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Jan 18, 2004 THE BEST WINE Isaiah 62:2-5 Israel will be rescued and become God’s "wife". INTRODUCTION TO ISAIAH 62:2-5 Today a single woman is thought of as strong and independent. Not many years ago, she was thought of as an "Old Maid," someone who couldn’t find a husband. In Biblical times, when females didn’t go to school and couldn’t run a business, a single woman was thought of as "abandoned," "desolate" and would most likely be "destitute" if not part of her father’s or brother’s household. When Israel was overrun by the Babylonians and her citizens were taken off in to exile in what is now Iraq, she felt that her Covenant partner, her God Yahweh, had deserted her. Her divine "husband" had abandoned her. Isaiah preached hope to those despairing Israelites in exile. Listen carefully and hear how these promises might have sounded to the original hearers.
Psalm 36:7-9 God’s superabundant love. INTRODUCTION TO PSALM 36:7-9 In these verses the measure of God’s love is likened to the abundance of a banquet and a river. How much does one person need to eat? A plateful. But God provides a feast. How much does one person need to drink? A cup or two. But God provides a river or a fountain! John 2:1-11 Jesus turns Water into abundant wine at wedding. INTRO: A1. Friday night I attended a banquet par excellance! It was the annual installation Dinner of the Bayport Fire Dept., and our member, Dave Henrich, Althea Palmer’s son, was being installed for his second year as Chief. (Honor!) As Chaplain, it’s my duty to say a prayer of Invocation. For that, I get a 5-course gourmet meal, D.J. & dance music, and open bar for the evening. Not a bad deal! 2. People were having a blast! The drinks were flowing, the people were cheering their old-timers being recognized for years of service – Charlie Bogel had 67 I think !! It was a pretty raucous crowd!
3. Then Dave caught me by surprise and called me up for a closing prayer after all the presentations. When I took the podium, I said that I was reminded of my research this week on Jesus 1st miracle – turning the water into wine to keep the party going and how Jesus wasn’t one to miss a good party. In fact, among the charges against him was that he hung out with drunkards and sinners, so I thought he would feel right at home here. Well, that got quite a rousing round of cheers & applause. B. But then don’t you find it a bit odd that Jesus’ first miracle in the gospel of John is something as frivolous as making booze for a party?! Wouldn’t you expect it to be something of more …let’s say "eternal value" … than that ? -- like a healing or calming a storm?
I. As a matter fact, there’s much more here than meets the eye! A. First, remember that we are in the Gospel of JOHN. And what do we know about John’s gospel? 1. John ALWAYS is telling a story on at least two levels. As a story-telling technique, John LOVES contrasting the physical/literal level with the level of spiritual/inner meaning . a. Take the story of the Woman at the Well, told only by John. Jesus: Those who drink the water that I give will never be thirsty. Woman: Oh, good! Give me this water so I won’t have to keep coming to this well!
b. Take the story of Nicodemus. Jesus: You must be born again. Nicodemus reacts: What do you want me to do, climb back in my mother’s womb?
This is a method John uses again and a gain to illuminate who Jesus is and what he provides to humankind.—Living Water. New birth.
So, knowing John, we can pretty well be sure that he’s got more going on here than keeping the party rolling, as kind and thoughtful as that was, given that he saved the host from a major social faux paux --to run out of wine at your son’s wedding reception. This is why Bible Study can be so exciting —like a mystery novel. You have a clue that there’s something hidden, so you read the commentaries, follow the clues, and look for the hidden treasure. B. So let’s look first at the setting. 1. Cana was a tiny village. Best guess is that it was about 9 mi. NW of Nazareth, Jesus’ home. There may have been maybe 150 inhabitants in the whole town, so a wedding may have only come along every few years.
2. One of their own young men, known by everyone in town, was getting married. They would have all been anticipating it for a year or more. Friends and relatives were invited from miles around. 3. And whereas a wedding these days might even stretch for a weekend, with brunch the next morning, skiing or beaching the day after, depending on the season, an Middle Eastern wedding was a community gathering that lasted a whole week!
4. A wedding celebration was the biggest party known to an Israelite village. That’s why it is used, both in the Old Testament and the New as a metaphor for God’s kingdom, God’s reign, the BEST of all possible WORLDS, the world the way God longs for it to be – a happy place, plenty of good food and drink for everyone, singing, dancing, but even better than a Fire Department Installation bash because of what it represents -- a Wedding Banquet-- a celebration of life and the next generation, the future of the village, a celebration of love and commitment… // C. Now, a couple of insights about the writing a gospel. Each of the 4 Gospel Writers chooses what events they are going to include in their book. 1. John ends his gospel saying, "But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written." Don’t you just want to protest, "Don’t stop there! Go on!! Tell us more!" 2. The Abingdon New Testament Commentary on John says that each of the Gospel writers chooses a different "first act of ministry." And each of these "firsts" introduces the reader to how Jesus will be portrayed in that gospel. - In Mark it’s an exorcism. Power over evil. - In Luke it’s Jesus’ mission statement that he preaches in his hometown synagogue in Nazareth – "I have come to bring good news to the poor…" - In Matthew it’s the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus the teacher. - In John, it’s the changing of water into wine. 5. So if John chose this wedding banquet as the setting for Jesus’ first "ministry story", and as a prototype for his presentation of Jesus’ ministry, what can we understand from that?
See? Already we’re getting clues for one of John’s hidden treasures! John is telling the reader with awareness that Jesus is the one who Brings to Life the Kingdom of God! Jesus is the one who animates the party, but not just the party in Cana, the party of God’s reign on earth, The new "God-thing." God’s plan for the world is newly beginning, here! In Jesus. It’s in hanging with Jesus that we come to discover and participate in and become part of God’s Wedding Banquet now present here on earth….and eternally!
II. Now, let’s look at the wine. A. What did Jesus make the wine from? 1 .Water in stone jars. Stone jars. There’s a message here. Clay jars are used for drinking water. Impermeable Stone jars, are use for the water of purification, the water used for the religious ritual of cleansing. When you’ve become unclean— like from touching meat, or a corpse, or a leper, or like a woman after childbirth -- as a good Jew, you would purify yourself with ritual water. 2. Ritual water would symbolically represent the rigid rituals and legal system of the Jews. Here Jesus transforms it. He takes the legalism and changes it into celebration!, into the new, joyful, rich wine of the Kingdom of God! Another Hidden treasure! //
3. Now consider this: this gospel is written a number of years after Jesus’ death and resurrection.John and his readers know "the rest of the story." They know what happened in the Upper Room at the Passover Supper between Jesus and his Disciples. They know what Jesus played with wine as a metaphor. They know what Jesus said about the wine at that table. They know that his words, "this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of sins," became dramatically and literally true the next day on the wretched hill of Calvary. They know that that shedding of blood was a SAVING act that that TRANSFORMS human lives.
4. a. For all of Jewish History, when people had drifted away from God-following, when they had sinned, when they had gotten distracted and forgotten about God, when they had displeased God, how would their relationship be made right? How would it be restored? By repentance and sacrifices on the altar, by repentance and ritual bathing and hand-washing. b. In this new age, now, the age inaugurated by the coming of Jesus, how are people put right with God? Not by animal or monetary sacrifices. Not by the application of water. No. How? By the act of awesome grace and love of God’s gift of Jesus, the sacrifice of Christ on the cross and the victory of his resurrection. God’s forgiveness in Christ brings us back to God! c) Look at that! Another treasure that John hid, right in this first act of ministry: in Jesus our relationship with God has been transformed! The presence of Jesus at the wedding changes water into wine. The presence of Christ in the world transforms cleansing ritual into the wine of forgiveness. /
d) For us today, the transforming power in that miracle and the transforming power of the cross is brought to us again and again in the wine (or grape juice) of the Sacrament of Communion as we enact the Last Supper, Crucifixn & Resurrection at the Lord’s table. /
5. Communion, Last Supper, Forgiveness, Saving, life-giving blood of the Cross, a New age of Reconciliation and joyful celebration-- all these are images that reverberate in the background when First Century readers hear this story of the Wedding in Cana. Hidden Treasures! Just look where our Treasure Hunt as led us! B. Can you stand one more treasure.? 1. How much wine was produced? There were six jars filled to the brim and every one held 20- 30 gallons. 180 gallons of wine?! Isn’t that a bit extravagant? Certainly more than sufficient! The wedding couple would have enough wine for every celebration for the rest of their married lives! 2. William Willimon of Duke University says that the rabbis said one cup of water could purify 100 people. One cup! So how many people can 180 gallons of wine save?! … The whole world! 3. John wants us to know that God’s mercy is SUPER abundant. He wants us to know that the Jesus he is writing about represents a transforming power that is sufficient for the salvation of the whole world! 4. Like the Psalmist proclaimed, "How precious is your steadfast love, O God! They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights. For with you is the fountain of life." Ps. 36:8-9 In Christ this Old Testament promise is fulfilled! 5. If you read the entire gospel of John, you discover that it is organized around a series of miracles that are signs of the true identify of Jesus. Doesn’t this just make you want to investigate that Bible? To track down those hidden treasures?! I hope so! And I truly hope that next fall we will start a new class of Disciple Bible Study I, and some other shorter studies between now and then! (Anyone want to study the book of John??) III. Here, right up front in chapter 2 of his gospel, John tells us that Jesus is the one who takes the ordinary and makes it extraordinary. Jesus hasn’t quit doing that. A. eg. In the 1950’s an ordinary woman, a seamstress, decided she was tired of living a split life – believing she was a child of God, but acting like she was an inferior human being. So she made one small step of living into her own integrity. On her way home from work that day, she sat down on the bus, but she sat in the front. When she was told to moved to the back, she quietly said, "No, I think I’ll just stay here." She wasn’t trying to start a revolution. She wasn’t trying to change the whole of society. Rosa Parks was just owning her own dignity as a human being whom God loved enough to send his Son. But God took that ordinary woman and that ordinary act and made something quite extraordinary out of it! God brought about an uprising of Spiritual Power that transformed life in America. B. A few years ago I was at a mission conference of some sort and a man spoke. I don't remember his name, all I remember is his story. He was a dentist practicing his profession in the suburbs in Kansas City. He told how a few years before one of his friends had shamed him into doing something he never thought he would do. His friend dragged him off on a Volunteer In Mission trip. He went to a central highland village in Mexico to this clinic, a Methodist clinic, for ten days, to practice dentistry there. He said dentistry there was very different. He said, "Here in the suburbs my goal as a dentist is for all of my patients to keep all of their natural teeth for all of their natural life." He got to the third world and discovered that dentistry was a whole different thing there. The dental problems he confronted were ones that there were not resources to care for. There were dental problems that left people in pain day after day after day after day and he began to do the one thing that he never did in the suburbs—pull teeth. In ten days he pulled more teeth than he would in the entirety of his dental practice in the suburbs. Now he said, "every year I go back and as the years pass the time here is just preparation so I can go there."
2. The water of a self-sufficient suburban life style was turned into the good wine of service; the emptying of self for others. Jesus Christ still turns the water into wine.
3. If your life is getting a little thin, a little unhealthy, if your life is passing and not much is coming from it, then the extent to which you can give yourself to others in Christ's name, can still turn our water into the good wine— gallons, and gallons, and gallons, and gallons and gallons of wine; lives that are rich and full-bodied, fragrant and life-giving.
CONCLUSION If you were a Disciple that day at the wedding in Cana, you might have been able to hear the Matre Die say, "Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guest have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.." You may have looked at Jesus and said, Yes, Lord. We have Known Moses. We have known Elijah. We have known King David. But you have kept the good wine until now! Today we can look back on our own lives and say, "I have known achievement. I have known success. I have known self-sufficiency. But I stand in the presence of the Living Christ and I know, "Lord, You have kept the good wine until last!" THANKS BE TO GOD!
PRAYER Savior Jesus, you walk among us today working wonders and signs of God miraculous abundance. You are able to change the ordinary waters of our own lives into the finest of wines. Lord Christ, open our eyes to experience the marvelous in the everyday rising of the sun or the birthing of new life. Show us your miracles of transformation and abundance as signs of your overflowing grace around us and within us. In your powerful name we pray. Amen.
HYMN No. 642 "As Man and Woman We Were Made" vs. 2: Now Jesus lived and gave his love to make our life and loving new; so celebrate with him today and drink the joy he offers you, that makes the simple moment shine and changes water into wine. vs. 4: Then spread the table, clear the hall, and celebrate till day is done; let peace go deep between us all and joy be shared by everyone; laugh and make merry with your friends, and praise the love that never ends. |