Life Hungers to Abound

John 2:1-11

Preached by Rev. Trina Zelle

I love it that Jesus’ first miracle was to save a party from ending early.  Back then, as now, wedding celebrations in the Middle East were huge occasions, representing a high point in village life.  Unlike the comparatively sedate events we call weddings, these celebrations took place over several days, involving friends and large extended families – the more the merrier -- with massive amounts of food and drink. Running short on wine was unthinkable and would be one of the most embarrassing things that could happen to a host.  By comparison, I remember when I was a college student and a bunch of us decided to show up for a college friend’s wedding.  We had been invited but were not expected.  Her parents were obviously appalled that so many extra guests were there and not at all happy with our presence.  Looking back, we were wrong in thinking that our arrival would be a delightful surprise but I can’t help but wonder if we would have been treated differently if this had taken place in the Middle East – or even the Serbian section of Cleveland – where the obligation to show hospitality trumps everything else.

In any case, back to this wedding.  Here comes Jesus to the rescue!  Why does he finally agree to do it?  To save his friend from soul crushing humiliation?  That might be Mary’s motivation when she drafts Jesus into service – and I’ll bet there’s more than just a touch of maternal pride in her request as well (don’t worry – my son will help you – you should have seen him at the Temple when he was a boy!) --  but I don’t think that’s why Jesus does it.

I think Jesus changes this water, which had been set aside for ritual purification purposes, into wine for two reasons.  First – to keep the party going.  And second, as the first miracle of Jesus’ ministry, to signal in unequivocal terms that God has created us – all of us -- for abundant and joyful life .  Hmm.  Party.  Abundant, joyful life.  Actually, this might just be two different ways of saying the same thing.  Despite all of the events in the bible that might indicate that God is pretty irritable and has a hair trigger temper, we also read how, time after time, God says and does things to indicate that a big, cosmic party is being thrown in our honor --  all we have to do is show up. 

A couple of examples.  In the book of Deuteronomy, the Israelites are given detailed instruction as to the proper worship of God after they have entered the promised land.  First, they are to take the first fruits of their harvest to the priest as a sacrifice – but then all of this food is to be used in a giant potluck that includes everyone in the community.

Or, how about Jesus’ parable about the host who throws a big party, but no one comes – isn’t that a nightmare we all have from time to time --  everyone is too busy to attend.  Does he postpone or cancel the party? Or wonder why no one seems to like him? No.  he goes out into the street and invites everyone he runs into regardless of social status or even whether or not he knows them.  According to these and other examples, It would seem that as far as God is concerned --  in the words of the great country singer, Robert Earl Keen – the road goes on forever, and the party never ends.  

But so many of us seem not to have gotten the message.  Think of all the grim if earnest religious groups over the years who have remained suspicious of bright colors not to mention anything approaching riotous celebration.  Even for those of us today who reside at the  progressive end of the spectrum.  Perhaps we’re OK with bright colors but we don’t really trust religious expression that’s too happy.  I understand why.  As people of faith and conscience, acutely aware of the grotesque excess and hideous suffering in our world, we suspect that over-the-top celebration is neither a faithful response nor an appropriate one in a suffering world. How can we make a joyful noise unto the Lord when children are dying in Haiti?  How can we affirm, much less rejoice in God’s extravagant generosity in a world so riven with need. 

How dare we not?

Years ago – I mean years ago -- when our oldest was an infant and in need of baptism, my spouse and I decided that it was time to go back to church.  We were still living in our college town and the campus church – Westminster Presbyterian -- where I had been an elder during my undergraduate years, was the obvious choice.  Especially since renowned preacher and poet J. Barry Shepherd had just begun his tenure as its senior pastor.  This should have been a slam dunk decision.

Except for one thing.  Rev. Shepherd’s church was in the middle of one of those nightmare church fights.  You know – fights that make perfect sense to everyone whose enmeshed in them but are totally baffling, and perhaps a little comical, to people on the outside looking in.  In the case of my prospective church, battle lines had been drawn over whether to offer wine as well as grape juice at communion. The congregation was so divided and the conflict was so intense, that Rev. Shepherd had decided that a season of  corporate repentance was called for. His method?  Serve water at communion instead of either wine or grape juice. 

This did not seem like a promising scenario for a young couple with an infant and life issues to deal with -- so we joined the Episcopal Church up the street where wine – or spirits of any sort actually – was never an issue.

Over the years, I have come to view this incident as a metaphor for what has happened in so many of our churches.  Even in the absence of church battles, we have managed to turn the wine of Jesus’ miracle  back into water --  desacralizing the holy, draining away the joy and settling for a faith that might point us in the right direction but can never move us beyond ourselves and into the presence of the holy.  It might have seemed like a grand and poetic gesture on the part of the preacher to force the people of his congregation into such extreme penance, but what it did was signal to two young people in the midst of their own need and crisis that there was nothing for them there.  Calvin defined the church as the place were the gospel is rightly preached and the sacraments rightly administered.  For that period of time, the Presbyterian church in Wooster Ohio was not really church – just a gathering of people who couldn’t get past their own issues to the suffering that lay just outside their walls.

People in need, need companionship and support and the joyful wine of God’s redemption – not purification rituals.

The muted tone in many of our middle class churches is especially puzzling when you consider the joy that is evident in so many impoverished communities of faith.  Logically, it makes no sense.  We have the stuff but they have the joy.  What gives?   

I think that it has something to do with our understanding of poverty and our confusion as to what should make us happy as opposed to what actually does.  A very wise man once explained to me that there are  three kinds of poverty:  poverty of relationship, poverty of meaning, and material poverty.  Everyone at some point experiences one of these three.  Our materialistic world view only recognizes one – which is, perhaps, one reason that it is difficult to establish significant relationships with the objects of our charity.  We lack the self-knowledge and thus the humility to understand our own impoverishment, or the wealth of relationship and meaning that those experiencing material poverty might possess.  We, or at least I, tend to assume that people in need, are in need because of some inadequacy on their own part.  Or, that material impoverishment is somehow accompanied by a lack of insight or knowledge.

But I have been brought up short, this week, by the comments and actions of ordinary Haitians, caught on tape and camera, amidst the excruciating images of the suffering in Haiti. Speaking English – not their first language – to our reporters.  Showing great resourcefulness and courage digging people out of the rubble.  And, despite their desperation, reading what they thought was the expiration date on the food that was brought in and objecting. These people may be poor but they are neither stupid, nor ignorant.  We need to come to their aid with a sense of respect and mutuality rather than with the corrosive attitude of pity which tends to diminish and objectify.

We can see this mutuality in interviews with the on the ground aid workers who know and love and respect the people of Haiti.  There is no sense of “we and they” in their comments. They are in relationship with the people they are there to serve.  By contrast, the majority of supplies are bottle-necked at the Port au Prince airport along with outside relief workers who are afraid to venture out.  Just like New Orleans.  Because, as General Honore says, we are afraid of poor people – especially big groups of them.  We confuse poverty of material possessions with other kinds of poverty and treat them as a different species.

And what does this have to do with the wedding at Cana and the significance of Jesus turning water into wine?  Just this: shared celebration, perhaps even more than shared sorrow, is the great equalizer.  It brings us into relationship.  It helps us set aside the superficial differences that separate us.  We are saying that the same things make us happy.  That we have the same need.  That we are all simply guests at God’s big party. 

There’s a joke among Presbyterian preachers that a Presbyterian sermon consists of three points and a poem.  I’m not sure how many points I just made but I do want to share a poem with you that I think says it all.  We can’t let the darkness overcome the light.  We can’t let death have the last word.  Sometimes all we can do is embrace life.

A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

Amen.