Outline for sermon for 2019 January 20
Jesus at the Wedding in Cana; water or wine, which? Both.
John 2-1-11, Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36: [1-4] 5-10 [11-end], 1Cor 12:1-11
- Last Night was Cold, Bitter Cold, -33°C (-27.4°F)
- I wake to a propane furnace will not fire, no generator running, almost out of battery power
- Wood heat possible, with wood stashed long ago, newly finished wood-stove shelter and connector to the camper.
- So I
- Pull out the propane heater, warm up the tank in the wood heat shelter
- Build an ad hoc shelter in which to heat the generator (insulated tarp)
- Protect tarp with wood holding it to the sides and 6 feet over heat
- 20 minutes make coffee from water on wood stove
- Start gen after 10 pulls a pop, then three more, fire, c02 filled, scramble with tarp to get to fresh air
- Plug in block heater, hook up battery charger,
- Eat breakfast and drink coffee
- Set charger to 55 amp starter, and start the borrowed vehicle
- Off ten minutes late to a meeting
- Almost every safety back up came in to play, one stupid mistake: turning the generator off at midnight to sleep the night before.
- All the carefully planned and executed plans and preparations pay off: I’m safe,
- Best latest addition makes the best difference: wood heat that warms to 50° C, provides
- A place to warm up even before it was completely setup and connected to the camper,
- A place to warm up propane tank,
- A place to warm up waiting for the generator to warm, and the vehicle to warm up.
- A warm place to come home to even at -33°C
- Tonight is forecast to be colder: leave the generator on all night, simplify it a bit.
- Tomorrow, more wood cut.
- I can sleep through the night, story of the farm hand’s qualifications: he could sleep through the night. Storm, owner panics, hired hand sleeps on. Farmer finds everything already secured against the possible storm. The qualification was the most important: he got things prepared for the worst, and enjoyed the best and most important; a good night’s sleep.
- Miracle:
- Jesus’ first miracle: water into wine
- Who is Jesus? He’s a miracle doer, as God’s son
- Dynamics: loss of face, community support, health necessity, water not safe to drink.
- Everyone there is looking poorly, not just the hosts
- Jesus’ first miracle: water into wine
- Miracles:
- Some people like to say it’s all just God’s ‘magic’, or God inexplicably entering the universe and superseding all the laws of reality to make something inexplicable to happen.
- Others say miracles do not happen, no matter what the story-line is.
- There’s a third possibility, one I’ve embraced for quite some time.
- Inexplicable is possible for God, but hugely rare, and there is not really much for us in it. Only one time-event-place fixes.
- Jesus’ miracles are much more meaningful, much more difficult to pull off, and so much more hope-giving.
- Miracles: explicable
- Take the bringing wine to the wedding feast in Cana.
- Inexplicably, traditionally we’ve seen that Jesus, through the work of the servants who pour water into 6 jars set aside for the purification rights, makes the water chemically transform into some very good wine. Every good vintner can tell you the science of making a good wine is more an art; it’s complicated and to master it is a goal to strive towards rather than a destination one arrives at.
- There has been another interpretation, not in contradiction with the texts: There was something like real strong port in the jars so that adding water diluted it into good wine.
- A little stretch that there is something like ‘instant wine’, just add water; but it is an effort to explain that Jesus just made the obvious happen, though it was not obvious to his on-lookers.
- There is a better miracle explanation: namely that the servants had stolen (or helped someone steal, or knew that someone had stolen) the best wine from all the gifts that evening.
- When Jesus directs them to fill the jars, he gives them a way to make it right.
- The best wine is available for the wedding guests;
- No health risk or embarrassment for the hosts or the guests.
- As guests, they were supposed to bring enough food and wine so that this did not happen.
- Water was not safe to consume, food was perhaps a bit off often enough, so a wine, a weak wine was needed to give all the guests something to drink, not to be dehydrated through the whole celebration.
- What Jesus knows is that the servants know where to go to get the good wine that is taken from the celebration, which belongs to the celebration.
- They do. They correct the wrong, and everyone saves face.
- And Jesus’ power and authority are manifest in that he knows how to provide for the occasion so that a past wrong is corrected before it becomes so much worse.
- The miracle that Jesus performs is that he changes hearts, which is the most difficult miracle of all. Work contradictory to the laws of nature, well that’s simple; it’s magic, no real work done, just wave your wand or speak a word.
- Real difference is what it means to us.
- If God just works the inexplicable, then everything that goes wrong could just as well be fixed, but God does not; SO Why does God not just fix everything!? (Real theological and hope problem there.)
- And with that question begins the slippery slope to full-out doubt and disbelief.
- When Jesus’ miracles have a simpler, very possible explanation that Jesus changes people’s hearts to get them to do something different or new; then we have a real challenge: given each real difficult challenge in our lives, we could face the challenge sitting on our hands and praying that God will do the inexplicable and fix this for us.
- But if Jesus’ miracle is that he changes hearts to get us to do things we might not have otherwise, then …
- Well, every situation can become a challenge that calls us, and all around us, to give our best, including a profound sense of hope that God is working a miracle through our hearts and hands to give other people real grounds for hope.
- As for me, I like a world, a world of faith, where in God makes good use of us creatures of God, in order to bring about, for us and others, what God has promised us and wants for us.
- As for me, I like a world, a world of faith, where good common wisdom makes sense; namely that what happens to one is not so important as what we choose to do. 90% of life is how we respond, the other 10% is what happens to us.
- Consider some life challenges; with inexplicable miracles, we can do nothing but wait for God to act and make things different and better for us. If Jesus’ miracles are that he changes hearts and gets people to act as they would not have otherwise. Then we can get about working to make things better … starting with our own hearts, minds and souls.
- Court: I, as much if not more than most, want a real justice based on real truths to be possible.
- Choose: Wait or work.
- Much more hopeful being able to work, knowing if we do not do it perfectly, God will make it good enough.
- Every minute people around the world are starving, literally to death.
- If God works miracles inexplicably, then we need to pray that starvation not happen or go away. But since it persisted for the last … well since recorded history. What kind of hope is it to think that God is going to change now, so that what people have prayed for since beginning of time will somehow get fixed. That’s just arrogant hubris.
- But if God changes our hearts so that we can learn new things and do new things to help people to not starve, then there is real hope in that.
- A Prophet like Isaiah would tell us (who live in the greatest luxury the world has ever provided so many people:) pay attention: what you’ve chosen to do with oil and energy and food production has had consequences: lost family farms, lost environment as farmers chemicalize greater and greater production, global warming brings yesterday’s extreme weather to be today’s normal, and the new extreme to be deadly for so many, the ice melt will flood the coasts. The earth will have less people on it, one way or another.
- But if we had not waited for a miracle 40 years ago, an inexplicable action of God, to solve the population explosion,
- If we’d had a change of heart (that would have been a miracle of Jesus) and decided to end poverty (since poor people always have had more children as future security) world population could have stayed at 4.5 billion instead of the 7.5 billion of today.
- In Corinthians Paul speaks to the congregation about their gifts: the miracle-make-it-happen-gift of speaking in tongues and interpretation is not denied reality, but it they are not the most important gifts:
- Also for them Christ calls them through Paul, to wake up and be the ones who make justice happen for all:
- All people should share equally in the food of the feasts, not just the wealthy get to eat well.
- And the gifts, all from Christ, are not drowned out by speaking in tongues, or it’s interpretation: God calls them to not forget that God works miracles through them: ending hunger, homelessness, poverty are all going to take miracles; and that miracle is not someone speaking in tongues so that God does something inexplicable.
- Rather these scourges on the face of humanity will end when enough people have a change of heart. That’s the real miracle.
- The great praise of God in the Psalm fits well in our lives, not on its own as if, miraculously all were right in the world and our faith in God suddenly became perfect.
- The Psalm is actually very real:
- The verses before our selection are a lamentation for how much humans have messed things up.
- Then come the change: the hearts giving God praise for helping them end the time of lamentation.
- After these verses of praise, then the people return to lamentations, begging for God’s protection from their enemies.
- This is the real rhythm of us people of faith: we are simultaneously saints and sinners;
- We may get things sort of right, but there is always the next challenge, the next sin (or rather billions of sins) committed each minute; the consequences which we all suffer.
- Our salvation is that God comes to work miracles in us.
- God changes our hearts
- And we no longer wish to protect ourselves
- We are interested in protecting everyone, equally
- We are interested in ending homelessness, best strides ever have been taken by people who know the greatest miracle is a changed heart.
- We are interested in ending hunger. Because it always comes around to us. And it’s is something we can solve: there is enough food, its distribution that is controlled and provided unequally to the wealthy (us) over the poor (others) until we become the poor and the poor become wealthy enough to have enough good food.
- God changes our hearts
- Today we wait for a miracle: and we know that it will start with us, our hearts, minds and strength, turned once again to God’s will for all.