Sermon for Sunday, June 15, 2008

THE JESUS WHO LOVED FEASTS AND PARTIES

By

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: John 2:1-12

¹ On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ² Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³ When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine." ⁴ And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." ⁵ His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you." ⁶ Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷ Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸ He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it. ⁹ When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰ and said to him, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now." ¹¹ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

¹² After this he went down to Capernaum with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples; and they remained there a few days.  

About six or seven Sundays ago my wife, Judy, had come to worship at the early service and then had taken our son Todd to the neighborhood Starbucks for his typical small cup of decaf coffee. She was standing in line and overheard a conversation that got her attention. 

A grandmother with her eight year old granddaughter was in line behind Judy and they had apparently just come from church also because they were talking about the Bible. The grandmother was telling the grandchild that the Bible was reliable and important because after all, Jesus had written part of the Bible.

Now if you have been with us at St Andrew for a while or have done any Bible study at all, you know that is not true. Jesus did not write any of the Bible.  In fact the only record we have of Jesus writing anything is in the Gospel of John, which we are looking at this summer, when Jesus kneeled down to the ground and wrote in the dirt while some men were standing with large rocks in their hands waiting to stone a woman, also there in front of Jesus.

 Judy thought for a fleeting moment about speaking to the grandmother and suggesting she look again at a study Bible to get a more accurate understanding of where the Bible did come from and who did write the different parts. She thought for a fleeting moment about that and thought better of it and got her coffee and sat down-probably what I would have done also, though I would have been sorely tempted, sorely tempted to say to the woman that there are some better ideas about where we got the four gospels, and that, here again, a study Bible would prove a tremendous help.

 Most of you already know that the four gospels came from different time periods and have a different purpose for being written. None of them were probably written by any of the original twelve disciples. Mark is the earliest gospel and the shortest. It is full of action. The word “immediately” shows up forty or fifty times in Mark. It gives us a very human picture of Jesus who gets tired, gets frustrated with his disciples. He says when someone addresses him as good teacher, “Why do you call me ‘good’? Only God is good”. Mark tells us about Jesus’ family coming to take him away because people are saying that he is crazy.

 Matthew’s gospel is written at a later time and for the purpose of convincing a Jewish audience that Jesus is indeed the long awaited Jewish messiah. It is in Matthew that we have most of the teaching material that we know of-the Sermon on the Mount, the parables, the version of the Lord’s Prayer that we use mostly. Luke’s gospel is also written later and gives us a Jesus who is the savior of the world-not just his own people, but all people. Luke is full of teaching material also and is the only source for the two most important of Jesus’ parables; stories that, if they were the only parables we had, they would be enough to tell us all we need to know about God and about how God hopes we act toward each other. Do you know what those parables might be about how God is toward us and how God hopes we will be toward each other: the story of the Prodigal Son or the seeking father, and the story of the Good Samaritan.

 John’s gospel is really different as we said last week. We get more emphasis on Jesus’ divinity than his humanity. John leaves out some very important parts of the Jesus story-the virgin birth, the temptation in the wilderness, the anguish in the garden of Gethsemane, the institution of the Last Supper. And John gives us some other unique and very important stories about Jesus that we like very much.

 The story for today is one of those that only appears in this very special, perhaps most spiritual, gospel as one of the early church leaders called the gospel of John.

 Each of the gospels is important in how it portrays the first public acts of Jesus. In Mark he is baptized by his cousin, is driven into the wilderness for a vision quest, and then appears on the shore of Lake Galilee calling people to follow him and to draw people to him. In Matthew we have some birth stories before any of this and then the same stories as Mark tells. In Luke, birth stories begin the Gospel, Jesus is baptized and sent to the wilderness temptations, and then Jesus’ goes to his hometown synagogue where he reads from the prophet Isaiah about freeing the captives and giving sight to the blind, tells the hometown crowd that this story is now coming true in him, and they grab him to take him to a cliff at the edge of town to throw him to his death.

 Here again, the gospel of John is unique: John begins by telling us that what we see in Jesus is the Word, the Logos of God. John tells us that some of the disciples of John the Baptizer begin to listen to Jesus and sign on to follow him around. And then, they go to a party, a wedding, where the wine runs out and Jesus, in the first of eight signs in this gospel that cause people to see he is the messiah, turns 180 gallons of water into 180 gallons of fine wine.

 Let’s take a moment to talk about “signs” or miracles in the Bible. One commentator says that a miracle is any event that produces faith in God-any event that creates faith. Let’s think about that. For many of us, the birth of a baby, the creation of a whole new, unique person from the love between two other unique persons, is a miracle and is a sign that brings us closer to God. We hear that report in every new member session-that we have felt close to God at the time of birth.

 In the Bible the purpose of a miracle is to create faith and to show, in the person of Jesus, that God’s power is at work through this person. Jesus’ ministry did include miracles, healings, other similar phenomenal events, but Jesus did not come to perform miracle after miracle. In fact when some people asked him to show some miracles, some tricks, he refused, just as he refused to be primarily a miracle worker messiah when the tempter invited Jesus to throw himself off the 200 foot tall pinnacle of the temple so the angels could rescue him and people would be impressed. His ministry was not primarily about miracles and we showed that in the true false survey about Jesus from last Sunday’s bulletin insert.

 The other point about miracles is, the wrong question to ask about miracles, in my opinion, is this: how could that happen? Or did it actually happen this way? We can never know the answer to these questions and they will hang us up and keep us from growing toward God if we focus on them. The most important question to ask is, what does this story mean? What does it mean that the early Jesus movement talked about Jesus calming the storms on the lake, or walking on top of the chaotic waters of the lake? That water represented chaos and destruction-disorder and danger. The story is most helpful when we see that Christ can help us get on top of the chaos and danger in our lives when we need that help and that is the importance of the story we will look at in some detail in a few weeks.

 Jesus is at a wedding. It is a joyous and happy occasion. Weddings can also be times of mishaps and even humor. If we had time we could share some stories of mishaps that ministers have seen or even caused at weddings, and any time you get a group of clergy together and give them a chance to share stories about weddings or about mothers of the brides who are sometimes a source of stories, you will be surprised and amused. We don’t have the time for that now, but if you are interested, you can find some wedding stories in the Rev. Robert Fulghum’s books-his first book was “Everything I Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten”.

 Weddings in ancient times were fabulous events. The wedding feast/celebration lasted seven days-seven days of dancing and feasting and good and plentiful food. Most people did not eat meat except on special occasions like a wedding. The food intake for 90% of people in the first century was very meager-some cheese, olives, bread, small fish. But at a wedding there was meat and plenty of other good food and there was an abundance of wine. It was a great and joyful party. And in the Hebrew Bible, the coming of the messiah was compared to a wedding banquet, a wedding party.

 There are two other elements in this story that we need to explain. When Jesus’ mother suggests to him that he help the embarrassed host with the problem that the wine is all gone, Jesus directs the servants to fill up some huge stone water jars with water. Those jars are around for the purpose of the washing ritual of purification. Jews were required to perform ceremonies of hand washing in a very prescribed fashion. And you may remember that Jesus and his friends are criticized by the Pharisees in another story because they are not washing themselves according to the prescribed rituals in Jewish law.

 The third element that needs attention is what the wine stood for. Wine in Judaism was a sign of joy and celebration. In the book of the prophet Amos, we read of a time in the future when God will restore the glory and power of Israel and the mountains and hills will flow with wine. Wine means joy and celebration. It is not an invitation to drunkenness or alcohol abuse, it is a sign of abundance and happiness. Maybe even these folks had some idea of what we know from current research-that red wine IN MODERATION-has some health and longevity benefits.

 That is what the gospel of John tells us in this first sign of Jesus-something radically new is happening in Christ-the old flat water of ritual and ceremony is now being replaced by the wine of joy, the best wine available, joyful celebration that will never run out. The best has arrived and it has arrived in abundance.

 This gospel says that God is doing something really different, really new in Christ. God is doing something really dramatic to replace the boring flatness of life or even of some religion-God is sponsoring a feast, a party.

 Most of us are still getting to know Jesus. Does this story fit into your image of Jesus, Jesus at a party, a feast (one of 6 times this Gospel shows us Jesus at a feast/celebration)?

 Is your image of Christ stern and sour and dour and condemning? Or is it the image that John’s gospel gives us of a laughing Jesus, Jesus at the feast?

 This first story in John’s gospel says that God wants to give us joy and abundance and the best life possible-that is what Jesus says later on-I have come so you might have life and have it abundantly, in all its fullness.

 Let me close with a sentence from Jesus in the beginning of this gospel. He is being followed by some of the friends of John the Baptizer. They have heard John the Baptizer tell them that Jesus is the lamb of God and they set off after Jesus. One of them was named Andrew who later brought his brother and many others to Jesus-our church namesake of course. When Jesus saw that two fellows were trailing him, he turned around and asked them, “What are you looking for?”

 It is his question to us as well. What are you looking for? Are you looking for a meaningful life, a life that makes a difference, a life that is not just about affluence and accumulation and achievement and appearance but a life that counts? What are you looking for? John’s gospel gives us an invitation to follow-not just admire but FOLLOW a teacher and savior who is the source of meaning and abundance and the best life possible, a savior and teacher who really is the bread of life and the light of the world. Have you accepted that invitation yet? Here it is!

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