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Sermon 3/7/04
Had It Up to Here - John 2:1-11
preached at the quadrennial meeting of the Northeastern Jurisdictional United Methodist Women, in Baltimore, MD
Our gospel reading, the story of Jesus changing water into wine at the wedding in Cana, is hopefully a story that is familiar to you. In fact, if you attend a church that follows the lectionary, you might remember that this passage came up in the cycle just two months ago, on January 18th. But, as is the blessing and challenge of God's Holy Word, we never seem to exhaust any text, familiar or not, of meaning for our lives.
Every time we read the Bible, we bring to the scriptures our own unique perspective and experiences with us when we read. That's the amazing gift of God's Word: the scriptures meet us as we are, where we are, works with us and in us and through us, that we can never exhaust the Word of meaning for our lives. The rich will come with one way of reading, the poor another. People of color hear something unique in God's word, Anglo readers find something else. Young readers hear stories in one light, experienced readers catch different nuances. And so, as women, we bring our own set of experiences to the text, our own sense of identity and responsibility. As a woman, what does it mean to read of a wedding? As a woman, what does this relationship between mother and son mean? As a woman, how do you react to Jesus' exchange with Mary? As a woman, with whom do you identify in this story?
So let's have a deeper look at this changing of water into wine, and see what it means for the United Methodist Women of the Northeastern Jurisdiction. This sign, this clue about Jesus' identity, is named as his first miracle, the first of many recorded in the gospels. Indeed, the transformation is a striking act to perform for a first miracle, I think because of the act's very mundane nature. Don't get me wrong: I have not yet myself mastered changing water into wine, and I doubt many of you have either. But why would Jesus let his first act be changing water into wine? In comparison with his other miracles, what is so special about this event? What is this wedding spectacle in comparison with restoring sight to the blind, with healing lepers, or casting out demons? Who does this miracle even help? Sure, the wedding guests can drink for a few hours more, but we're led to understand that the guests are already drunk anyway! Who would have cared? Did Mary's urging Jesus to act start him off with a less-than-stunning miracle?
Such a question leads our hearts to tell us that Jesus surely knew exactly what he was doing. The better question is: Do we know what Jesus was doing? Where's the message for us in this text? The wedding at Cana happens on the third day after Jesus calls the disciples Philip and Nathaniel. We read that the disciples, Mary, and Jesus were all invited. Mary plays an important role in this story, though John does not even bother to call her by name. We do not often see Mary interacting with Jesus in the gospels, except at his birth, death, and resurrection. But here she is, in the thick of the story. Seeing the wine finished off, Mary tells Jesus, "They have no wine." Jesus questions her back, with a tone we can just imagine a child using toward his parent: "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come." Mary seems unfazed by Jesus reply, however, and works quickly to set the scene, telling the servants to do whatever Jesus told them. And indeed, perhaps thinking over his mother's words and reassessing the situation, Jesus suddenly moves into action.
Six stone water vessels were standing there, jars used for Jewish purification rites, which were empty. The jars, we read, Jesus had filled with water. I can just picture those ads for refreshments you sometimes see at the beginning of movies. The popcorn is piled so high that it spills out of the bag, and the soda in the brightly-logo-ed cups is so full that it is to the brim, just about to spill over, but not quite. It all looks so good, we all want to rush right out to the concessions counter. So Jesus says, "Fill the jars with water." And, we read, in my favorite verse, the servants "filled them up to the brim."
Perhaps you've been asked, do you see the glass half full or half empty? In other words, are you an optimist, with a positive outlook on life, or a pessimist, with a negative outlook? Truth is though, for women, that we don't usually see the glass that way at all: our glasses are never just half full - our glasses, and our lives, are always filled right to the brim. Our lives are filled right to the top with such a myriad of things, people, responsibilities. As 21st century women, we are busy with careers in which we continually seek to break barriers, and enter positions and fields that used to be open only to men. We continue to be most often the primary caregiver in our families, caring for children, and often for our parents as well. There are now more women than men enrolled in most Protestant seminaries, and women attend and participate in church activities at a much higher level than men. We are involved in community groups, in youth programs for our children. We are in schools, completing degrees, going back for more education. We are working many hours, sometimes multiple jobs. We are doing it all.
And with our filled-to-the-brim lives we are doing the work of Jesus Christ in the world. We are in mission and ministry in countless ways. In December of 2000, I was at a gathering of young United Methodist Women in Chicago, the "Young Woman, Rise Up" national gathering. We had a chance to meet in sub-groups with our annual conferences to talk about youth and teen units of UMWs. One young woman wanted to know what was so special about a group of women - why no men? What was the big deal? I myself was fairly new to involvement in United Methodist Women, but I told her what I had come to learn already: The truth is, I told her, the women are simply getting it done. They're doing it, doing it thoroughly, doing it well, have been doing it for hundreds of years, in hundreds of places. They're doing it: doing ministry, doing mission, doing social justice. These women have just got their acts together. There is no doubt: we are filled, our vessels are full to the very top.
So, what've we got to learn here? We're busy, we're doing it all, at home, at work, at church, in the world. We're full, abundantly full. We're spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, loving our neighbors, and loving God. What's left? The trouble is, somewhere in the midst of our full-to-the-brim lives, we forgot to ask ourselves, what exactly is it that we're full of, anyway? What have we been using to fill our vessels? What is this that's in these containers of our lives?
The truth is, God has created us to be amazing creatures. We have brains, we have skills. We have gifts and talents and intelligence and creativity. And on our own, we have done some amazing things, and we have filled our own vessels, not needing others to do it for us. But I fear that sometimes we leave God out of the process, becoming too independent that we shy away from asking for help even from the One who created us as Beloved. We are certainly filled-to-the brim. But we are full of ambition, we are full of worries and self-doubt. We are full of desires for success and equality. We are full of fears about the future. We are full of stress and full of appointments and schedules. We are very capable of filling our own vessels: we're just not good at choosing what to put in, and we can never choose as well for ourselves as God can.
"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." This is the way it always is with God: God is always saving the best for us, and God is always the best for us. God is the best wine. Will we let ourselves be filled to the brim with this wine, this saved-the-best-for-us wine that God offers?
Today, we share in a love feast. Calling it a feast might strike us as odd: our meal consists of bread and water. How is this a feast, we wonder? But Christ tells us this is the best feast we have ever tasted: When Jesus feeds the five thousand, he tells them, "do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life . . . the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to this world. I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty." To the woman at the well, Jesus says that he can give us living water to drink. "Those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life." To us, Jesus says, "I have come that you might have life, and have it abundantly."
God wants to be the one to fill us up. The scriptures are testimony to God's pleading with us to choose God, to choose life, to choose the best wine over the cheap stuff, the real thing over imitations. One of my favorite verses from Isaiah asks, "Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?" How will we answer? Why do we insist on filling our own vessels, when Jesus says he can fill them once in such a way that we will never need to be filled again?
We are strong, wonderful, talented, beloved women, children of God. So let's be as smart as we know we are, and seek to be filled-to-the-brim by our Creator. Full of grace. Full of hope. Full of courage to do justice. Full of promise. Full of passion to spread the good news. Full of love. Full of desire to spread God's peace. Full of creative ways to fight oppression. Full of Spirit, full of Christ. Full of life.
Come, let God work a miracle in you. And God will take the muddied waters of your soul, and change you into the best you've ever been. Best-for-last, filled-to-the-brim, up-to-here. Amen.