Your Selected Sermon
The Light of Joy
It was a seemingly simple act for a savior.
The people just needed some wine. They didn’t have withered hands that needed healing. They weren’t lying paralyzed on a mat for decades outside the temple. They weren’t possessed by demons or on their deathbeds and needed total and complete healing. There weren’t 5,000 of them out in a field with nothing to eat.
They just needed something to drink.
It was a wedding after all. And in 2,000 years, some things never change. A wedding means a big party. Weddings in Jesus’ day were just as much a cause for celebration as they are today. But the festivities themselves lasted for days – feasting, dancing, drinking, and celebrating. Without careful planning, in the first century, just as in the 21st, the wedding party hosts could easily run out of food and drink.
And here was Jesus, present as a guest at a wedding. He still was an ordinary person for all intents and purposes. So far in his short ministry, he had not performed any miracles or healed anyone who was blind. He hadn’t even given a big sermon yet. He was baptized by John in the Jordan River, he invited some strangers to be his friends and disciples, and then he went to a wedding with his mom.
And like most moms, Mary was there to remind her son to give the bride and a groom a gift. And in the best wedding gift a couple has ever received, Jesus gave them something to drink. He turned their water into wine. Not just a little bit of wine, but a lot. Not one or two bottles of mediocre cooking wine but vats and vats of the good stuff – about 900 bottles of the best money can buy.
Through that simple act of providing a drink, we read that his disciples believed in him. Believed that he was more than a charismatic rabbi, more than a persuasive teacher, more than a preacher who had a mysterious aura about him. In providing that drink in a simple, understated, almost secret way, his disciples began to confirm their initial claims that Jesus is the lamb of God, the king of Israel, the savior, the messiah, the Christ. By providing that simple drink in extravagance and abundance, they knew Jesus as a miracle worker who came from God.
A savior who is extravagant. A messiah who is abundant. A God who knows what we need even before we do and responds with of boundless love, grace and provision.
But sometimes, when we look around at the world, we don’t see God’s boundless love. Instead we see siblings fighting with one another over an inheritance or privileged people putting others down because of skin color, economic class, or background . Instead of seeing grace, we fight with one another over perceived slights, and we make others prove they are worthy of our love and respect before offering it. Instead of provision, we see unemployed folks losing their homes in this country and unbelievable devastation in Haiti, where children are orphaned, men and women have no homes, no food and no water.
It’s now, at this time, that we ask, that we plead, that we pray, God, where are you? We need something to drink because the thirst of pain, of heartache, and of grief is almost too much to bear.
My friends, it is okay to ask God, “Where are you?” when bad things happen. None of us escapes life without feeling the pain of loss, experiencing the heartbreak of shattered expectations or witnessing oppression or destruction and feeling utterly useless to respond. Our God is big enough to hold our doubts, to face our fears, and to receive our anger.
This week, I have been asking God that question a lot. I can barely stand to look at the pictures of the suffering in Haiti and read the stories of what has become one of the worst crises to ever strike a country. I have not been able to watch any video because the destruction is too overwhelming, the pain too raw, my feelings of helplessness to intense. It just isn’t fair for the people of Haiti to suffer so much when almost half of them already lived in abject poverty, when their land had been destroyed from deforestation, when have lived under colonial rule for so long.
This question of “Where are you, God?” is not new. From the earliest recorded stories in the Bible, whenever things don’t go right, the people cry out. When the Hebrew people were slaves in Egypt, they cried out to God. At the people’s lowest point, God called Moses to lead the people out of Egypt. God said, “I have heard the cry of my people. I know their sufferings and I have come to deliver them, to take them from a dry and barren land and lead them to a land flowing with milk and honey.” God heard, God came, God brought abundance and extravagance.
Years later, when the Israelites were taken into exile to Babylon by the Assyrian army, they cried out to God. As they spent years in captivity, they began to assume that God had abandoned them. But in the midst of their distress and anguish, their lowest point, God sends the prophet Isaiah comes to tell them, “You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight is in Her and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you.” God speaks to them with abundance and with extravagance.
When we ask where God is, when we cry out to God in our distress or in the distress of others. we are more likely to look for God and find God. And we don’t have to look very far to find out where God is. For, brothers and sisters, this is where God is – God is right here where God’s people are, giving us something to drink. He’s at a wedding in the person of Jesus Christ. He’s turning water into wine. He’s showing up in extravagant, abundant and miraculous ways.
Jesus was at a wedding, with ordinary people, doing ordinary things. Our Scriptural witness testifies that Jesus was with the people. He went to find them when they were fearful, like he found Zaccheus the tax collector up in a tree. He went to them when they were mourning the death of their loved ones, like when he went to Martha and Mary after their brother Lazarus died. He was with them when they were put on trial and sentenced to death, like the woman charged with adultery. He was with them in storms on the sea. He ate with them, meal after meal. He shared his laughter, his wisdom, his tears, his love and forgiveness liberally and abundantly and extravagantly. Wherever the people are, Jesus was there.
And this is the heart of the good news, the gospel of Jesus for which we live, which gives us great joy – our God came to be with us in the form of Jesus our Christ, our Messiah, our Savior. And Jesus came as a human being – complete with flesh and bones, feelings and thoughts, a heart that swells with love and breaks with pain. Jesus knows what it is like to watch a loved one die. He understands the pain of a friendship betrayed. He knows what it is like to wander about thirsty, dusty and dirty. He knows hunger. And because of all of this knowing, God knows us.
Where is God? God is among God’s creation, in the middle of us, whether we are celebrating a wedding or mourning at a funeral. God is wherever people are doing simple, loving acts with great extravagance, with great abundance and with great joy. The act of turning water into wine wasn’t flashy and it wasn’t designed to draw attention. It was simple, it was small, but it was extravagant. It was abundant.
Our friends in Haiti need simple, small acts from us that extravagant and abundant. God is already with them – God was with them from before the earthquake to the terrifying moments after. When we respond with extravagant prayers, generous offerings, and abundant love, then they will be able to recognize the God that is in their midst, and we will see the God in ours. God has heard us, God comes to us, God responds with extravagance. Let us receive our God in Christ together. Amen.