Sermon for the Second Sunday after the Epiphany, January 19, 2025

Isaiah 62:1-5+Psalm 36:5-10+1 Corinthians 12:1-11+John 2:1-11

I am not sure that anyone can pinpoint where, in the grand sweep of Christian history, the Good News became a list of restrictions on behavior so that if you really wanted to be living right you had to be miserable. Maybe it started with the ascetics, the Desert Fathers and Mothers who went into the wilderness or into caves or, in one instance on the top of 50-foot-high pillar. The miserable living conditions (at least to my mind they are miserable) were less about making them miserable than allowing them to get away from all the distractions and live closer to God. Somewhere along the way, priests and bishops who were really serious about their faith and a recognition of their sinfulness would mortify the flesh by whipping themselves with rope cords or wearing hair shirts under their robes that would rub the skin raw.

By the time we get to the Reformation, we have people so repelled by some of the excesses that they declare that beauty and art and fun are out and unrelenting solemnity and self-denial are in. I am looking at you, John Calvin. No drinking, no singing, no dancing, no parties.

Did they just skip over the 2nd chapter of John?

Sure, in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus's first miracles are healings, but in John? He turns vast jugs of water into the finest wine. And he did this at a wedding which was a long, extended party with tables groaning with food and wine. This story from John was so important that the marriage liturgy in our Book of Common Prayer incudes this in the opening paragraphs

The bond and covenant of marriage was established by God in creation, and our Lord Jesus Christ adorned this manner of life by his presence and first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee. (BCP 423)

We may not know why Jesus was at this particular wedding, but he is there with his mother and some of the friends he has been assembling around him as we read in the first chapter of John. He is a party guest doing what party guests do, which is enjoying himself, at least until mom interrupts him. There are countless occasions in the gospels when Jesus is enjoying himself over dinner in somebody's house, usually somebody most polite folk would not be seen spending time with. That's what Jesus does.

But this first miracle was not just about creating more wine out of water in order to keep the party going. John doesn't even call it a miracle. No, in John, these phenomena performed by Jesus are signs. They are not just what they appear to be but point to something else. And what this one points to is the abundance of God.

In John's prologue, the opening of the first chapter that we heard a couple of weeks ago, it says, "And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.  From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace" (1:14,16). God's fullness, expansiveness, grace upon grace. It is a theme especially in John's gospel, where we have an entire discourse about bread which was, for so many, the staple sustenance of life. In our day, we don't view wine as sustenance, but in Jesus' day, wine was one of the ways to preserve the fruits of one's labor as a vineyard keeper. It provided sustenance through caloric intake, it was part of the staple diet of a people. Even the poor relied on wine to drink even if less frequently or of lesser quality.

But it isn't just about that, either.

If we glance back to the Hebrew scriptures, the prophet Amos who died in the 9th century BCE, writing of what will happen when the throne of David is restored, has this to say

I (meaning God) will restore the fortunes of my people Israel,
    and they shall rebuild the ruined cities and inhabit them;
they shall plant vineyards and drink their wine,
    and they shall make gardens and eat their fruit. (Amos 9:14)

And a century later, Jeremiah would write

Again you shall plant vineyards
    on the mountains of Samaria;
the planters shall plant
    and shall enjoy the fruit. (Jeremiah 31:5)

Vines and vineyards and wine are a sign, a symbol, of God's generosity and grace toward us. Jesus came to show us what that looks like, so it really is no surprise that the first sign in John is of a feast where, thanks to Jesus, the wine will not run out.

On Thursday, I attended a conference at Union Theological Seminary in New York that was sponsored by the Immigration Center of New York, The Episcopal Diocese of New York, the Riverside Church, and the Jewish Theological Seminary. The title of the event was Know Your Rights, Find Your Voice: Faith Communities Against Mass Deportation. The room was filled with people from all kinds of faith traditions listening to stories of those who have made a home here and the challenges they faced along the way who are now trying to lend a hand to those coming after them. We also heard from immigration attorneys who give of their time and expertise to advocate for immigrant rights. And we heard from Bishop Matt Heyd of the Diocese of New York who uses his platform to, among other things, meet with civic leaders to prevail upon them the need for humane treatment and protections for those who have come here from other countries. One of the moderators was Ruth Messinger who was a member of New York City Council, borough president of Manhattan, and the first woman candidate for mayor of New York in 1997.

I came away from this meeting encouraged and hopeful, whether or not the current landscape warrants it. You see, one of the recurring themes was that those who urge mass deportation, shutting off our borders to those seeking refuge and asylum, aim to make us afraid - afraid of people who don't look like us or speak our language, afraid that there simply is not enough to go around. But our faith tradition tells us that we have nothing to fear. Do not be afraid is one of the most common phrases in our scripture. We also know that we have a God not of scarcity but of abundance. We heard from Isaiah just a little while ago that "the Lord delights" in us (62:4). We cannot allow ourselves to become a people who are afraid, who do not trust in God's abundance and generosity, because the power to paralyze people into inaction by making them afraid is a political technique as old as the hills, from the enslavers of the American South to the Nazis in prewar Germany, to the McCarthy era Red Scare. We have seen this movie before. Our fear and our inaction in the face of that is death-dealing to millions of people.

But we do not confront our fears alone. That was one of the valuable lessons of this conference in the city. There are so many people of faith doing this work that we can partner with. We have the Lighthouse as one of our ministry partners, so even if marching or calling government leaders or protesting in the streets or accompanying immigrants to legal hearings is not your thing, there are ways you can simply be a good neighbor by providing for the stranger in our midst.

The wedding at Cana was Jesus’s first opportunity to give us a sign of who and what God is and what his incarnational ministry on Earth was about which is what this season of Epiphany promises us. It was not about fear. It was not about scarcity. It was about abundance. "I came that (you) may have life and have it abundantly" (John 10:10), Jesus will say later in John. That abundance is not for us to hoard, it is for us to share as freely and as profligately as it has been shared with us. We need not worry, because Jesus also says, "the measure you give will be the measure you get back" (Luke 6:38).

I want to encourage you to take your worship leaflet home and search for all the ways God's abundance is offered in our readings and liturgy today. I'll close with another one from the psalm for the day:

How priceless is your love, O God! *
your people take refuge under the shadow of your wings.
They feast upon the abundance of your house; *
you give them drink from the river of your delights. (Psalm 36:7-8)

The Good News of the wedding at Cana is that God will provide everything that we need and everything that we long for, not for us alone but for all God's people.