3 salvations and a wedding

Sermon for the second Sunday in Epiphany, delivered at St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Louisville, KY
Text: 1 Corinthians 12:1-11, John 2:1-11

Jesus and his mother are at a wedding. The conversation between them is actually funny, in the same way that the preceding paragraph in John’s gospel is. In that passage, which we didn’t read, Phillip finds Nathaniel under a tree, and tells him about this guy Jesus, from Nazareth, and what he has been teaching. Nathaniel quips, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” So, I imagine that Jesus’ and his mother’s conversation went something like this:

Mary: Oh no, they’ve run out of wine, and the party just got started.
Jesus: Maybe they miscounted invitations.
Mary: You know, you could make more wine for them.
Jesus: I’m not ready, and besides, I’m just a guest here. I’m not the main attraction.
Mary - to a steward: Listen, my son can fix your wine problem, just bring him those jars.
Jesus: Mom! What did I just say?
Mary: Show me some honor, son. Now hush and show them what you’ve got.
Jesus: Oh, alright. Fill up those jars to the top with water.

There’s a reluctance on Jesus’ part that shows us his human side, and Mary nudges him just like a mother nudges her children at times, “Go on, you can do it.”

Jesus’ first sign in John’s gospel fits nicely with Paul’s words to the church in Corinth regarding gifts. Paul talks about various gifts that people have to bring to the church. And by extension, those gifts are brought to the community as well. Paul makes a particular point that these gifts don’t come from the pagan gods that the new Christians used to believe in. He makes it known to them that their gifts come from the Holy Spirit, sent from God, and it is only through this Holy Spirit that these gifts are given and activated. It’s an important point for the members of the church to understand in order to separate themselves from what they used to believe, and to whom they used to pray.

But we already know where Jesus’ gifts come from, because John told us that in the very beginning of his gospel that the Word was God and came to live among us. Jesus’ gift of turning water into wine is just one of many things he could do that were beyond gifts. They were signs of God’s presence and creative action among the people around him. We’ve heard from John that the Word was made flesh, so it stands to reason that the Word is more than just words, or conversations about Jesus. To be made flesh is to be made real, and Jesus’ identity was made real by a concrete action that could be smelled and tasted by people who didn’t know him. From the incarnation comes a physical revelation in the form of good wine, not just a spiritual epiphany of God’s presence.

You would think that the bride and groom, as well as the wedding guests would be curious about where this new, better wine came from. But that isn’t what John wanted us to focus on. The witnesses to Jesus’ first sign were the most important but least prominent people who made the wedding celebration happen: the servants and the slaves. They were the background people who were only important when family or guests wanted or needed something, and yet they participated in the sign as witnesses to the presence of God among them. They didn’t get it at first until they tasted something different from what they were expecting, and realized that this guest, prodded by his mother, did something they just knew was impossible. They were the ones to whom Jesus was first revealed, not to the socially higher, more prominent wedding party and guests. Truly, the last were the first, and the first were the last to experience this revelation.

Jesus didn’t reveal himself to be visible, otherwise his mother wouldn’t have had to prod him into action. This runs counter to his other signs as written in John that happened out in the open where everyone could see them. The hidden circumstances in this first sign makes the point that Jesus was revealed to the world to show that God was present. It wasn’t about his mother showing parental pride in him, wanting the world to see who she had raised. The reason for the quiet revelation was to point to salvation. This scene in John’s gospel focuses on Jesus saving the wedding party from embarrassment and significant social failure, and is followed first by Jesus clearing out the Temple and restoring its holiness, and then by his clandestine encounter with Nicodemus. The culmination of those scenes is in chapter 3, verse 17 where we read that Jesus came to save the least among us, and to save the whole world, not condemn it. Salvation came to the wedding, the Temple, and to Nicodemus.

If this sign of salvation had been witnessed by more than just the wedding servants, people would have only talked about what had happened to the water. What would have been lost was the experience, the emotions from the undeniable action that revealed that God was among them. The season of Epiphany for us is an afterglow of the excitement and pageantry of Christmas, and we talk about Jesus being revealed after his birth the same way we talk about his birth. But revelation is more than only talking about Jesus and his signs. It is about experiencing God among us, and for us, 2000 years after God walked among us, it is about experiencing the power of the Holy Spirit. Our signs that we perform are not changing water into wine, nothing dramatic like that. But whatever we do as those signs, they are just as amazing and impactful and saving as what Jesus did at Cana. That bring to my mind some questions: What can we do to reveal that the Holy Spirit is real and present in us? What can we do beyond words, beyond just talking about it? What gifts do we have that reveal the signs that God is present in this time and place?