Jesus As Party Giver

Jesus As Party-Giver

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was
there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine
gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her,
“Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His
mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six
stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.
Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said
to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When
the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came
from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the
bridegroom and said to him, “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.”
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his
disciples believed in him.

I know that what I am going to say is going to be hard to believe, at least for some of
you that know me, but when I was in seminary I was actually known as quite the partier.
Actually, my roommate Beth and I were actually known as the people who threw all the
cool parties—I mean, we threw all these silly theme parties—Bastille Day parties, and
parties based on television shows, and probably my favorite, the Abba party, the
Swedish pop group, we threw during my second year of seminary: it was a celebration
of all things Abba, and all things 70ish.

But, let’s face it, it doesn’t take much to gain a reputation for being THE partiers in
seminary—seminaries aren’t usually known for being the kinds of places that attract a
wild crowd. You know, the funny thing is that when I finally became a minister and took
my first parish, its like from that moment on, whenever I now walk into a party, especially
a non-church related party, its like all the air immediately gets drained from the room if
they know what I do for a living, and all the Baptists, with their cocktails in their hands,
just start getting nervous—put away the beer, the preacher’s here! So, if you want
someone to take the life out of at party, invite me to it—I’ll take care of it for you!

But in the story we heard earlier, its clear that Jesus didn’t have the kind of reputation,
because here he is, at this wedding, early on in the Gospel of John. He has just come
out of the desert, and he had just begun surrounding himself with his early disciples. In
this Gospel, there are no birth stories, no mangers—Jesus simply arrives on the scene,
almost as if he came directly out of heaven—“In the beginning was the Word,” so says
John (1.1). And he is at this wedding, at this pretty raucous party, I suspect, and unlike
us minister types, he just blended in because he hadn’t really begun his ministry—they
didn’t know who they had in their midst because he didn’t yet have much of the
reputation that he would later acquire. But there is one person in that room who knows,
who knows what Jesus is capable of, the potential that he has, the gifts he possesses.
Jesus’ mother, who is oddly enough, never actually named as Mary throughout the
whole Gospel of John, nevertheless, the writer of John hints that she knows her own
son—mother’s usually do, don’t they?

She asks him to do something about something that has happened at the wedding—
the hosts, the people throwing this wedding party, they’ve run out of wine, and they’ve
run out of it way too early. And this isn’t some major city, or even Coloma—you can’t
run out to the Speedway, and pick up some cheap wine to get you through the end of
the party. Not having enough wine is a social disaster of the first magnitude—I mean, I
know that we get what it means to be socially embarrassed, but in the ancient world, in
Jesus’ day, it was really bad form, because being a good host, being hospitable, was so
important in a desert environment, and it may be even a matter of life and death
because your life might very well be dependent on the kindness of strangers, the
graciousness of your host. So, Jesus here is asked to solve a problem that is not his,
and to be honest, in the great scheme of things, is not all of that big of a deal—I mean,
this is not healing a blind person, or raising someone from the dead—this is just about
saving someone from being embarrassed, though profoundly embarrassed, to be sure.

So, his mother just goes up to him, amidst the loud and partying crowd, him against the
wall, maybe soaking it all in with his disciples, and she tells him that there is no wine
left. A simple statement, really, and yet, like any mother, those innocent words are
loaded with a lot more meaning—and a whole a lot more baggage than the statement
of some simple facts—you know what I mean, don’t you? She didn’t ask him to do
anything and yet…she did, didn’t she? Again, you’ve probably experienced that as
well—I know I have—ours Mothers saying something seemingly simple and innocent,
just a statement, really, but you knows she means something else, she’s trying to tell
you something or ask something from without actually saying what she means. I’m glad
my mother isn’t here today, and that she doesn’t have internet access so that she
could check this sermon out on our church website… And Jesus knows that she’s not
just giving him an update on the going-ons at the party—he knows that she expects him
to do something about this, for whatever reason, but he just basically responds that its
not his problem and that this wasn’t the right moment—“my hour has not yet come,” he
says to her, setting some boundaries, it looks like.

But like all mothers, she’s persistence, and she knows her son, and so she just tells the
servants to do whatever he tells them…and, in fact, he eventually does what she has
asked me to do without actually asking him to do it, right? Despite what Jesus has just
said, despite the fact that he has told her that he is reluctant to use his gifts, at this
moment and for this reason, still, he does it—he changes huge vats of water into wine,
and it ain’t the kind of wine you pick up at Speedway because nothing else is open at
11. This is good stuff, the stuff you usually serve early on in the party, the wine from
Contessa Winery, so to speak, when everyone is sober, not the stuff you serve at the
end, when people really don’t know what’s being served to them or probably don’t care
at that point and couldn’t tell the difference anyway—you see that kind of reaction in
the text itself—“you have kept the good wine until now,” the party planner says to the
groom.

I’ll tell you what I love about this text—a couple of things, actually. First, I just love the
fact that John tells this particular story about Jesus, which is only told in John’s version
of Jesus’ life, and that for him, the story of Jesus began with a wedding party, and this
simple miracle, this simple moment where Jesus quietly turns water into wine in order to
keep party going—what a glimpse of our Savior, how human, how beautiful. And it also
makes me feel better about my crazy, wild, partying seminary days—hah!. But for our
purposes today, I’ll share with you the second thing that is amazing about this story. I
just want to point out something we sometimes miss in this story, and that is this: the
Savior of the world, the one whom so many of us believe is God draped in human flesh,
this Jesus, the son of Mary, and this very child of God, even Jesus needs to be pushed
into using his God-given gifts. In so many ways, Jesus is just like you and I—we receive
the grace, over and over again, we spend a lifetime stumbling upon the ways God just
loves us and meets us, and yet we stay against the wall at the party, we spend our life
holding up the wall, so to speak, at the party that’s going on all around us, unwilling or
too scared to give some of that grace to the other people in the room—and for us, the
people in the room, in our case, are the particular people of God we’ve thrown in our lot
with here at this church, the people around us in the pews, as well as the people all
around us that need to know that they’ve been invited to a party where everyone is
welcomed, and a party that lasts well into night, and is still going at daybreak—indeed,
a party that lasts well into eternity.

Now, that grace that invites us to the party is something that we all experience
differently and we all have our particular ways of describing the meaning of grace for
each of us, and the way I understand grace, the way I’ve come to experience it is in
those rare moments in my life where I get the truth that I am loved, completely and
utterly loved, and that I am not loved because I am good enough, sweet enough, pretty
enough, or that I am someone’s son, friend, or pastor—it is those moments when I
realize that I am loved by God for no reason at all. God has no other agenda but to
love, to love me, to love you, and to love us through this life, and to love us into the
next life, into the next world. You and I, we are not loved because of anything—there
are no “becauses” in the way we are loved by God, unlike all the other human ways we
are loved by other human beings, all of which are hints of that divine love, but which
always, in the end, fail to fully capture this love.

Grace, being loved by God completely and utterly, it frees you, it lets you go, and it
screams in your ear, or it whispers softly, that you are free now, you have always been
free, and the ultimate sign of God’s love is what was done thousands of years ago, on
a cross, through this One who began the grandest and most beautiful story ever told at
a wedding party, where the wine had run out and he was suddenly and awkwardly put
into the role of wine-maker, if only briefly. But it fascinates me that even Jesus had to
deal with the struggle of what to do when we finally get it, when finally get that grace
has always surrounded us, of what to do after we get it, when we finally get the truth of
that grace. Mary has to push him into being the man of grace that he already is, she
has to remind him of who he is and what he is meant to become—a man who will one
day do more than change water into wine—he will change lives, now and forever. It’s
strangely comforting to know that even Jesus has to be reminded of who he was and
what was meant to become. Some of us, no, actually, all of us, need someone like
Mary, to remind us of who we are and what we are meant to become.

And the power of grace is that it frees us to be that piece of God that we were meant to
be, to be that piece of the living breathing body of Christ that Paul speaks of in the
passage from 1 Corinthians. Why? Because it unhinges us from this idea that we
need to be good enough, or spiritual enough, or pretty enough, or nice enough to be
the person GOD HAS CREATED US TO BE, the unique piece of God, the unique piece
of the Body of Christ each of us is.

You know, the life of grace is challenging, because most of us spend our lives wanting
to be like others, those that we admire for what they have done, or who they are. A few
months ago we celebrated Martin Luther’s King birthday, and if there is any story that
should remind us that we are called to be who uniquely ourselves, with our particular
gifts, it is his story. King has wanted to be an academic, to be professor somewhere,
like those scholars he admires so much in seminary and yet the church kept pulling him
back. Then he wanted to simply pastor a church like his father, whom he admired so
much, to live a quiet life, amongst the people of God, going with them through the
rhythms of life and death together. And yet that was not who he was created to be—
God had something else for him, a different sets of gifts that he possessed that only he
had, spiritual gifts that would change the world forever. Now, all of us can’t be Martin
Luther King, but we’re not asked to be. We’re not asked to be someone else, even the
people we admire—we are asked to be ourselves, to be the one that God has created
to be, with the set of gifts that only we can bring to the party. Granted, no one is asking
you to turn water into wine—remember, we’re not asked to be Jesus, we’re asked to
follow him—and to be honest, that job at the party has already been filed, the wine
maker’s job is already taken—we’ve already got someone making sure that party goes
on forever, making sure the wine is plentiful.

I suspect most of us have at least one friend like Mary in our lives, you know, the one
who keeps reminding us that the walls don’t need our help to stand up, and that we
need to loosen up and figure out what we are here for. But just in case you don’t have
that kind of person in your life, I’m going to briefly be the Mary in your life—no snickers,
please.

Look, my friend, its hard throwing a party without everyone chipping in—we may have a
host, but what you bring to the party is going to take it the next level, and we need
some roof-raising, stomping good times around here. Let the walls shake, I promise
that you don’t need to hold them up, they’re strong enough, and we need your help
serve some more drinks—if we don’t get help, someone’s not going to get served. You,
over there, we need you to tell a good story, a good joke, as we gather around you,
help us laugh through it all, maybe laugh until we cry. Someone needs to take care of
the music, and the food, someone’s got to make sure we have enough to spread
around to everyone. You, with the camera, get everyone to this side of the room, we’re
not going to want to forget this party, we’re going to want to get everyone in the
picture—this one is going down in the record books as the best one ever, the best
party ever thrown. We need your gifts if we’re going to ever pull this off. And you know
what? More than anything, I want you to know that this party, the one you’re at right
now, it would have not been the same without you. I hope you know that because we
sure know that about you. Amen.