2nd Sunday after the Epiphany
16 Jan 2022
Weddings are big deals in many, perhaps most, cultures. Jewish families in Jesus’ time were no exceptions. This was not a religious event per se, but rather the result of negotiations between the family of the bride and groom. The wedding lasted seven days. The groom and entourage would go to the house of the bride and bring her to his house, where a weeklong celebration began, with the actual marriage and blessing occurring on the second day. I would imagine it was a great expense for the family of the groom; this wedding must have been one of great import for the people of Cana.
I started wondering. Cana is not that far from Nazareth, but how did Jesus and his mother secure their invites? Friends of the bride or the groom or, in a small town, both? Sounds like they were just two of the regular guests. Jesus had been pretty busy so maybe he was happy to take time to come to a wedding. He had been baptized by John and over the next two days had called his disciples. Now, three days later, the whole lot of them are at a wedding. It would seem all the disciples came from a rather small area, and, like most small towns, there were only a few degrees of separation. I guess that doesn’t matter; maybe the whole village and everyone from the area would be invited anyway. No wonder the wine ran out.
Jesus did not seem to care that the wine had run out. I wonder if he was having a good time talking to old friends, eating, hanging out, listening to the music. He seemed to be oblivious, or at least disinterested, in the fact. Or he really felt it was none of his business. But were that the case there would be no reason for this passage to be recorded! Something else is going on and it is difficult to figure out why Jesus is so reluctant to intervene. His mother tells him simply, “They have no wine.” Now you may think that God, and God’s incarnate son, have a lot better things to do than provide wine for a big party. There is all of Israel that needs Jesus’ ministry. This is small potatoes, or rather small grapes. Providing more alcohol for people to become more and more drunk seems like something that is outside the province of God. And John is all about timing: Jesus’ has a schedule and Cana is not on it.
But the story is there!! John, or for that matter Matthew, Mark, or Luke, are not documentaries or travelogues. John is up to something, and he is revealing something wonderful about God!! God wants us to have a party!! No, I don’t mean a frivolous drunk where we all get wasted, but Jesus didn’t come to tell us we should not celebrate. His ministry was full of celebration, of meals and shared companionship. He came to bring us the Good News that God is full of peace and mercy and love and joy. So why shouldn’t we celebrate? I love that we sit down to a meal after church service; and if someone did come in out of nowhere, they would be fed!! So much time is spent in Christian circles worrying about salvation and who is in and who is our, when the plain truth seems to be that it is here for everyone. We spend so much time pointing fingers, making decisions about the lives of others, that we don’t take time to celebrate God feasting.
He wanted to argue with his mother that he needed to wait; things had to go on a certain schedule. But she argues with her son with the simple statement, “They have no wine.” And so we nudge God, argue with God, question God. Bad things have happened, are happening, and will continue to happen. We don’t have to look far in either time or place to see where things are not right and where they could have been, and could be, made better.
In the end I am left a little uncomfortable by this miracle story. Had I been there at the wedding feast I am sure I would have enjoyed the resulting good wine. Yet I cannot leave it at that. While I argue with God, question God, and even try to nudge God, I know that what I need to do most of all is to listen to God. I come away reassured that God wants the best things for all of us, but that we need to approach God. God you are the Holy one. Give us today the bread we need, guide us, and let us praise you.
Yesterday would have been the 93rd birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. I could not help but think of his life and how his vision was a lot like the wedding feast at Cana, where there was the best wine, everyone was at the table, and God was present.
We have tended to put both Jesus and Martin Luther King on pedestals, safe places where we can admire yet not be close enough to really see and be affected.
In 1984 The British musical group U2 published this song:
In the name of love
One man come in the name of love One man, he come and go One man comes here to justify One man to overthrow
In the name of love What more in the name of love In the name of love What more in the name of love
Early evening, April four A shot rings out in the Memphis sky Free at last, they took your life They could not take your pride In the name of love In the name of love
Maybe we have domesticated both Jesus and MLK instead of following them. Jesus never said worship me; he said follow me. King said the same.
Pastor and writer Ken Sehested says:
“The annual commemoration of Dr. King’s birthday provides a perennial occasion to remember the dream that still beckons both church and civil society. And not just in the US: I’ve listened to children in Baghdad sing “We Shall Overcome” in Arabic, and read similar accounts from the Berlin Wall and Tiananmen Square in Beijing, to South Africa’s Soweto Township. A comic book-style telling of the Montgomery bus boycott, first published in 1958, was translated into Arabic in 2008 and circulated widely during the “Arab Spring” democracy movement in North Africa. Yet Dr. King was not assassinated because he was a dreamer, though the national holiday-makers have largely domesticated and smoothed over the threat he represented. (“The most dangerous negro in the country,” according to the FBI’s assessment.) We forget that by the time he was assassinated, his favorable public opinion polling had plummeted to 33%. We forget that his last major speech, “Beyond Vietnam,” when he openly condemned the U.S. war in Vietnam, he charged that our nation was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world.” After prophets die, we mold their memory to suit our purposes. We ladle praise on them and put them on pedestals—as a way to distance ourselves from them. There is some truth in that old canard: “A conservative is someone who admires a dead radical.” Admiring Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream is not the same as being captured by it.”
I believe we are left with both a promise and a charge: water can become wine; but only if we follow Jesus.
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