He Always Had Some Mighty Fine Wine
Second
Sunday after Epiphany
John 2:1-11
January 14, 2018
John 2:1-11
January 14, 2018
Rev.
John M. Caldwell, PhD
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
First United Methodist Church
Decorah, Iowa
So,
it's party time.
It
tells us something that in John's gospel when it gets down to talking
about the ministry of Jesus, about what Jesus does,
it begins with a party. "This was the first miraculous sign,"
it says. So this isn't an accident. The author does it on purpose. He
means
to begin with a party.
And,
more particularly, he means to begin with a story about a party that
centers on wine. There is a lot that the author does not
care about like about whose wedding it was. It doesn't matter,
apparently. It was held in Galilee in a place called Cana. Jesus'
mother was there. And Jesus and his disciples were also invited. The
wedding feast was under way when they ran out of wine. What a
catastrophe! Can you imagine? How mortified the hosts--the parents of
the groom--must have been.
At
occasions like a wedding feast, the responsibility of the host was to
provide more than enough so that their guests could drink and eat
their fill for
several days!
Not only that, they needed to do it casually, as if it were no big
deal. Hospitality was not only the act of providing for the needs of
guests: it was a performance. To appear to be anxious about how much
people were drinking or eating was bad form. The reward for doing
it right was
honor in the community.The
punishment otherwise was shame.
Of
course, there were corners that could be cut. We are told as much by
the headwaiter: "Everyone serves the good wine first. They bring
out the second-rate wine only when the guests are drinking freely."
This
is
the extension of a well-known fact that has been around since
somebody decided not
to throw away a barrel of spoiled
grapes but
to drink the
juice instead.
One fellow turned to the other and said with slurred speech, "You
know the more of this I drink, the better it tastes!"
How
would the guests know if Gallo wine-in-a-box had been subsituted
after the 2013 Flowers Sonoma Coast Pinot Noir had been consumed?
They wouldn't! Well, except for the headwaiter who had to stay sober.
But
to run out of wine altogether? Clearly, the hosts had gambled that
their guests wouldn't drink as much as they did and they lost. They
would keep losing, too, as whispers followed them around the town,
"Did you hear what happened at the wedding? They ran out of
wine!" "No!" "Yes!" Oh, the shame.
It
was a disaster. Or it would have been had it not been for Mary. She
noticed there was a crisis. Maybe she was in the kitchen when the
news that they were on their last bottle was delivered. She went to
Jesus, "They ran out of wine." She let the statement hang
in the air. Jesus picked up on it. "Ma, what do you want me to
do about it? How is that my
problem?" "Oh, be a mensch,"
Mary replied. "Would it kill
you?" She knew her son well enough to know that he would do what
was needed, so she warned the servants, "My son, the messiah, is
going to ask you to do something. No matter how crazy it sounds, just
do it!"
There
were six stone jars nearby, each of which held from twenty to thirty
gallons. They are said to be for the "cleansing ritual."
But the cleansing ritual was for the bride, so the jars should be at
the bride's home, while the wedding party is at the groom's home. I’m
a little confused. Maybe
he married the girl next door? I
don’t know. But
not ultimately it’s
very
important to the story, except that the jars were available.
Jesus
told the servants to fill the jars full up with water. The servants
did that. And then came the crazy thing that Jesus asked them to do:
to take some of the water to the headwaiter for him to sample and
approve for serving to the guests. And, of course, we know what came
next. The water had become wine and not just wine, but wine superior
to what had been served so far.
Let's
see: six jars, each holding twenty to thirty gallons, filled to the
brim and turned to wine adds up to somewhere between 120 and 180
gallons of wine. That's a lot of wine. How many preachers in our
historically dry denomination have I
watched twist themselves into pretzels trying to avoid that
conclusion?
“Well,
you, see it wasn't really
wine because Jesus wouldn't serve actual wine to already-inebriated
guests, would he?”
“Well,
the text doesn't say that the guests actually drank
the wine, only that the headwaiter tasted it.”
Or
they'll take another approach and declare that the story needs to be
read as an allegory. Along the lines of "well, the wine is a
metaphor for joy. And the wedding feast is a metaphor for the end of
time. So the story means to tell us that the joy of those who are at
the Messiah's wedding feast will be even greater than the joy that
the world gives." Clever, huh?
As
Sayre Greenfield, a scholar who has worked with allegory in
Greco-Roman culture, has argued, allegory happens when a text (in the
case this story about a lot of wine at a wedding) becomes intolerable
but cannot be gotten rid of. For many of my colleagues, the story of
Jesus making so much wine for guests who have, in the words of the
story, been "drinking freely" is simply unacceptable. But
they can't cut it out of the Bible. So they turn the text into a text
that isn't about what it is about.1
You
know how I feel about that doing that. Let's read this story about
Jesus marvelously supplying a lot
of wine for a wedding party as if it were a story about Jesus
marvelously supplying a lot
of wine for a wedding party. The problem here isn't the story; it's
us, I'm afraid. We United Methodists have a strange relationship with
alcohol. We got mixed up with the Temperance movement along the way.
And that happened honestly enough. Alcohol was bound up with social
problems at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Many
men were working very long hours in miserable conditions. They were
paid on Fridays in cash. Too many of them sought some temporary
release in drinking. After a night at the local bar, they would come
home drunk, having spent far too much of their wages on drink. Too
many of them took out their shame and anger on their wives and
children with physical violence. The women of the Women's Christian
Temperance Union blamed domestic violence, marital rape, and poverty
on the drinking. "Lips that touch wine will never touch mine,"
they said.
We
came to regard alcohol as a moral evil in
itself.
We became a dry tradition. That's not all bad. One of the ways that
we can use this tradition is to make and keep our official church
events alcohol-free. Just
to name one result, we
avoid putting a recovering alcoholic in a difficult position.
Recovering alcoholics are confronted with enough difficult
situations. We don't want to add to their struggles. This is why, for
example, we don't serve wine at Communion.
But
we are learning that, while the details may be quite different from
one addiction to another, almost anything and almost any activity can
be at the center of addiction: alcohol, pain-killers, exercise, work,
sex, sugar, all sorts of things. The fact that something is abused
does not--by itself--mean that it can't be used, that--used
properly--it isn't a gift from God.
In
the early days of our movement that is how we approached alcohol.
John Wesley was very critical of his government because it
deliberately kept the price of gin very low to encourage its use by
the working class. It was a form of social control and it was
damaging working class families among whom he did most of his work.
On the other hand he advocated drinking a half-pint of dark ale a
day. He believed that it aided digestion and helped one relax.
The
Bible taken as a whole also has a mixed message. On the one hand we
can read that Noah got into trouble with wine.2
Wine and beer can lead its drinkers astray.3
We are warned not to hang out with those "who get drunk on wine"
as
well as those "who
eat too much meat" (which probably includes most of us).4
Paul warns the Ephesians not to "get drunk on wine."5
On
the other hand "Timothy"
is told to stop
drinking water only and add "a little wine" to his diet to
help with his "stomach problems."6
"Choice wines well refined" are part of the picture of the
life of a restored Judah that Isaiah offers.7
Jeremiah seconds the motion.8
The Psalmist praises God for the splendor of creation that sustains
human life: "[Y]ou make plants for human farming in order to get
food from the ground, and wine, which cheers people’s hearts, along
with oil, which makes the face shine, and bread, which sustains the
human heart."9
Wine,
and a lot of it, was an integral part of weddings and other
celebrations in Jesus' day. It could be misused, but its use was
expected and anticipated with a certain eagerness. John's readers
would have found the presence of wine at the wedding unremarkable. So
what would
they have noticed?
Let's
remember that John's community had suffered the terrible trauma of
separation from the Jewish synagogue, a split that broke up
friendships
and even the bonds of family, a split that left them emotionally and
spiritually unmoored.
So
what is the first story that the gospel gives them, the first story
of a "miraculous sign that Jesus did"? It is a story about
a week-long party with food and wine, wine
that
starts pretty good and gets even better. The host is happy, the
guests are well-feasted, the
headwaiter is impressed, and
the groom and his bride (who, remember, begins her life with her
husband by leaving her own family behind) and well-celebrated.
What
I think that John's gospel is saying to his community in pain is
simply this: "Even in the midst of your anguish, remember who
and whose you are. This is cause for celebration. Jesus is in your
midst. He will insure that you have everything you need, not only for
your comfort, but even for your joy."
For
the author of John at the core of the good news is joy.
How
easy it is to forget that when the world looks dark, the future looks
grim, and the light I can see consists of little candles bravely
flickering
in a storm. How easy it is to forget that when justice looks like
it's in full retreat, when hate speech is in fashion, and when peace
seems like a dream we knew we had moments before waking but cannot
now remember.
It's
hard to remember when the weather is cold and we're down one boiler
and the replacement didn't come in when we hoped it would.
It's
hard to remember when the cancer is back that
the heart of the gospel is joy. It's
hard to remember when new and unexplained symptoms appear.
The
heart of the gospel is joy. Joy comes with hope and hope has nothing
to do with optimism or pessimism. Joy is not because if we just look
on the bright side, everything will turn out fine. Joy is not because
if we think positive thoughts, do what the doctors tells us, and get
enough people to pray for us hard enough and long enough, the cancer
will go away never to return. Joy is not because "if we can see
it, we can be it." Joy is not because we can imagine a better
universe if the facts of the one we live in don't suit us.
Joy
is because--when we decide to party, when we break out the wine
(metaphorical or otherwise)--Jesus is sitting in a corner, enjoying
our joy and willing to do whatever is needed to keep our joy
well-supplied.It’s party time.
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2 Gen
9:20ff
3 Prov
20:1
4 Prov
23:20
5 Eph
5:18
6 1
Tim 5:23
7 Isa
25:5-7.
8 Jer
31:12
9 Ps
104:14-15
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