The sermon for January 15 was based on John 2:1-11.

For Jesus' first recorded miracle to be the changing of water into wine seems awkward, more of a magic trick than the manifestation of the only begotten Son of the living God. It seems like such a small and insignificant thing as if Jesus might somehow be tentative in the use of His power or in some way unsure of Himself. But if we take the time to read the text and let the Holy Ghost guide us through it we find a wealth of wisdom and comfort offered from what amounts to day one of Jesus' formal public ministry. We can't digest all or even most of what is offered us in today's Gospel in one sermon but we can take a few gems home with us and I'd like them to be them to be the ones most helpful in your daily life.

I make no secret of the fact that I identify very closely with St. Peter. He is the hot headed, impetuous man of God. He is well meaning and energetic and he is so often mistaken. He is all passion and fire and loyalty and dreams. He is also temper and impatience and pride. He reminds me of a friend of mine who introduces himself as Chaplain so and so, "often mistaken but never in doubt."

I'm less forthcoming about how closely identify with Jonah. Jonah who tried to get out of going to Nineveh, Jonah who resented the fact the people took the word of God to heart and weren't destroyed, Jonah who wasn't the least bit shy of telling God how he thought things "should" be. I feel like Jonah all the time and I know that many of you do too. We look at our lives and the people in them and we say right out loud this "shouldn't" be this way. You "shouldn't" treat me like this. I "shouldn't" have to put up with this. Things "should" be different.

When we hear today's Gospel we notice right away that things aren't as they "should" be. Why is Mary the Mother of God in charge of this wedding? Doesn't the bride have a mother of her own? What kind of tragedy must this bride have suffered to cause her to need Mary's help? Why has the wine run out? Evidently there is not much money in this household, even for something as important as a wedding. Most disturbingly we ask ourselves why Jesus is so surly with His own mother. He doesn't even call her mother, but rather "woman". What is that all about and what are we to make of it. Plainly things are not the way they "should" be.

We are acquainted with the hardness of life and we are not too surprised by the fact the bride and groom of Cana find money to be tight. Neither are we surprised that there are people missing from their lives. Death and grief are common to all of us. But for Jesus to be so distant and unfriendly to His own mother seems "wrong" if we dare use that word of Him. How dare he take such an attitude with anyone, let alone His own mother? The simple and honest answer is this. Jesus will not let anyone, even His own mother, live with the illusion of worthiness. Before Jesus can help anyone, before he can answer any prayer, He must pour out the law on the one He loves. Faith cannot rest on the lie that we in any way deserve better than God has given us or that we are in any way entitled to anything from Him but wrath and hostility.

Jesus' first miracle takes place at a wedding because it is in the family that we are most vulnerable and marriage is the one social and governmental institution established by God Himself and it is the only one to which He attaches a blessing as seen in the Fourth Commandment. By attending the wedding at Cana Jesus is reaffirming He devotion to the institution of marriage and renewing His support for it. He is also offering encouragement to those who are in that estate. Faith, as Jesus makes clear in His conversation with His mother, can have no assurance other than Jesus Himself. Mary cannot expect Him to answer her prayer just because she is His mother. Neither can she expect to be heard because of her piety or humility. Jesus gives her no reason to expect that she will be heard other than His own goodness. The same is true for us. Husbands and wives and parents and children who find themselves in the very midst of life's most difficult circumstances are given no reason to hope for anything good from God. There is nothing ourselves that deserves His blessing, neither does He give us any hope from the ordinary turn of affairs. We see fine and noble people all around us suffer tremendously and we see the most violent and crazy people affirmed and praised. All we have to go on is the revelation from Scripture that God is good and that He will care for us in the way that is best for us. By turning Mary roughly away He does for her what He does to all of us. He drives us to the promises of Scripture and the gift of faith and away from ourselves and our devilish "shoulds".

And lo and behold it works. We see in Mary the very faith to which Jesus drives us. She had asked Jesus very politely for some help. She didn't come to Him and tell Him what He "should" do. She didn't put a time or a place or any other condition on her prayer. She simply entrusted the need of her relative to the good will of Her Son and Savior. She made no effort to boss Jesus around. She is a true and virtuous Christian woman. And still Jesus rebuffs her. In her shame though, she remains faithful. She says to the people around her, the people who heard her son scold her publicly, that they should do whatever He commands. In that wonderful and beautifully humble confession her faith shines. She doesn't slink away from Jesus muttering about how hard He is. She doesn't break down and wail at having been shamed by her son in public. Neither does she argue with Him. She has gone to God with her need and she knows that He will take care of it. She doesn't know how but she knows He will. In telling the servants to do as He bids she is confessing her confidence in His goodness even though He seems to have given her no good reason to do so. That is true faith. That is what makes every true Christian look like a fool and an idiot to the rest of the world. That is what makes Christian marriage seem like such a disaster to those who are outside the faith.

Jesus does, of course, pour out His goodness but not in the way we would expect. He doesn't make up for the fact that bride's mother is not present by raising her from the dead or healing her illness or bringing her from afar. Neither does He make the groom wealthy enough to go buy more wine for his guests. Instead he changes the water that sits outside their house in what amount to rain barrels into the finest wine of the occasion. He takes something they had overlooked, something they probably took for granted and transformed it into a blessing that enriched their lives and made them glad without taking away any of the hardness of their lives.

It is not Jesus' habit to take away our crosses and hardships, in fact we confess that He designs and sends them to us. What Jesus does is something more wonderful still. He joins us in them and suffers with us. He comforts us in ways we would never have dreamed possible. He transforms our pains and crosses into blessings and comforts with His inspired and inerrant Word and by His holy and Sanctifying presence. This is a wedding and Jesus joins the wedding without changing the circumstances of it. Death still comes, poverty still exists, the curse remains. Husbands and wives will always be at each other's throats. He will rule over her and she will hate and resent it. Our children will fight with each other no less than did the first two children. They will run from us as surely as Cain fled Adam and Eve and none of that will change while this world endures. But Jesus comes to our weddings and makes them His own. He invites us with the water by which we are purified. He thickens that water into gladdening wine and then He thickens that wine into the Blood by which our sins are forgiven in Holy Communion and as every family member who has ever been in crisis can tell you, Blood is thicker than water.

Our lives remain hard and each of us remains an unworthy sinner and yet when Jesus comes to us in Water, Wine and Word there is something added to our lives that seems like madness to the world. In Jesus' presence, we like the Virgin Mary, become humble, patient, obedient and repentant. That last one is the one that makes all the difference. One of my favorite phrases from the Divine Service is the one we use when preparing for the Lord's Supper "repentant joy".

Once you let go of the illusion of your own righteousness you become much more joyful. Once you stop telling yourself how worthy you are, how deserving you are of a better life than the one God has seen fit to give you, you become much more tranquil. The great lie that ruins our daily lives is that we deserve things to be better than they are and that things are the way they are because of someone else. It may be true that there are people in our lives who actually do make our lives rotten in some way but while we cling to blaming them for our unhappiness we remain unhappy. Only when we look at our own sin and our own unworthiness and what we do to make our own lives miserable and even more importantly what we do make the lives of others miserable do we begin to be free. Christianity is about repentance, not condemnation.

I speak not only as a Pastor but as a man, a husband, a son, a father, a brother and a fellow Christian. When I cling to what I deserve, when, I hold on to my imaginary entitlements, when I refuse to confess my sin and admit my unworthiness I am least happy, least joyful and most miserable. The wife who cannot see her own weakness will always hate her husband. The Husband who denies his own weakness will always resent his wife. The children who refuse to repent will always flee their parents and the parents who will not recognize their fallen state will always exasperate their children. The sinner who refuses to repent pushes God away and there can be no comfort until such a one is broken down completely. But there will be comfort then.

Thanks be to God that He is amazingly persistent and surprisingly gracious. He joins us in our homes and in our troubles and sanctifies them both. What I find so beautiful about the Wedding at Cana is the liberality and freedom that are the order of the day. We get all uptight and bent out of shape about propriety and what the people around us "should" be doing and we loose sight of what we were created for. Jesus turns water into wine so we know for a fact that he doesn't have a problem with drinking wine. More than that though He offers very fine wine to people who have already well drunk. Unless you are prepared to say that Jesus has made a mistake He isn't opposed to people drinking a bit beyond mere necessity either, at least at weddings. Jesus built us in the Garden of Eden to enjoy the life we had to the very fullest.

His plans for us have not changed. Since we are talking about weddings and marriage the same thing applies here. Marriage is not some necessary evil. The relations between a man and his wife are not mere mechanical necessities. Husband and wife are put together for the free and unrestricted enjoyment of being together and to that God appointed union the Lord grants life when and where He sees fit. As surely as Jesus looks fondly even on the well drunk at the Wedding of Cana He looks fondly on the man and wife who are well drunk on one another and whose life together is free beyond mere necessity. This true too of His relationship with His bride the Church. There is nothing parsimonious or repressed about the flesh and blood union between Christ and His people. We mingle our bodies and blood every Sunday and on every occasion during the week when there is something to celebrate and we make much of those festivals wherein our salvation is remembered. We take communion as often as we can and we remember our baptisms daily. We receive the Word and utter prayers hopefully several times a day and still Jesus would offer and invite us to more and more intimate communion. The truth is that we cannot get close enough to Jesus in this world. He won't be satisfied and neither will we until that great day when we see Him face to face in glory with our own eyes. And the promise of that day is what drives us to be patient and the foretaste of that union is what sustains us in this world. May God fill you with repentance and cheer even as He did the guests at the Wedding of Cana. Amen.

The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.

Last Updated: 7/15/2008