Miracles – Sermon Post
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Miracles
A Sermon for Pleasant Street Church
January 17, 2010
Rev. Reebee Girash
Text: John 2:1-11
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 to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Prayer
Sermon
I’m Elizabeth. You remember, John’s mom? Jesus’ mom’s cousin? I knew Jesus from before he was born. I knew, we all knew, Jesus was someone special.
Frankly though, before the story I’m about to tell you, he was a bit of a disappointment. A late bloomer. Spent a little too much time at the synagogue, if you asked me. Hadn’t found a partner. Hung out with all those fishers and tax collectors, not doing much that I could see. Hadn’t moved out of Mary and Joseph’s house yet.
He was thirty. It was time.
He kept saying, wait, wait, my hour has not yet come, the time is surely coming. Hmph.
This particular spring, I was a bit worried about my own son, John. That whole locust thing, you know? Mary said, come with Jesus and me to Cana. It’s our cousin’s daughter’s wedding. We should all go. It’ll be fun. It’ll get your mind off of things. Who doesn’t love a wedding feast, all that food and wine? People dressed up? Come on, climb on the old donkey (the one they’d had since before Jesus was born) and go with us!
So, I went. Bad hip and all, I went. I sat on the side of the room near the kitchen and watched people. What can I say, I’m a people watcher. I’m past my dancing days.
Isn’t it funny how every wedding has its own little crisis? The groom faints; the rabbi shows up late; it rains and tent leaks? You run out of wine….
Not every wedding has its own miracle, though.
You could see, around the room, people starting to fidget. Thirsty, tired, people were about to just leave.
Mary, you could probably guess, was a fixer. If she saw a problem she didn’t wait to see what happened, she wanted to make it better.
You should know, too: Mary taught Jesus everything he knew. Ok, not everything, but a lot.
She taught him compassion. She taught him how to pray. She taught him what justice looked like. And she taught him how to behave at a party. (reflections on Mary’s role in this story inspired by Chung Hyun Kyung’s Struggle to be the Sun Again: Asian Women Doing Theology)
So, Mary’s been teaching this son of hers and waiting all this time to see what difference this remarkable man was going to make in the world.
It’s fair to say she pushed him out onto the stage.
I heard her – she put her hand on his shoulder, drew him away from the crowd and over to my little corner.
Son: they have no wine.
I don’t know if you’ve heard this about Jesus, but he had a tendency to push back a bit. Even with his mom. Though the word he used, you might hear it gruffly – woman! – but really in our language, it was a respectful way to talk to your elder. Woman, Jesus said, what concern is that you and me? My hour has not yet come.
Like I said, Mary pushed him out onto the stage. She grabbed the first servant she saw and told him, Jesus was now in charge of the wine crisis. Whether he liked it or not.
I think this was a turning point. This was the moment when he stopped putting off his calling. This was the moment when his gift was ready to give. And what a wedding gift it was, eh?
So, he did it. He did what I had been waiting for since John leapt in my womb: he performed a miracle. Just a little one, but a fun one. He turned water into wine. The best wine. He listened to what his mother…and his God…said, and he worked a miracle.
There were certainly more miracles later. But this was the first. This was the one he did in the midst of his community, surrounded by cousins and siblings and friends.
He brought joy back into that room.
You know, he was awfully good at that. Some folks forget, but this was the guy who gave a starving crowd a buffet lunch!
That joy, that abundance, was one of his big messages.
There’s enough for all, if we share it.
Blessed are they…
Everyone can be healed.
Lots of folks wonder how they can be like him. How they can follow his path. I’ll tell you, prayer and worship, compassion and mercy and justice, giving of yourself: those are all ways you can be like him.
But don’t forget: you’re also following his path when you bring joy into a room.
Amen.