ran for
days and often as long as a week in Jesus’ time, what happened at the Wedding
at Cana would be a lot like that experience. Halfway through the party, you
have lost the ability to provide for your guests, your family, and your
children, and you’ve lost that ability in a very public way.
John tells this story in his Gospel at the very
beginning of Jesus’ ministry to highlight how, as God sent Jesus into the world
and as Jesus begins his teaching and preaching and healing, we should have no
doubt that what John writes about Jesus is true. In the miracle of changing the
water into wine, Jesus shows that the fear we bear of “not enough,” in him,
becomes an overwhelming supply, not only of “enough,” but of the very finest
provisions.
In this twenty-first century world, our motto might
well be “there’s not enough.” Whether we are thinking of food, water, shelter,
money, or love, the repeated messages that there is not enough to go around
reinforce our fears. This fear infects all segments of society – home, family,
church, work, nation, world. In an increasingly insular world, where we
function in a “it’s a dog-eat-dog world and we need to grab what we can first,”
this text invites us to stop, and to look at what Jesus is doing.
Jesus takes a moment of supreme fear for the stewards
who were charged with making sure they ordered enough wine and turns it into a
story of abundance and wonder as they marvel that the very finest of wine – and
so much of it – would be provided for the second half of the feast, assuring
that all who attended not only “got enough” but were well-pleased at being
filled with such a fine provision of food and drink to the end.
This gospel story reminds us that the magnificent,
inexplicable love of God is a gift that is abundant and satisfying. God’s
generosity moves us from wanting to satisfied, and from fear to fullness. In
God walls are unnecessary, because in Jesus God provides for our every need.
Because God loves us we need never fear not being good
enough, bright enough, rich enough, or loved enough. In the baptism that we
remembered last week, God takes each of us and declares that in his eyes we
will always be enough upon which his love and mercy and grace will rest. Each
of us has been miraculously willed into being by God and saved through God’s
grace. Therefore, we have no need to fear. As theologian Walter Brueggemann
puts it, “the story of abundance says that our lives will end in God, and that
this well-being cannot be taken from us. In the words of St. Paul, neither life
nor death nor angels nor principalities nor things—nothing can separate us from
God.”
Of what are you afraid today? In what ways is God
providing abundantly for you in the midst of your fear?
When water was changed into wine at the wedding at
Cana, Jesus proclaims the radical abundance of God. The wine is copious. God’s
love is unending. God’s mercy is without parallel. God’s forgiveness is
eternal. Just as the quality of the wine in Cana is not just adequate but is
“the best,” in Jesus, God grants us not just a better story but the best. God
gives us new creation, new life, new possibilities, new and eternal hope.
Trust that regardless of what fears you may be holding
inside, and regardless of where you fear the judgment of “not enough,” God has
already answered your scarcity with abundance – with overflowing answer to your
prayer – with unending healing of your pain.
In Jesus, God is revealed and shines forth as the one
who answers the myth of scarcity with a powerful new narrative, filled with
abundant new life in Christ. may we learn to trust in the abundance of God,
relinquish our fears, and live new lives shining forth with the generosity of
faith and love, in Christ. Amen.
