Jesus is the Life of the Party

John 2: 1-11

January 17, 2010

Epiphany 2

In my position, I’ve seen quite a few weddings.

from an assortment of families and situations.

Some wedding celebrations just click and everything is great

The Wedding at Cana
Nicholas Correa, 1670

My own wedding was very fun, people still talk about it.

Soupy Sales came to our wedding.

(if you don’t know who that is, ask your parents or maybe your grandparents.)

Some weddings have snags and the mood of the party

and can’t seem to recover.

Apparently running out of wine

is one of those snags in Jesus time.

Now we might not find that to be unrecoverable

but in Jesus time running out of wine would mean running

out of good spirits for the marriage.

A shame to the people throwing the wedding.
Bad luck for the couple.

It would have been a cause of gossip for the new family.

And at this time, the best man can’t just drive down

to the liquor store and buy another case.

A big social faux pax.

But still and all, preventing social faux paxs

might not seem like it’s at the top of important

miracles for Jesus to get done in this world.

But like the feeding of the five thousand,

when we deal with miracles of Jesus

we can’t just look at what’s being done,

we have to look at what it means,

what does Jesus show us with this miracle.

  

One of the more significant details

is that the miracle starts with six water jars.

It says they’re jars for the rite of purification,

something that the people listening

would have been familiar with.

The rite of purification before an event

was more than just washing hands for cleanliness,

this was long before there was an understanding

that germs cause illnesses.

Purification was about preparing yourself

spiritually for an interaction with God.

Metaphorically cleansing yourself of the profane

to prepare to ascend to the sacred.

It’s at the root of our own ritual of baptism

And, like our own rituals, sometimes

we can lose sight of the purpose of them.

The ritual can be followed without joy

without feeling it can become a thing you do, a check off the box.

Eventually it becomes empty.

And apparently it had. The jars were empty.

Metaphorically and literally.

Throughout the gospel of John,

John writes about hand cleaning and rituals a lot.

They are never ridiculed, but as he refers to them,

they seem to belong to the past

been replaced by a new order of grace

a new kind of purification.

And that’s what Jesus is doing here.

Jesus takes these jars of ritual 

these empty jars that divide

between clean and unclean,

that separate the sacred from the unsacred,

and makes a new thing.

Jesus doesn’t make a bad thing good.

He makes a good thing better.

He makes something that

doesn’t separate people,

but links all the guests together,

something that is full of spirits, and spirit,

Jesus takes the empty jars

and makes it a celebration.

We are now all purified by the wine

that Jesus shares with us, his own

body and blood and soul and life.

From this miracle, we see

Being a follower of Jesus is less

about counting and separating and rituals

and more about celebration and joy.

Jesus brings life to our party.

The grace of God is not just about providing

the minimal for us to survive,

it’s not just about forgiving our sins

so we don’t get punished.

Grace is about giving us more than that

more than we ever knew we deserved

it’s about abundance.

More than enough for everyone.

But  where has this joy gone,

where is the party atmosphere?

For some Christianity is anything but a celebration.

Somewhere along the line,

we’ve forgotten about this miracle and invitation

to be guests at the party,

And we started counting the sins again,

Dividing the clean from the unclean

counting the places in heaven

and deciding there’s not enough for everyone.

Grace and abundance are scary.

We like a little moderation in all thing

We’d even like to see God follow some sensible rules too.
So we tried to control and forgotten to celebrate.

But Jesus is always making the old new again,

every day, we can bring our empty

jars to him, and Jesus will fill them

with new Spirit, new hope, new life.

Jesus is always starting his ministry again,

Jesus is always turning the water into wine.

There is always more and

the best is at the end.

Every day with Jesus,

our eyes are open and we understand

more of what Jesus is trying to tell us and who Jesus is.

This is the first sign of Jesus ministry

the first glimpse of the reign of God come to earth.

And for first sign of his ministry, Jesus didn’t call a meeting,

he didn’t scold or reprimand, or sit solemnly.

Jesus ministry started at a party.

And from that we learn one simple thing:

Jesus brings life .