Christ Episcopal Church
January 20, 2013
2 Epiphany C
Wedding talk is common at our house these days as our son Slocomb is getting married in late May. Slocomb and Leslie have been dating for over 7 years, so she has already been a wonderful part of our family for a long time in many ways. As a priest, I have obviously been involved in planning many weddings, but I have only been involved in planning the wedding itself, not the rehearsal dinner or the reception, or arrangements for guests. I have now been to my first wedding cake tasting-where I learned new things like if you are going to have a ribbon on your wedding cake, the ribbon must be one shade darker-or was it one shade lighter- than you want it to be on the cake as the butter in the icing will alter the shade of the ribbon. The rehearsal dinner and reception tasting is next month, another new learning experience for yours truly, which means that we had to have a menu for the rehearsal dinner months ahead of time. Save the date cards need to be sent out, which means the wedding web site needs to be online, which means the choice of entrees for the meals needs to be set, and the discussion over what constitutes semi-formal attire wears my brain out. The wedding weekend will be joyous and a great deal of fun, but I have new appreciation for all of you who have already had this adventure. As a priest, I am quite sure I have the easier end of the wedding planning!
While Slocomb and Leslie are planning a wedding weekend, this morning we hear about a wedding feast that lasted many days, as people walked for miles to get there and needed to be entertained for quite some time to make the trip worth the time and effort. This wedding feast lasted so long that the hosts ran out of wine, which was, at the least an embarrassment, and at most, the cause of an early end to the wedding celebration. Jesus saves the day, however, by turning 6 stone jars of water into the best wine of the feast, and causing the wedding steward to marvel.
The danger in this gospel lesson is that we turn Jesus into the original fraternity brother, with primary responsibility for making sure that the party supplies stayed well stocked. The reality is that this story is not about wine, any more than the story of any wedding is really about what kind of wine was served or how much was consumed. At their best, wedding stories are about the love we have for each other, our commitment to each other, our lifetime trust, respect, and honor for each other and God. The passage from Isaiah this morning uses the analogy of a marriage to describe God’s great love for the Hebrew people. "For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you."
The story of the wedding in Cana of Galilee is also about God’s great love for us and our trust in and love for God. Rather than being the story of the original fraternity brother, the story of the wedding in Cana is a story about offering God what little we have, in this case, 6 stone jars of water, and based on the love God has shown us throughout history and our own lives, trusting that God will transform the little into an abundance. This story is actually very much like the story of the feeding of the 5000 where Jesus took the small amount of fish and bread offered to him by a little boy, and turned it into enough food to feed 5000 men, plus women and children, with 12 baskets full left over. In both stories, there is risk involved in offering to God the water or the fish and the bread. Neither clean water nor food was easy to come by in those days, so in both cases something irreplaceable was being offered. Both stories are powerful stories about offering to God that which is obviously inadequate, and trusting that God will create an abundance.
In the reading from I Corinthians, Paul writes about a different kind of abundance-the abundance of spiritual gifts. Paul writes "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit, and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone." Paul is quite clear in this reading both that there are a variety of gifts, and that they are given to every one as the Spirit chooses. No one is without gifts. God’s abundance of gifts is spread generously among all people, to be used for the common good. The gifts, services, and activities given by the Spirit are a different kind of abundance, an intangible abundance, but they are the abundance of God nonetheless.
This weekend, we honor the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, one person with one person’s set of gifts, who trusted in the abundance of God to take what he had to offer and make a difference in the world. My favorite Dr. King quote is from "The Strength to Love" written in 1963. "Darkness cannot drive out darkness. Only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that." The task Dr. King and other civil rights leaders faced in the 1960's was enormous. Any of them could easily have said "What good can one person do against the darkness and hate of racism?" and walked away. But when each person offered his or her gifts, whatever they were, and trusted in the abundance of God, slowly a change began, an awareness grew, that continues to this day. We honor the work of Dr. King, not because his work is complete, which it is not, but because he was willing to offer all that he had, trusting that God would use his life to create a world where light and love triumph.
We can easily think that our lone voice, or small amount of money, or little bit of time, or fledgling skills will not make a difference against the darkness in our community and in our world. If we let ourselves become paralyzed by these thoughts, we deny the God who has given everyone, each and every person, the gifts of the Spirit to use for the common good. When we allow ourselves to think that whatever we can give is too little to make a difference, we deny the power of God to take what we can offer and turn it into more than we can imagine. When we think that what we, as individuals have to offer is too little to matter, we deny the power of God to bring people and their gifts together to work for the common good.
At the end of the story of the wedding at Cana, after Jesus has taken the 6 jars of plain water and turned them into the best wine of the party, we are told that this was the first of his signs and revealed his glory, and the disciples believed in him. Jesus glory was revealed, not so much in the dramatic act of changing water into wine, but in the trust that was displayed in the simple yet difficult act of offering Jesus something scarce and seemingly inadequate, and believing that Jesus could turn it into the abundance that was needed. When we trust Jesus to take the gifts we offer, both tangible and intangible, and which seem utterly inadequate for the situation at hand, and transform that offering into an abundance, Jesus’ glory is revealed, and light and love triumph.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment