Wedding Feast

 John 2: 1-11

Epiphany 2 January 16, 2022

 

Bob, Soupy, Pr. June, 2002

I do not mean to brag, but my wedding was fun.

Soupy Sales was there

(if you don’t know who he is, look him up

he had a children’s show in the 50’s and 60’s)

We had raffles and prizes, and a talent show,

we were encased in a giant bubble, and my

father-in-law yodeled

and played the harmonica.

People still tell us 20 years later how fun it was.

If we had any problem, it was that we

over-estimated the amount of beer people would drink

and we had to return an almost full keg of it.

But our wedding only lasted a few hours.

 

I bet that never happened at a wedding in Jesus time.

The weddings in Jesus time were supposed to last days.

And apparently there was a lot of drinking,

you were expected to drink at a wedding.

That’s apparently what held the guests there, not yodeling.

They would put out the good wine at the beginning,

like the fine French wine, then

when people got good and drunk,

they would bring out the grocery store boxed wine.

 

But at this wedding at Cana in Galilee

that Jesus, his mother, and his disciples

have been invited to, they have run out of wine all together.

Apparently, this would have been social disaster for

the couple and it would have started their marriage in shame.

But don’t worry, because Jesus is there.

Or more specifically Jesus’s mother is there.

 

Jesus is not too keen on helping out in this situation.

He says it’s not his time yet. But apparently,

his mother thinks it is his time, so he’s gonna

start flexing that divine muscle right now.

 

After Jesus’ mother coaxes her son to start doing something –

I’m guessing she used the kind of icy stare that mothers use --

he asks the waiters to fill the giant jars that were there with water.

The jars weren’t drinking jars, they were jars that were used

for water for the purity ritual – John specifically tells us this.

 

So Jesus has the servants fill those jars up with water.

And from that water, he makes this fine wine.

Wine so good that the chief wine steward was amazed with it.

And wondered why the host had held it back

and didn’t serve it at the beginning of the wedding.

 

So  in John’s gospel, this is Jesus first miracle of his ministry.

Helping keep a wedding going is not necessarily

high on the list of what people asking the savior to do.

But for John, the only place that this story appears, everything is a sign.

Not just the miracle but a sign of who Jesus was

and what he came to earth to do.

 

Jesus hasn’t just saved the reputation of a newly married couple,

and allowed a wedding to go on.

This miracle was a sign of his ministry and purpose.

So what was that sign?

 

To know what that sign was, we have to know more about those jars.

John tells us specifically that these jars are for the purity ritual.

Jesus doesn’t tell them to use wineskins, or bowls, or buckets,

but specifically these jars for ritual purity.

Meaning, the water in them was meant to be used so that

anyone who was in a state of uncleanliness,

could wash themselves in it, and they could be clean again

and approach God for meals or worship.

 

Now you would find yourself in a state of uncleanliness

for a variety of reasons: unusual bodily discharges, having a disease,

handing the ashes of a red heifer used in the water of cleansing

(which I’m not sure I really understand) or the biggest category:

having contact with anyone else who was unclean.

 

That included the diseased, like those with leprosy,

women who were menstruating, people who were sick,

people who had bad jobs like tax collectors and prostitutes

and funeral directors, and anyone else who was not ritually clean.

 

If you came into contact with any of these people

or situations, you needed to be made clean again.

 Cleanliness wasn’t primarily about germs and viruses,

it was about sinfulness or worthiness.

And it was believed that some people were just

separated from God  by things they could control,

or things they couldn’t control, and that

separation was apparently contagious to others.

 

It may have started out as a protection against illness,

but it turned into a casting of people into categories

and levels of holiness and unholiness.

 

And the cleansing ritual itself also put people

into different categories too. You had to had to be of certain means

to be able to get yourself clean again.

 

The wedding that Jesus was at had six 20 gallon jars for this ritual.

And you can imagine the house that would be required to hold

six jars that size, and they would have to have

the servants to handle them and fill them up,

and they would have to have access to water in an arid region,

That person would have to be pretty well off.

 

People without these resources would have to pay someone to have

a ritual bath, and very poor people would often never

be able to get ritually clean.

 

So only the richest people can be the very cleanest and the closest to God.

Those who are poor or just getting by would not have the resources

or the time to do the ritual, and if you were one of those

sick people, or a woman, or a funeral worker,

or a tax collector or sinner or prostitute, then forget it,

being acceptable before God was an uphill battle.

So this ritual was divisive.

It ended up creating a division of people: Clean and unclean.

And those who could get clean again.

 

Now, lest you think this is repudiation of Judaism,

many cultures and religions have similar ritual cleaning practices,

It is a human tendency to bring religion down

to these opposing factors :

Clean and unclean, holy and unholy,

Worthy of God and unworthy of God.

Saved and unsaved. Them and us.

As if there was not enough of God to go around,

so we have to compete for God’s favor and love.

 

Now as modern day Christians, we might not

be familiar with the practice of ritual cleansing or jars.

Be we are familiar with the division that religion can cause.

 

We’ve been told that if we didn’t believe in the right way

that we can’t share communion or prayer with some people.

We have been told that we have to be baptized to be saved.

or we have to be baptized in a certain way.

Or we have to belong to the right denomination

or sect of a denomination or believe certain doctrine.

 

People who are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender

have been told repeatedly that they are an abomination and worse

for no other reason than their sexuality

They have been told that they could not possibly

be faithful people worthy of God’s love.

 

I have been told by more than one Christian that I

am doomed because I’m a female pastor.

And by the way, you’re all doomed too for listening to me.

  

And even outside of religious contexts,

we still like our humanity divided into camps.

We still like to blame the poor and idolize the rich.

Sometimes it’s the other way around.

We draw lines between people because of race, culture,

economics, demographics, neighborhoods, habits and

 

More than ever, we define people by

the labels of Republican, Democrat, liberal and conservative.

Vaccinated and unvaccinated. Them and us.

 

We want absolute purity in every belief and action,

and crossing those lines is a betrayal.

Clean and unclean.

 

Even today, we still like our religion and our society,

divided into comfortable groups,

by counting beans and rating sins we want to

be able to tell who is in and who was out.

And the side we’re on is always in, isn’t it.

 

This is our problem now.

And two thousand years ago, it was the problem

that Jesus was faced with at that wedding in Cana.

Them and Us.

 

So this is what Jesus does for his first sign:

He takes those giant clay jars, that religious divider,

and turns it into the finest wine, more wine than anyone can drink.

And Jesus participates in a celebration of God’s abundance.

He turns religion into an endless party for everyone.

 

The sign is this:

There is no Them and Us.

There is only us. That is the only way to approach God.

That is the only way for us to be clean before God.

This Monday we celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr.

We remember him as a champion of civil rights and a person 

who was dedicated to realizing the kingdom of God on earth.

At a commencement speech at Oberlin College in 1965, he said this:

“What we are facing today is the fact that through our scientific

and technological genius we’ve made this world a neighborhood.

But now through our moral and ethical commitment,

we must make it a brotherhood.

We must all learn to live together as brothers and sisters–

or we will all perish together as fools.

This is the great issue facing us today.

No individual can live alone;

no nation can live alone. We are tied together.”

 

And I think after more than 50 years,

this might be even more relevant today

And Martin Luther King was only echoing

what he learned from Jesus,

what Jesus was doing with his whole ministry:

 

Showing people that we are tied together to one another.

Every life is tied to our own, and our life is tied to every other.

The more we try to separate ourselves from one another,

the more mess we find ourselves in.

 

It may seems like a good solution

to weed those “bad” people out in whatever way we want,

to stay with our own, to avoid certain neighborhoods,

only send our kids to the right schools,

to lock our doors, to stay within our gated communities,

put more of “them” in jail, to build more walls to keep “them” out.

 

But that has never kept anyone safe for long.

Jesus wants to teach us to learn how to live together

as brothers and sisters. No them and us. only Us.

We are all invited to this endless party together.

Everyone of us. No one is clean or unclean.

We are all worthy to celebrate with God.

And there is more than enough for everyone

to have and to have more.

 

We’ve tried war, dominance, segregation, tough love,

genocide, apathy, and disinterest.

Why not try Jesus way?

The great wedding feast will save us.

God’s grace will save us.

 

And grace is when God takes the divisive rules of human

institutions and transforms them into the finest wine of love.

Grace is when God takes “Them and Us”

and turns it into a party for everyone.

Grace is how we will learn to live together as one.