Walls, Weddings, and Wine

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 7^th 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.

What is Hidden in Bread and Fish?

Matthew 14.13-21

      The feeding of the multitude: Who doesn’t know something of this story in which what seems at first glance like scarcity, or the lack of “enough” to accomplish a task, is transformed into a story of plenty?

But the truth is, rather than a story of insufficiency, what we have here is a story that instead becomes a tale of abundance illustrated by an overflowing profusion of food produced from only five loaves of bread and two fish.

      This is the only miracle story that appears in all four gospel accounts. Each of the evangelists, therefore, found something profound and necessary for the life of faith and discipleship in this miracle of feeding, especially for the early church.

There is something profound and necessa

ry for the life of faith and discipleship in this miracle of feeding for us as well, especially for today.

We live in a world where scarcity stares us in the face every day. Every message we hear from the world around us is designed to reinforce the idea that there is not enough to go around, and that we need to look out for the bottom line; there is not enough happiness, food, or wealth; there are not enough resources, jobs, or homes. There is not enough for everyone, therefore, the message continues, we need to protect what is ours, we have to keep the “others” out.

       Who among us wouldn’t love to have been on that Galilean hillside? Who wouldn’t love to see such a miracle – even to be part of it? To set our worries of scarcity aside? To witness the scope of Jesus’ care and provision for every last person there, with such an abundance that there were leftovers aplenty?

Yet as we gather each Sunday around the table of goodness and life, we do witness such a miracle. We hear of God’s steadfast love and mercy, of God’s power to provide our every need, even our salvation.

We share in an abundant smorgasbord of God’s compassion, goodness and love, with plenty to go around, and enough left over that God sends us out from this place to share of our bounty and the good news with our neighbors.

      But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because there is more to this story than just a tale of a vast crowd that numbers in the thousands, out in the wilderness of Galilee, where each person present received and ate a satisfying helping of bread and fish in the company of thousands of other men, woman and children, with copious amounts of leftovers to boot!

There is a wider connection than simply the story of a meal, as wonderful and miraculous as that is, for our life of discipleship today.

      Because the story begins not with the feast but with Jesus and the disciples seeking to get away – to be by themselves. Jesus himself goes to a deserted place to be alone. The news has just caught up to them, that John the Baptist had been killed – beheaded by Herod. We can only imagine the sadness, grief and confusion that must have overcome them.

How could this have happened to their friend? How could John be gone, so cruelly murdered? And what did this mean for them? For the ministry of Jesus? For those who followed?

Of course they needed to get away, to tend to the business of mourning, and to grieve the death of their friend. But suddenly they realize that they are not alone. They are not the only ones suffering. The crowds have heard the news as well, and they followed Jesus to be with him, perhaps to have him reassure them that all would be okay, that God was still in charge, that they would be cared for.

It is at this point that, despite his own pain and sorrow, Jesus does what God always does. He has compassion on those who suffer. Jesus literally feels with and for all these people. Jesus cares about their suffering, so much so that he turns aside from his own grief and he cares for them. He loves them. He cures their sick, perhaps as a sign to them that the power of God would prevail against every evil, every earthly power, and every illness in the world.

Finally, as evening approaches, the disciples come to Jesus. They are feeling depleted. The need is great and they just can’t take care of the great need before them. Send them away, they tell Jesus. Tell them to go back to the villages, to go get some supper, to tend to their own needs.

Jesus, who has been caring and loving and healing the people in these crowds won’t send them away, but note that he also doesn’t feed them now. Not by himself. Instead, Jesus sends the disciples to feed them. “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Jesus is telling us the same today. His words have echoed in my mind all week as I have contemplated this message. “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”

Jesus says the same to us today, that despite the voices that surround us, telling us that there is never enough and that we must therefore protect “our own” we have work to do.

Jesus gives us the poor and the lonely, the oppressed and the ill, the weak and the dying, and tells us to show them his compassion. Just as Jesus gives us every blessing in which we partake, Jesus gives us all these as well. And Jesus tells us, “Don’t send them away. Care for them. Give them something to eat.”

In our text, the disciples respond, that they simply don’t have enough. This is crazy, Jesus, we can’t do it. We can’t take care of them. Send them away to care for themselves. Send them on their way so that we don’t have to do this. The truth is that the disciples were weak, weary, sad, and grieving, and they were overwhelmed with the magnitude of what Jesus was asking them to do.

Sound familiar?

When we are exhausted, scared that we don’t have enough to give or that there isn’t enough to go around, Jesus responds to us, “They need not go away; You, tend to them.” And then, Jesus makes it possible for us to follow his word.

In the text today, the disciples didn’t know how this would all work out, but they followed Jesus’ command. They clung to God’s Word. They clung to Jesus and trusted in him, even if, in that moment they doubted how things would work out.

It’s a powerful, beautiful image – struggling, even wrestling with what God has demanded, even as we cling in faith to what Jesus tells us to do; even as Jesus sends us out from the table and from our assembly this day, to do as he has done.

We confess that like the disciples, we are not up for the magnitude of the job. And yet, God invites us to the table and welcomes us to a feast of food and drink that are entirely free – “everyone who thirsts, come to the water; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy….. without money and without price.”

God welcomes us to this table, makes of us a beautiful community and feeds us live-giving food, Jesus Christ. God reminds us that through Christ, when we need it most, God will give us the power and ability to obey.

When we think that we cannot manage, that there is not enough food, not enough resources, not enough of us, not enough within us, God, in love and mercy for all this fallen world, provides just what we need, with an abundance of leftovers.

That is the Good News for us today. That when we follow Jesus’ command, when we join together in unity and faithfulness, God will be with us, making miracles happen, turning our scarcity into God’s abundant mercy. God uses our best efforts and transforms them into the fulfilling of God’s intention for love, peace and justice in the world to ultimately prevail.

God calls us to be partners with God in making fullness of life a reality today for the world that God loves. Let it be so.

Amen.

 

Lotteries, Abundance, and the Promises of God

John 2:1-11 Wedding at Cana

On Thursday it was announced that finally, for the first time since November, winning numbers had been drawn in the Power Ball lottery. At least three winners would split a record jackpot that had grown to something like $1.5 billion.

While for some the news brought great disappointment because their tickets were worthless, for many, the news came as a relief. Not because they had won anything, but because finally, life – and conversation - could return to “before the lottery” normalcy. Because, the truth is that there had been little else to talk about for the past couple of weeks. Right? I know that everywhere I went, it was all I heard about.

Never mind the state of the world, the growing crisis in the Chinese markets which were causing stocks around the world to tremble and fall, or the increasingly wild weather patterns around the world progressively pointing to the build-up of what is perhaps a record-breaking El Niño still strengthening and growing.

Never mind the plight of the homeless throughout the northern hemisphere where winter is bearing down in so many areas, or the refugee crisis that continues to grow. Never mind the growing sense of helplessness for so many who are feeling the pinch but not the solution to the failed health insurance situation.

Rather, in the days before the drawing, the Power Ball seemed to be on everybody’s mind. The possibility of larger-than-life winning jackpots became an obsession. Dreams and schemes developed. Everywhere you went you could overhear or enter into conversations about the big jackpot.

What would you do with the sudden windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars? How would your life change if you fell into such a fortune? Who would be the first person to contact you if word got out that you had won millions? Would you work or would you retire? Would you spend or would you save? How much of the winning money would make you content or fill your need and how much would you give away? In the spirit of full disclosure I admit that although I didn’t purchase a ticket myself, I did my own kind of dreaming, and lots of it ..what if??? It’s fun to dream, isn’t it?

Conversations I overheard or comments I read either fell into the camp of wishful thinking like mine, or judgment against this outlandish form of gambling. Then of course were the often-repeated statistics and cautionary tales of the large percentage of previous multi-million-dollar lottery winners who ultimately went bankrupt, whose lives were ruined, those who regretted ever buying that ticket.

On the day that the drawing took place, as the cumulative winnings for the Power Ball jackpot grew, there was a conversation that took place in the office here at church which reminded me of one of the basic laws of human behavior which I learned in college in my Economics 101 class – that is the principle (paraphrased) that just about the only things we as a people have in unlimited supply are needs and wants. Everything else has limits, which we interpret as scarcity. There is never enough to go around, never enough to fulfill all of our real and perceived needs or wants. As soon as you fulfill one want or need, another comes along to take its place – in unlimited supply – an endless laundry list of essentials. It is the way we are wired. It is part of our human nature.

What catches the imagination of those who dream and scheme about winning fantastic jackpots comes from our very human desire for abundance. We see the possibility of winning millions of dollars for the price of a single lottery ticket as the chance to suddenly have our existence transformed from one framed by scarcity that frustrates and sometimes scares us, to one overflowing with abundance, which we are sure will lead to happily-ever-after, where we will never want – for anything - again.

The gospel text this morning is also a story about scarcity and abundance. What happens at the Wedding at Cana is considered Jesus’ very first public miracle or sign. In the gospel of John, from which the story comes, every sign Jesus performs points to something deeper – they point to his true identity as the Messiah, and to his role as the one who brings into the world God’s very Word, Light and Life of grace which is abundant – in Christ, it is overflowing, in fact.

In this action of turning water into wine Jesus reveals himself to his disciples as God’s own sign and promise of life abundant, of dreams fulfilled. Jesus is the jackpot – the winning sign of God’s love and unmerited favor for God’s people, the very finest gift, appearing at the end of the ages. Jesus is the fulfillment of the hopes and dreams of Israel for a life full of good things and the promise of God fulfilled.

The text tells us that after this miracle at Cana, this sign that Jesus performed on behalf of the bridegroom, this miracle that took Jesus and the partygoers from the embarrassment and humiliation of scarcity to one awash in undeserved and overwhelming abundance, Jesus’ disciples believed in him. Did they know they had hit the lottery? With the coming of Jesus, their hopes and dreams for a new life framed by this abundance of God’s love and of promise fulfilled would be realized – but perhaps not the way they first dreamt and fantasized – at least not at first.

In this story that took place in an insignificant little town called Cana, not only did Jesus change water into wine but in so doing he transformed the host’s crisis of disgrace into a marvelous feast of generosity and joy; not only had he saved everyone there from a miserable and embarrassing end to this story, but he did so by giving the very finest of the fruits of the harvest – saved for the ultimate party – at the last - a reversal of the customs of the day.

In first century Palestine, at a wedding feast which went on at times for upwards of a week, the host would exhaust the stores of the very finest – and most expensive – wines first. Then with the vast majority of the guests sated and many deep in their cups anyway, the cheaper stuff might be pulled out and served. But at this party, God’s economy places the finest tasting wine last.

The narrative here is not simply the telling of a nice story with a happy ending – a fairytale in which the fairy godmother – or father - comes to the rescue, leaving us with the joy we long for. As is the case throughout the scriptures, this story is filled with symbolism relevant for the life of faith and pertinent to the community for whom it was first written as well as for us, still, today.

As Jesus enters the human story, the old religion as it is understood and practiced has grown stale and now fails to reflect the vast abundance of God’s love. I wonder if the same could be said for today?

The wideness of God’s hospitality and the vigor of religious life are gone. Many are left out and turned away from the goodness of the mercy, care and blessing of community as the poor and the powerless, the diseased and the disenfranchised are marginalized – set aside - ignored. God’s people are oppressed by the very institution that God declared should be a source of blessing. The good wine of God’s abundance seems to be exhausted.

Jesus, however, brings change to the old order. Jesus transforms what was old into something new. Jesus provides overflowing vats of wine – more than even a very large wedding party could possibly consume. He transforms the mediocre party into the finest of celebrations. Jesus transforms the scarcity into a blessing brimming with an abundance of the very finest, unprecedented kind. The quality of the wine is superb. It is unexpected. It is unearned. The finest most abundant and generous gift is given when it is least expected.

Frankly, it is sometimes difficult to speak of true abundance in a world where many suffer from poverty, want, disease, injustice, hunger, terror and war. It is difficult to speak at times about the goodness of God’s grace when the reality is that the true scarcity of our lives resides in the depth of our broken hearts, broken systems and broken relationships. It is difficult to think in terms of true universal abundance when there are still so many who are shut out.

But the story of transformative abundance as revealed in this gospel text points to an economy that is new and strange and wonderful. It doesn’t follow human paradigms of extravagant abundance. Rather, God’s measure of love and mercy and promise, present in Jesus, overflow the boundaries of human need. God’s abundance comes to us as grace that surrounds us and fills us with good things.

God saves the finest gift of all to last – where we receive grace upon grace – at the cross.

Abundance begins for each of us at our baptism, and we are reminded of it each time we meet together as we remember God’s revelation in human history within our worship and at the table where we taste and see the goodness of our God; when we celebrate the abundance of God’s grace in the forgiveness of sin. God’s grace is not only sufficient, but it is the jackpot – the undeserved, unmerited, unexpected goodness of life overflowing with good things.

The richest jackpot of our lives is the one not won by chance with the purchase of a ticket, but the one that is revealed to us through the coming of Jesus. May we share this gift with those God places on our path and in our community, that all may know the goodness of sweet wine, the depth of God’s love, and the wideness of God’s mercy. May our hospitality be reflective of the abundance of God’s grace. And may we be ever mindful of the enormous treasure we have received through the priceless gift of Jesus