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The Second Sunday of Epiphany
SERMON – 10.15am, Emmanuel Church, Pokfulam, Hong Kong
Sunday 17th January 2010
Revd. Canon David Pickering
John 2.1.On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there 2. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited.
What follows is probably one of the most well known and favourite miracles, the changing of water into wine.
In talking with couples over the years I have always been assured that the cheapest part of a wedding is often the Church ceremony. Though I remember one occasion some years ago …..Cancelled choir for an open carriage.
We feel that people go over the top with weddings today.
But extravagant marriage celebrations are nothing new.
In first-century Palestine wedding feasts were great occasions; the whole village or community would turn out, and the celebration could go one for a week.
The extra 120 gallons of choicest wine provided by Jesus would probably have been more than needed.
John calls this and the other miracles of Jesus a 'sign', which indicates that the inner meaning of the event is more important than the mere wonder of what may or may not have taken place.
For John a miracle is a sign of the special quality of God that has been made known to us and embodied in the person of Jesus, his life, his ministry, and especially his death and resurrection. A detailed bible study of this seemingly simple story would reveal a number of parallels and pointers to the cross and resurrection.
For now we will concentrate on what it tells us about God.
Among other things it reveals something of the magnanimity of God.
Ordinary plain water is made into choicest rich wine - the best served through the whole of the feast.
Commenting on this story, a Mervyn Willshaw has written;
'In the provision of this excessive amount of wine the superabundant grace of God is revealed. . . . . . Here we witness the magnanimity of God, his undistinguishing generosity, his excessive beneficence, his reckless extravagance, and his capacity for opening up new possibilities, in apparently hopeless situations'.
What could be more hopeless than to run out of wine at a wedding feast? The jars containing the new wine are those that previously held water for purification rites. Now they are filled with wine of a rare quality. But this is not just about a new dispensation in Jesus doing away with the old Jewish rituals.
Rather it is about the abundance and limitlessness of God revealed in Jesus.
So often we make our God too small.
I think someone wrote book entitled 'Is your God too small?'
It is so easy to lose sight of the freedom that God gives to us in our faith.
We lose the joy, the spontaneity and freshness when we unduly concern ourselves with formal religious observances, practices, rules and regulations. They may have their place but they must not stifle the freedom of the Spirit.
There is an interesting dialogue between Jesus and his mother, when the wine runs out. 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 you and to me? My hour has not yet come.' His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tells you.
The outcome is nothing precise and definite, but just, do whatever he tells you.
To quote Mervyn Willshaw again, we can turn the freedom of a situational ethic of grace into bondage to law. We can forfeit the excitement of theological thinking by overlooking its inevitable provisionality and petrifying our dogmas. We can stifle the Spirit by falsely ascribing infallibility to Bible and Church. We can miss the dynamism of the Christian pilgrimage by too much emphasis on the tradition. We can kill the wonder of worship by scrupulosity about the minutiae of liturgical correctness. We can distort the Gospel by failing to recognize the sheer extravagance and riskiness of grace and by wanting to confine faith within acceptable Channels.
Perhaps a lot to grasp there but is gives a sense of how so often we try to confine God to our limited ways.
The wedding at Cana got to an embarrassing and hopeless situation.
In response Jesus took something ordinary - basic water, and changed it into something rich and affirming – the best of wines.
There always has to be change and newness – OT Reading – new names. Isaiah 62:4.
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,
and your land shall be married.
The Christian life is always about transformation and change.
Turning away from where we fail and fall short and knowing that our sins are forgiven.
That all the evil of the world can and is overcome by the love and goodness of God.
And we take part in that transformation. Haiti Appeal.
Old to new
Life is always moving on with God.
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