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Good to the Last Drop: Tasting the Fruit of
the Lord
A sermon by Dr. Scott Spencer
First Baptist Church, Richmond, Virginia
Sunday, June 3, 2007
John 2:1-11
Graduation from high school represents a major transition in our
society from youth to adulthood, ending one extended stage of development and
commencing another. It signals a new beginning, fresh opportunities for growth.
Another watershed crossing for
many young adults, not unlike graduation, is marriage—leaving behind one phase
of life and embarking on an exciting and challenging new venture, this time
joining two lives in covenant partnership.
Appropriately, we mark these big transitions (graduation and
marriage) in style with big ceremonies, a bit of pomp and circumstance. And
given the high significance of these banner occasions, everything must go just
right—which means, of course, that it never does! Weddings are especially
notorious for something always going wrong—an irrepressible monument to Murphy’s
Law.
My own wedding 33 years ago
(yesterday) was in the backyard of the church parsonage. We had to have it
there because a few weeks before a church member (I kid you not) burned down the
sanctuary—not a good omen for our ensuing marriage. Anyway, we pressed on and
had the wedding outside in the middle of a hot June afternoon in south Texas—a
blazing 100 degrees Farenheit in the shade.
At least it didn’t rain. No, that was reserved for the first
Virginia wedding I performed four summers ago in the back yard of a Richmond
home. With ink running down the page on my script, I valiantly married that
young couple in the rain.
Or at least I thought so. I said all the right words, signed all
the right papers—only to find out the next week I was not “legal” in the state
of Virginia. I had not officially registered my ordination credentials and had
to go to court. And until I did, this poor couple would not be issued a valid
marriage license. So I had brought two people together “illegally” who were
“living in sin” (wonderful).
We finally got it sorted out—but it reminded me again: whatever can
go wrong at weddings . . . WILL.
It’s been going on a long time. The wedding at Cana of Galilee
attended by Jesus and his mother—probably the wedding of a relative—had a
problem: they ran out of wine.
Now this may seem like a fairly
minor glitch, but remember, everything is pumped up at weddings. The pressure
is on. And, if anything, it was even more intense in ancient middle-eastern
culture where such celebrations were taken very seriously.
If the host failed to provide
wedding guests what was expected—such as sufficient wine—he could be subject to
a law-suit and liable for a stiff fine. More than social awkwardness or
embarrassment were at stake. Family honor was on the line.
Beyond any social and legal repercussions, running out of wine at a
wedding party did not bode well for the ensuing marriage. Wine represents vigor
and vitality, jubilation and rejuvenation—a hopeful symbol of a vibrant,
fruitful life together for the young couple embarking on their new journey. To
run out of wine before they get started puts a damper on the whole affair.
So we have a real problem here—that Jesus marvelously
solves—salvaging the wedding, supplying the requisite wine, starting the couple
off on the right note of joy, hope, and vitality—a promising commencement.
What exactly does Jesus do here? I want us to consider both the
process and the product of this first miraculous sign Jesus performs
in this Gospel.
The process
begins with a provocative exchange between Jesus and his mother. She discovers
the wine shortage and succinctly tells her son—“They have no wine”—with the
maternal implication that Jesus should do something about this problem.
That’s certainly the way Jesus
takes her statement. He assumes she’s making demands on his time and
attention—and he responds rather abruptly, even rudely, some might say: “Woman,
what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Or more
literally: “What to me and to you, Woman”—or: “What it’s to you, Woman.”
I would never dare call my
mother “Woman” to her face or behind her back for that matter. But in this
culture, it was a perfectly acceptable, polite way of speaking to one’s mother
or any other woman—a tad formal, perhaps, but acceptable.
Still, Jesus resists his
mother’s concern. He lets her know that even she cannot presume on his
ministry. She cannot snap her fingers and order him to hop to and do her
bidding.
Jesus’ response goes beyond the
adolescent rebel cry—“You can’t tell me what to do. You’re not the boss of
me”—and it’s also more than an adult son’s natural pulling away from his
mother’s apron strings. Jesus is Son of God as well as Mary’s boy. What he
does and doesn’t do is ultimately God’s business. God’s schedule—that’s what is
meant by “my hour”—controls Jesus’ actions.
Mary doesn’t dispute that, but
she still presses on and gets Jesus to deal with the wine crisis. Mothers can
be very persistent and persuasive. But Jesus’ mother makes a key statement
preparing for Jesus’ work. She tells the wedding servants: “Do whatever he
tells you.” She doesn’t back down. She assumes Jesus will take care of the
problem, but she makes clear that he will do it on his own terms.
Do whatever he tells you.
Good advice. Jesus is present with us to meet our needs, to supply what we run
out of—maybe patience with a longstanding hardship, love for a
troublesome family member, or options in some pressing life decision.
Jesus is there when we run low or run dry.
But Jesus’ help comes in all
kinds of ways through all kinds of means according to all kinds of timetables.
His grace and power come not as a computer program you download and then click a
few icons—but rather through a dynamic, growing, faithful relationship with the
Lord of life. Do whatever he tells you—there’s
your program.
So what does he tell the wedding attendants? Pointing to six huge
stone water jars used for “Jewish rites of purification,” he says, “Fill them up
to the brim with water.” And they do. Then Jesus says, “Draw some out
and take it to the chief steward.” And they do. And when the steward
tastes it, it has considerably more tang than water. This is wine. The water
has become wine—this water originally set aside for washing hands and utensils
according to Jewish purity customs.
Why do the miracle this way? A
common interpretation holds that Jesus is symbolically replacing the old,
stagnant Jewish water with his new, bubbly gospel wine.
But I think that’s off-base and
unfair to Jesus and Judaism. Jesus is a devout Jew. He regularly goes to
synagogue and temple, honors the Jewish scriptures, worships and prays to the
God of Israel—and there is no reason to think he doesn’t wash himself with water
at this wedding, according to the custom.
These Jewish “purification
rites,” as they’re called, were not forgiveness rites. No one thought
they were washing away sin. Only God could do that. Rather these were
holiness acts, setting people apart from the world for service to God.
Symbolically, they were washing off the world’s grit and grime to enter into
God’s sacred presence. In our story, the wedding ceremony is a worship
service—a sacred act joining two people for life in the presence of a Holy
God.
That’s what the water rites were
all about—and Jesus was all for that. If he wanted to STOP or REPLACE these
practices, he would have smashed the jars or knocked them over or poured out the
water on the ground. But instead he uses the water, increases it (fill
it to the brim) and revitalizes it (changes it to wine). He’s renewing
his Jewish faith, not replacing it.
It’s easy my friends, for
various reasons, to become frustrated with religious institutions and
obligations—to lose their joy and vitality. And in our disposable society, if
it doesn’t work—throw it out and get a new one. That might work OK with
toothbrushes, but not religion.
Jesus’ challenge in this scene
is to work within the system to bring about rejuvenation and
revitalization. With our own Christian faith, we do well not only to appreciate
our fundamental Jewish roots, but also our Protestant-Reformation heritage—semper
reformanda: always reforming—growing, developing, adapting, adjusting—in
faithful connection with our foundations and traditions.
Having explored the process of
Jesus’ miracle at Cana, we now consider the
product. This is the fun
part.
Notice first how much
wine Jesus provides. In an instant, we go from no wine to new wine—lots
of it. Not a cup or a bowl or a bottle—but six huge pots (kegs, if you will)
with capacities of 20-30 gallons, filled to the brim with wine.
The transformation is not merely
from deficiency to sufficiency, but from utter- absence to super-abundance:
dramatically illustrating claims about and by Jesus elsewhere in this gospel:
“From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” “I have come
that you might have life and have it more abundantly.” A hundred and
fifty gallons or so of new wine is plenty full and abundant.
Now the message of this sign at
Cana is not, as some would have it, a promise of overflowing prosperity and
dramatic reversal of all our ills—“When you’re down to your last dime or drop,
hitting the heavenly jackpot is just around the corner.” That’s more Ed McMahon
than Jesus of Nazareth. There’s no cheap solution here, no success formula:
take 6 pots, fill with water, pray to Jesus, dip in ladle—and voila: new wine!
No magic here. But there is
hope, vital hope. I like the way one writer put it commenting on this
incident—“When we reach the end of our resources we have not reached the end of
all possibilities.”
Along with how much wine
Jesus supplied at this wedding, we must also not miss how good the wine
tasted.
The chief steward samples this
new wine and says to the groom, “You know, normally, you serve the good stuff
first. Then after a while, taste buds become less discriminating, and pretty
soon, the party guests don’t care that much. But this new batch is the tastiest
yet. You’ve saved the best for last.”
I’m no connoisseur—but I’m told
that some wine is better than others. Among other things, it has to do with the
aging process: older is usually better. Well, in the present case, Jesus’ new
wine about as young as you can get when the steward tastes it. But it’s
still the best. Jesus not only provides a super quantity of wine; he
supplies a superior quality as well—that transcends time.
A few years before Helen
Mirren’s Oscar-winning portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II, she starred in a
wonderful movie called Calendar Girls (It’s NOT what you think—at
least not entirely). It’s based on a true story of a middle-aged women’s
religious organization in an English village who got together for fellowship and
charitable projects.
At the end of every year, they
put together a pictorial calendar, illustrated by photographs of some local
landmark or scenery. They sold the calendars to raise funds for some worthy
cause. A nice idea, but usually not very successful.
One year, however, they wanted
to make a real contribution for a change to support a local hospital that
recently cared for one of the women’s husbands during his final days with
cancer. So as a tribute to this woman and her late husband, they decided on a
rather “personal” calendar project—posing nude (not “naked,” they were
insistent on that) behind various props like a tray of baked goods or table of
knitting notions. In turn, a dozen “WMU”-type women became Miss January, Miss
February, and so on.
Well, well. What kind of women
are these! Women who determined in their mature years to do something a little
crazy, to keep their zest for life, to honor a lost friend and raise money—to
the tune of several hundred thousand dollars—to conquer a dreaded disease.
But you know what really
motivated them? It was a poem the dying husband wrote to his wife. A gardener
by trade, he aptly developed a metaphor about a flower’s growth and how each
phase—from seed to stalk to bloom to flower (he especially loved sunflowers)—was
more beautiful than the one before. That’s precisely how he felt about his
wife—each year she had only grown more beautiful, more special, more dear to
him. She had saved the best for last
(as indeed all these women had).
Whether you are a new high
school graduate or a bit further down life’s road, the best is yet to come. The
blessings of God are fresh every morning, never stale or stagnant. “O taste and
see that the Lord is good” (the Psalmist says)—and continues to shower us with
goodness all the days of our lives.
Jesus saved his best for last,
offering himself—body and blood—as the greatest expression of God’s self-giving
love the world has known. And he invites us to God’s table, as he did his
followers at the LAST Supper, to taste of his love and goodness.
Taste his body as you would
taste bread—a loaf made with bitter herbs reminding us of Christ’s abused,
beaten, and broken body—but ultimately leaving the fresh taste of new life in
our mouths that his death and resurrection make possible.
Taste his blood as you would
taste wine—a heady brew that burns and bites reminding us of Christ’s innocent
blood brutally shed for sinful humanity—but ultimately invigorating and
transfusing us with the new life of Christ pulsing through our veins.
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