“I Will Serve No Wine Before My Time”

John 2:1-11

January 15 and 18, 2004

St. Paul United Methodist Church

Rev. John A. Fleming

I have married more than thirty times. Maybe I should explain that. I have been married once, but I have married, officiated at weddings, more than thirty times. Sometimes strange things happen at weddings. And sometimes strange weddings happen. Let me share two or three examples of this so you can see the kind of thing that I am talking about. I heard about a woman who lives in Michigan. She loves her job, her customers, and the one that she was engaged to. She just happened to work at a 7-11. I hope that you know what a 7-11 is. I do not know if I have seen 7-11 stores in Little Rock, but a 7-11 is a convenience store that came by their name, I guess, because they were open from seven in the morning until eleven at night. This woman loved her job, her customers, and her fiancee and because she did she and her husband to be decided that they would get married just outside the store where she worked, on the parking lot. On the day of the wedding, she came out of the store, carrying her bouquet in a Super Big Gulp cup. She joined the minister and her husband to be near the front door and said I do in front of a dozen or so of her closest customers. The reception, of course, followed the ceremony. At it, hot dog and Slurpees were served at reduced prices.

Or what about the ceremony that is planned to soon happen in Maine, at a recycle drop off spot. In the city, the place where you recycle your newspapers, glass, and plastics, is known fondly as The Dump. That is where a young man met the woman that he will soon marry. She innocently brought her recyclables there and soon they were dating. The wedding is planned in the next few weeks. They plan on being married there at The Dump, standing in front of one of the green dumpster type containers. The people from the town, who recycle there, and who know their story, have been donating returnable bottles in hopes of building up a honeymoon fund. The couple is trying to think of ways that they could incorporate recycled materials in their wedding outfits. And the bride, who met her to be husband there, said this: “I can’t wait to say ‘I Do’ at The Dump.”

And although people get married all the time in Las Vegas, so it is not all that strange a place to get married, I think that you will have to admit that the circumstances of Britney Spears first wedding are pretty strange. It gives a new meaning to her song, “Oops I did it again.” If you followed her story at all, then you know that she and a longtime high school friend, Jason Alexander, married at almost five o’clock one morning in Las Vegas, in a wedding chapel, in the Michael Jordan Room, after a night of going from bar to bar and staying in a suite that cost $10,000 a night. On their way back to their suite, Britney said to their limousine driver, “Take us to a chapel.” Their wedding was annulled fifty five hours later, citing that they did not know each other’s likes and dislikes, each other’s desire to have or not to have children, and each other’s desires as to state residency. Britney has said that it was a joke that went too far. She has said that she believes in the sanctity of marriage. In an interview she said, “I was in Vegas, and it took over me, and, you know, things got out of hand.” Really, Britney, do you think so?

The truth is that most weddings, as lovely as they are, as special as they are, as much planning as goes into them, are forgettable. The unforgettable ones are the ones where something unpredictable happens. Perhaps it is that wedding where the best man locked his knees, at his sister’s wedding, and as a result fainted, falling head first. This guy and I were in each other’s weddings. I made sure that he kept his knees bent at both ceremonies. Or maybe it is the wedding where the smiling minister repeatedly and confidently calls the bride and groom by the wrong names. By the way, in my hymnal, I pencil in the names of the ones I am marrying just in case my brain freezes. Or maybe it is the wedding where one of the bridesmaids, with hands full of lilies, trying to juggle the flowers, the bride’s train, and the groom’s wedding band, loses the ring. In our contemporary service Thursday night, we showed a clip of that happening. I know about that wedding because I was there. It was my wedding, to Susie Simpkins. I wish that there were a way to show it in this service. I think that it we had submitted the clip to America’s Funniest Videos, we could have won $10,000.

There was a wedding at Cana of Galilee that is remembered not because it happened in an unusual place like the parking lot of a 7-11 or a recycling center. Cana is mentioned four times, every one of them in John’s gospel, but you do not get the idea that it is a particular strange place. The wedding was probably typical and traditional for a wedding of its day and the reception, most likely, was fine and pleasant. That is, until the wine supply dwindled.

I would like to put the wine issue on the shelf long enough to tell you something that if you have spent any time at all studying John’s gospel, you will know. John’s gospel is different, written a couple of generations after the life of Jesus. You will not find any miracles in this gospel. You will find signs, seven of them between this chapter and the twelfth one, all pointing to Jesus and saying that he is who he says he is, the Messiah. Besides all of that, most of the things in this gospel have more than one meaning. There is a lot of symbolism in this gospel, words that point to something else. For instance, it would be easy just to pass by the first words of this lesson where John writes, “On the third day, there was a wedding at Cana of Galilee...” You know this, but we will read something else about a third days a few chapters later in this gospel. In addition to that, a wedding feast is supposed to conjure up all kinds of thoughts about a banquet, where Jesus would sit at the table and where there would be all kinds of wine for celebrating his return. You need to know this as you read John’s gospel. So keep it in mind as we finish our sermon.

Because I think that it is hard to keep a couple of things on a shelf, like I have asked you to do, let’s go back to get the wine issue. One of the things that makes this wedding so memorable was that the wine supply dwindled. Back in those days, and I suppose in our’s too, it was the custom to serve the good wine first. That makes sense, doesn’t it? Serve the good wine, the fine wine, while your guests’ palates are fresh and hopeful. After a pint or two or a glass or two served, the idea is that the wedding guests would not know the difference. But to run out of wine before the end of the celebration, well, that was inexcusable and unheard of. To put it mildly, it would be a huge social embarrassment for the family. I can just picture this, can’t you? The father of the bride has a panicked look on his face. Maybe he is badgering his servants wanting to know why they did not order more wine to begin with. The problem could not easily be solved. The servants could not get in the car and go to the closest liquor store. There were no cars and no liquor stores. If you can picture the father, then maybe you can see the fear on these servant’s faces, too.

I am not sure why Mary, Jesus’ mother, got involved with the wine problem. There have been some people, much smarter than me, who have given some guesses to this question. Some have said that there is a possibility that the reason that Mary and Jesus had been invited to the wedding is that either the bride or the groom were somehow related, maybe a distant cousin. Others have guessed that perhaps she got involved because she did not want the family to be embarrassed by what was happening. Whichever it is, you can just imagine Mary going up to the father or to one of the servants, and saying, “Give me a minute. We’ll take care of this for you.”

That is when she turns to Jesus and says, “They have no wine.” Now you know Jesus’ response, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” That sounds a little disrespectful doesn’t it? I can just imagine my mother’s reaction if I said something like that. She would give me the look that I have seen before. The one that says, just you wait until there are no witnesses around. It is hard to hear these words from Jesus. If you translate these words with today’s words, they might sound like this, “Woman, why are you bothering me with this?” Or even better, “Woman, please!” She must have known that he could do it. There must have been something that she had seen in his first thirty years that led her to know that he was capable of doing something great here. What Jesus says to Mary or the way that he says it is not as important as the end of his sentence. These are his words: “My hour has not yet come.”

You will have to pick back up what John is up to in his gospel to hear that from now on, the hour will be getting closer and closer. And yet with confidence, Mary says to the wedding servants, “Do whatever he tells you to do.” He calls for the disciples to fill the jars usually used for a purification ritual, up to the brim. He dipped a cup into that, and told his disciples to take it to the chief steward who wondered why they had waited to serve the best wine until then. I want you to see this in this story. This miracle doesn’t heal anyone. It does not save anyone, unless it saves them from embarrassment. And no one, but Mary, the disciples, and a couple of servants, are privileged to know about it. Here is what I think. I think that this comes at the end of his calling of these disciples as a way of saying I am the one, special things will happen. Or, as the scripture puts this, “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

That is what I think that it means, but I think that a better question for us this morning is this one, what does this mean for us? That question is the one that I try to answer every week in our sermons. Here is what I think. I think that if Jesus can change water into wine, then he can change us, too. So maybe this is a miracle of transformation more than anything else. If Jesus can save a host from embarrassment, he surely he will want to save us and change us because we are much more important than a vat of wine. If Jesus can change water into wine, he can turn the sour into sweet, bitterness into peace. You might even say that, if the time is right, Jesus could change hatred into acceptance and maybe even love. He could change anger into joy. I think that we need these changes and the other ones, the ones that are down deep in our souls that we do not talk to anyone else about. I think that Jesus did this, and the disciples saw it in him. I think that the disciples believed in him when they saw it, and I think that we should believe, too.

And if Jesus can do it with wine and people, he can also do it with his church, this church. I do not know if you have noticed it or not. I do not know how you could have missed it, but there is a whole lot of transformation going on here. This year, our worship attendance increased from an average of 221 to 238. Our Sunday School attendance is up slightly, up four persons on the average since last year, but again, that is the average. I am proud of the Bible studies that we are offering. Twelve or so are enrolled in Disciple IV. Twelve or so in our Companions in Christ Group. There are fourteen or fifteen signed up for our newest study, The Way of Blessedness. And for those of you not in these studies, I know that you are taking care of your spiritual lives by studying the Bible every single day. This year, we have added a new staff person, Margaret Srygley to help us with our visitation and caring ministries. This year we pledged more than we did last to help the ministries here happen. Do not be content with that. We are giving, but we can always give more. We have made a dent in our payoff for our building. At the end of the current campaign, we will still owe somewhere in the neighborhood of $270,000. In March, you will get a letter from me and the church, asking you to help pay off our debt. This year, many of you filled out ministry menus, letting us know where you will volunteer your time and talent. Some of you did not fill them out. I hope that you still will. This year we sent almost $14,000 of our dollars to help missionary work in Little Rock and in the world. There is still a lot to do. We still need to hire a Child Care Center Director. We still need to learn more and to study more and to pray more and to love more. And if you are wanting a pastor to stick around and maintain the way things have always been, then I am not your man. But if you want someone to look to the future, while honoring the past, then I am him. The disciples saw what happened in Cana of Galilee and believed. We, too, must believe in this Jesus. Amen.

(Special thanks to the writers of Homiletics magazine for the ideas at the beginning of this sermon. The story about the two weddings is from that publication. Thanks to Susie for marrying me and loving me. Special thanks are also due to this church who honors the past and looks to the future and who loves me enough to try new things).