220116 Lectionary 2C
January 16, 2022
Sermon: “They have no wine."
Rev. Kristian Wold
Dear family of Hope,
Today we have encountered the third of Jesus’ great epiphanies traditionally celebrated by the church. “Epiphany” is a word that means revelation or new insight or fresh understanding. Jesus is “revealed” as the king of nations when the Magi visit him with their gifts. People have a new insight about who he is when they hear the voice from the cloud at his baptism proclaiming him the beloved child. And a fresh understanding of his role and purpose comes to those today who witness his sign of water turned into wine.
And what is that role and purpose? It is to “show forth” God’s favour as proclaimed by Isaiah:
You shall no more be termed Forsaken…
but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her…
for the Lord delights in you…
[For] as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
Today in Jesus the word of the psalmist is fulfilled:
[All people] feast upon the abundance of your house;
you give them drink from the river of your delights.
For with you is the well of life,
and in your light we see light.
This is all big stuff! Epiphany should be a season of rip roaring celebration, fireworks, and dancing in the streets. We have incredible news to share, and it’s for the whole world! Yet this year our Epiphany is muted. Toned down. For here we all are, stuck in our houses while we wait out omicron. We can’t even go to church, much less host large parties for the public to hear the good news of God’s manifestation in Christ.
But wait! Didn’t this last sign of the epiphany take place in just such a setting, and even in just such a muted mood? The changing of the water into wine took place in an ordinary house, and it was witnessed by just four disciples and a few servants. It was in many ways a very small event, and yet it still showed forth the joy, abundance, celebration, and blessing that belongs to the reign of God.
Maybe this epiphany of Jesus can speak to us all the more powerfully today as we gather for worship… in our houses. Maybe we’ll see that our houses, too, can suddenly and unexpectedly become settings for feasts of wedding celebration.
It might be helpful to imagine the scene and setting in which this story was originally told and heard. In a classic commentary called Early Christian Worship (1953), Oscar Cullmann made the case that the stories of John’s gospel were reflections and remembrances of Jesus meant to “show forth” his living presence in and among the community gathered for worship. Imagine you are part of that small group of believers gathered in someone’s house for worship. There are maybe only a dozen to two dozen of you there because houses are not all that big. It’s a Sunday evening and an elder stands up to read the story we just heard. It opens with the words, “On the third day.” And you realize that here you are “on the third day” after Jesus death on a Friday, on Sunday, the day of the resurrection. And you realize that the story you’re about to hear will in some sense be a story about your very gathering, and Jesus’ appearance among you.
No less is this a story about us, gathering in our homes “on the third day,” the Day of the Resurrection.
In the story the people are gathered for a wedding, which is supposed to be a festive and joyous occasion, just as worship is supposed to be a festive and joyous event when everybody is together. But quickly we come to understand that there is trouble. It is Jesus’ mother who notices and comments. “They have no wine.”
Now, to have run short of wine at a wedding – in Jesus time and place – was more than a minor embarrassment. It was catastrophic shame for a family and a village, and a metric of their poverty. It wasn’t just a miscalculation of the number of guests who would be coming to the wedding, or how much they would drink—it was a probable indication of a bad harvest in the previous year and a sign that times were desperate. No wine probably also meant no oil and little bread. All of which Jesus’ mother notices. “They have no wine.”
Imagine our first-century Christian of John’s community looking around their little house church. There weren’t many people there. They needed to gather at night when everybody was off work for the day. They felt oppressed and persecuted by the surrounding Jewish community who regarded them as heretics. Nobody in the group was rich or important in the world. Maybe they felt like they had no wine either. No great thing to offer or bring to the world, no festivity, no celebration.
And maybe we don’t either, these days. Here we are, huddled in our houses. Here we are suffering hardship and deprivation. Here we are, cut off from even being at church together. We have no wine. And maybe it’s even bigger than church and pandemic. To have no wine is all kinds of things. It could be to have no money, no cure, no friends, no strength to get through, no prospects for the future, no hope for the present. No wine is the feeling of desolation you have when everything looks grey around you. It’s the bitterness of defeat, or the sadness you feel when you look around and can’t see any way out or through… whatever it is you are facing. There is no wine in your life.
We come that way, to events that are “supposed” to be feasts and celebrations, but feeling like we have no wine in our life.
Back in the gospel story, Jesus’ mother brings before him the sad condition of the people and brushes past his protest that his hour has not yet come. It has, she says. The hour of your death and glorification on the cross and your resurrection to eternal life, it is true, has not quite come, but it’s time for you to set out on the path that will lead there. To the servants she says, in great faith, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Our first century house church worshipper hears this story, and then he looks at the person who is leading worship. She is a respected widow in the community and the informal leader of the assembly. Her mother travelled with Jesus himself. She explains the text to the people, and what the sermon comes down to is, “Do whatever he tells you.”
And what do the servants do in the story? What does he tell them? “Fill the stone water jars with water.” These are jars used in the rites of purification, a little like our baptism. They fill them to overflowing and bring the water to the steward, who of course tastes wine. And not just any wine, but the very best of wines. Suddenly this very ordinary event of a wedding of plain people in a rustic village becomes the feast described in Isaiah 25:
On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.
We are called, invited, and yea, even commanded, to do whatever our Lord Jesus tells us…
et cetera, ex cordia
Photo by Jametlene Reskp on Unsplash
