2 Epiphany C
Text: John 2:1-11
sermon by Pastor Robert Klonowski
Faith Lutheran Church, Homewood, IL
January 16, 2022
Fine Vintage
Sooner or later it happens, you know. Sooner or later, if things go just as they ordinarily do, the wine runs out.
Maybe it seems to you that is exactly what has happened, now that we are into these January days. A month ago everybody was celebrating the impending Christmas season, the Covid numbers didn’t look too bad – hard to believe that was only a month ago! – and maybe your social calendar was booked pretty solid, and the wine was flowing freely. Did you lift a glass or two, there amid the party-colored lights of the holiday season, before the dull reality of the Omicron wave locked us down? I hope so.
But now party time is over, that’s for sure, and the ordinary time of these January days and the threat of Omicron is upon us, and maybe it seems to you that the wine has run out. The eager expectations that led to hope about the Covid crisis and led up to the celebration of Christmas have deflated into post-holiday blahs of the very worst kind. Even the altar paraments at church have gone from Christmas white-and-gold back to the plain old ordinary-time green.
But for those who know themselves cherished, there is no such thing as ordinary time. Do you know what I mean by that? When you know you are loved, when you know that you are important to someone else, then there are no dull days, no empty minutes. And for those who know themselves to be loved, cherished, by God; well, then, about ordinary time there is really nothing so ordinary at all. The wine does not run out.
Today’s gospel lesson brings us to a scene that is, at first, quite ordinary. It is the scene of a wedding celebration in a town called Cana, and there’s a garden-variety wedding reception going on, and these things have a certain rhythm to them. Believe me, in my line of work, you become something of a connoisseur of wedding receptions. When we are brought to this scene in Cana, the father-daughter dance has been done, the bouquet has been thrown, the band has already played Kool and the Gang and Walk the Moon – “Shut up and dance with me!” – and this party is just about to peter out. The wine has run out – boy, that’ll kill the party! – and you can see the guests here and there draining the last from their glasses; spouses are starting to give each other that significant “Let’s get going, dear” look, and folks are just thinking about looking for their coats and digging for their car keys. Ordinarily, now, this is the time the wedding celebration would end: this party is just about to die a natural death.
But this is not to be just another ordinary good time. For those who are cherished, there is no ordinary time, not even an ordinary good time, and the bride and groom at this wedding are indeed cherished, by a family friend they have invited, a woman named Mary. When the wine runs out, Mary goes to her son and simply points out the obvious: “They have no wine.” Now, you have to think that there is much more being said here than is in that simple observation; mother and son are communicating on some deep level, and the simple observation carries with it some implicit but very significant expectation.
Jesus hears the expectation and replies, “Woman, ….” You have to know here that Jesus does not intend the harsh connotation that this form of address has in its English translation. Apparently in the first-century world it was a term of great respect, the same term Jesus would later use to address his mother from the cross: “Woman, here is your son.”
“Woman,” says Jesus here, “what concern is no wine to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” If you know the gospel of John you know that when Jesus speaks of his hour he is speaking of the time of the cross, the hour when the Son of Man would be lifted up, the hour when the Good News of God would intersect with the sinful fallenness of this world in a blast of suffering and glory. “My hour – that hour! – has not yet come.”
And Mary answers that assertion with not a word. Instead she turns to the servants to say, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Mary answers him not a word, but again you have to think that there is plenty being said here. Her instruction to the servants, her simple assumption that something is going to happen here, obviously it all says something to her son. Maybe this is Mary’s way of gentle rebuke and correction: “What do you mean, your hour has not yet come?,” she is saying. “This is a wedding going on here, and for centuries we have been told that when God came to be among the people it would be as a bridegroom taking a bride, as a marriage between God and the people of God. And for heaven’s sake, my son, have you not noticed that this wedding in Cana is taking place on the third day? God is with the people on the third day; it was the third day on which God came down to meet the people on Sinai, and it was on the third day that the prophet Hosea promised that God would raise up a broken nation. Perhaps your hour has not yet come, but it is also true that it already is, even right here, at a run-of-the-mill wedding reception, where ordinary people have gathered and where God walks among them. The hour of your glory is even here, where the sign is to be not a miraculous healing or a show of cosmic mastery of wind and wave, but the simple turning of water into wine, for the simple purpose of blessing a good time. The hour here now seems to be ordinary, I know, but when God walks among us and we know ourselves loved, cherished by God, there is no such thing as ordinary time. Your hour has not yet come,” Mary might be saying to her son, “but now it already is.”
“Do whatever he tells you,” Mary says to the servants, and the jars are filled with water, the steward is offered a taste, and over his face the news slowly spreads: this is not going to be any ordinary party after all! Somebody who cares has seen to it that we’re all going to have a very, very good time.
At low and ordinary, dull and gray and threatening times of our lives, God intervenes. For those who know themselves cherished by God, there is no such thing as ordinary time. Those who know themselves cherished by God know too that they are richly blessed, know that every seemingly dull minute is truly an opportunity to know and celebrate God’s blessings.
Certainly the wedding couple at Cana must have celebrated the blessing they received. Did you notice how abundant was the blessing? When God intervenes to sanctify ordinary time, God does not do it on the cheap. Did you notice that Jesus had the jars filled to the brim? Not only did he want to turn water into wine; he wanted to turn a lot of water into a lot of wine. Did you notice that the wine made by Jesus was of the finest vintage? When God intervenes to consecrate ordinary time, God isn’t going to do it with the jug of Gallo; God brings the stuff out from the back racks of the finest restaurant, the bottle of finest-vintage Carmenère; God brings out the very good stuff. Those who know themselves cherished by God know that they are blessed; more, those who know themselves cherished by God know that they are blessed richly and abundantly.
Remember it during these ordinary and threatening and oppressive January days, and through all your days. You are cherished by God, and your God walks with you. Be on the lookout, then, for the unexpected gleam in the glass; the mysterious ruby color in what you thought was plain water; the sudden, sweet taste in life where none was expected. Remember it: for those who know themselves cherished by God, oh, … there is always more wine.