February 13 Sermon

Friends, here is Sunday's sermon!

Mawidge...mawidge is what bwings us togewer today...
Mawidge, the bwessed awwangement, that dweam wiffim a dweam...
... Ven wuv, twoo wuv, wiw fowwow you fowever..
... so tweasuwe your vruv..

A quote such as it is from the classic movie “The Princess Bride”. Amazingly, today’s scripture lesson from John’s gospel, is about marriage too, but not about marriage. Confused? It turns out that John shares the story, the only one recorded of Jesus attending a first century Jewish wedding feast in Israel, and never once tells us anything about the wedding!

So, even though Valentine’s Day is here and you’re thinking about romance, I gotta break it to you; this story isn’t about love, it isn’t about romance, it isn’t even about marriage, it’s all about Jesus first miracle. But don’t despair. There are a few tidbits here, and before I’m done I share the crumbs of what I’ve found.

It’s hard to imagine because of our images of Jesus as the Cosmic Son of God, but the gospel writers present Jesus pretty much as an everyday guy, with a everyday life, especially when we find ourselves with Jesus walking the streets and roads of Galilee and even later in Jerusalem.

Jesus eats, he tells stories, he is accused of hanging out with a bad crowd. He comes from a small town. He goes to synagogue. He has parents and even occasionally listens to them. He starts out as a baby, becomes a teenager, and eventually an adult. He goes to Seders, attends celebrations in Jerusalem, and even more pedestrian, he goes to a wedding.

Not that we are told anything about the wedding like who was getting married, what the details of the ceremony were, whether the groom broke a goblet under his foot at the end, whether there was a huppa, whether a Rabbi was there, and why, why, why, Jesus and Mary and the disciples were there!

John places Jesus at the wedding reception, a wedding reception at which it appears he has no other responsibilities other than to show up. Why his disciples are there isn’t clear. The wedding is in Cana, a city that we can’t even really identify, but was probably a short distance from Nazareth; and it appear that at least Jesus is related to one of the families in the wedding, as may have been others of the disciples.

John frames the big question of the event, as a contest of sorts between mom and her adult son; think Jason and Karen Ketcham, Brian and Sue Farley, Mike Jr. and Allison Wilbur.

The practical concern Mary has for the wine running out and the need for more wine suggests a familial sense of responsibility. Providing sufficient wine would mean that the celebration would go on to its natural end. Running out of wine would mean that the party would have to end early, forcing a huge loss of face for the Bridegroom.

And it sets up this bizarre exchange, whether mary decided that Jesus can fix the wine problem, and Jesus seems at least a little miffed or maybe confused or maybe even amused at Mary’s request
He seems out of sorts John tells us, because dealing with the wine is not what Jesus wants to do, is supposed to do, or is a misunderstand of who Jesus is.

It’s interesting. Jesus seems to accept the basic Jewish understandings of marriage. He never really suggests another way of dealing with the relationship between men and woman, he just leaves what has happened over time in the Jewish tradition alone. He only suggests, and then sometimes in a traditional way, that there is anything about marriage that needs fixing, remembering that Jesus lived in a time of arranged marriages.

One, that divorce, an arrangement that Moses made with God, is not a Kingdom idea, that in essence it is a concession to the broad based sinfulness of humanity, that divorce is part of the fall, that though it happens it is jus more evidence of how badly we needs God’s intervention in our lives.

Two, in a conversation about the Levirate Law, which has to do with a woman having children and inheritance issues, a form of early social security, that in the eternal Kingdom, marriage is not part of the picture. Jesus says we will not be married in heaven.

Which leads to the third thing Jesus implies, that while marriage here and now has to do with procreation and interrelationships between people, marriages eternal significance has mostly to do with our relationship to God; that it is a concrete example of an abstract idea; that God is faithful to us and we should be faithful to God and the best example in the here and now of what that looks like and feels like is marriage, and contract and relationship so tight that it is almost like living in another person’s skin.

Jesus gets up in his mother’s grill, because of his mother’s pointed request, which by the way she handles just fine, like any normal mother would, by telling the servants to go and do what Jesus is about to tell them to go and do, because:
One, this wedding is not the time and the place for a miracle, nor to reveal who he was.

Two, because this kind of thing was not his calling, a reminder to all of us that we are not to waste our time and energy doing stuff that is not our calling, except possibly for mom.
And three, that physical miracles were a misunderstanding of who Jesus was! Jesus was not here on earth to do miracles, he was here to reconcile humanity to God.

Marriage is tough. Trying to put two lives together for all of time is really hard work. We make mistakes and we have to learn to be humble, and ask for forgiveness, and learn to love a person who sometimes is a complete jerk. But that’s exactly the point. Learning how to live in another person’s shoes, or another person’s skin, or another person’s soul, is exactly the training and insight we need to begin to understand what our relationship with God should be like.

The Holy Spirit, God’s presence is already in us, living in our shoes, in our skin, in our souls. We are, as it were already married to God. Now we have to learn what it is like to live into God, and marriage is the closest simulation we can get this side of eternity of how to live a fully God filled life.

So, if you are married, give thanks for the special privilege you have been given to understand just a little bit more of what it is like to in fellowship with God. If you aren’t married, give thanks to God that you don’t have to deal with his dirty socks or her shelf full of shampoo and conditioners, and know that God will still be at work in you making you more and more like God everyday. True truth!

Love, true love, will follow you forever! Amen.