This sermon is about the wedding at Cana, but there is an extensive sidetrack into Mennonite reflections on alcohol, so if you're interested, you're welcome to share your stories about alcohol either as a child or your current reflections.
Grace and peace,
Samuel
Good morning! Its good to see you all, I hope this Sunday finds you well.
I’m excited to be here and to have the chance to talk about this story of the Wedding at Cana with you.
This is an interesting little story-it is most significant because it is the first real public act of Jesus ministry in the gospel of John-or as John puts it, this is the first of Jesus’ signs, where he made manifest his glory.
Looking at this text, the first thing to notice is that it is in striking contrast with the stories that begin Jesus’ ministry in Mark, Matthew and Luke. In Mark, Jesus’ first public act is driving a demon out of a man who interrupts his first sermon, demonstrating that he can back up his teaching with power. This earthy power is one of Mark’s hallmarks. In Matthew, the first story about Jesus in public is the sermon on the mount. Jesus begins his public ministry with the beatitudes-blessed are the poor in spirit, and goes on for three chapters of reflection. The sermon on the mount is at the heart of Matthew’s gospel, and is a bookend with the story of the cross. In Luke, Jesus begins with a sermon in his home town, where he explains that Gentiles are going to be included in God’s salvation, and the people of his hometown drive him away in response. For Luke, Jesus’ unconventional relationships with women, gentiles, and the poor are at the heart of his gospel. So each of these Gospels reveals something they thought was particularly important about Jesus in their opening pages.
Here, then, we have the opening of John, where Jesus begins with celebration, and chaos. The wedding is obviously the celebration. But the next text in the book of John is Jesus cleansing the temple, driving out the money changers and the temple sacrifices, overturning tables and dramatically claiming authority. The wedding speaks to the commandment to love one another, insists on close community, the bonds of family and friends, gathered as one. Turning over the tables in the temple, driving out the sacrificial animals with whips then set Jesus up against the religious hierarchy, marked him as a dramatic, system changing person, and someone who would not take problems lying down. Both are core to how John saw Jesus, both the inward and the outward focus of the good news.
But this texts has lots of interesting details when you look a little more closely.
We could talk about family values- Jesus calls his mother ‘woman’ and dismisses her request-what is it to you and me? And Mary ignores his complaints, and acts as if he hadn’t said anything at all, and he goes along and completes the miracle.
We could talk about power relationships-there are the servants, who know where the wine came from, and the ruler of the party oblivious to what’s going on behind the scenes, where only those with ears are able to hear.
We could look at the promise of new wine, better than that which was purchased originally, and how this miracle speaks to a promise of a life surpassing what could be expected from even the best that the world has to offer.
Speaking of new wine, its probably worth taking a moment to talk about the alcohol side track in relationship to this passage:
The Mennonite Church has an interesting history with alcohol. For many of you, like my parents, growing up alcohol was on a list of banned items in the church, along with things like smoking, gambling, and dancing. In the last survey of Mennonite Church USA by Conrad Kanegy, 50% of Mennonites continue to suggest that drinking alcohol is sinful.
As one of the most dangerous substances that is legal, the cause of somewhere in the range of 35,000 deaths a year between drunk driving and liver disease, strongly correlated with family and interpersonal violence, not to mention being highly addictive, there are lots of good reasons to recommend against drinking.
But its not entirely clear that it is a biblical virtue. Giving up alcohol altogether is actually largely an American phenomenon. In Europe, Mennonites have a long history of distillery and brewing. When I went to Poland as an undergraduate, we experienced Goldvasser, a liquor produced by Mennonites for hundreds of years. When Mennonites immigrated to the United States from Russia, they found a strong prohibitionist strain in the Christian community, and generally adopted the beliefs of the prohibitionists, probably both because they are good arguments, and because it was an easy place to compromise to get along better.
From a biblical perspective, there are some obvious proof texts indicating that Christians should drink alcohol. Jesus’ first miracle is turning water into wine. At communion, the wine the disciples drink wine with Jesus. We are to put new wine in new wineskins. Paul recommends it to Timothy to help his stomach.
While there are some suggestions that excessive drunkenness is inappropriate, most texts would lead to a first reading leaning toward acceptance of alcohol.
On the other hand, the larger spirit of the Bible-the body as a temple, the commitment to acting soberly and under control, the calling to care for one’s family and love one’s neighbor all can be seen as undercutting the abuse, or even the use, of alcohol, in the same way that Jesus’ radical acceptance of women in new ways, and some subversive suggestions that women actually participated in leading Christian ministry, and the larger themes about spiritual gifts run counter to the more explicit texts in Paul’s letters about women in leadership, we can read the larger Biblical story as running counter to the culture of alcohol in our country.
I offer this not to draw any definitive conclusions about alcohol, or how we approach the Bible, but to acknowledge that reading the bible is tricky, and the community of discernment through history has sometimes chosen more literal, and sometimes more metaphorical readings of the text, and its worth asking how and why we make the decisions that we do.
Back from the side track.
I’d like to close with a reflection on what it means that Jesus’ first sign here in John is helping a marriage celebration go off without a hitch. Most of the stories of miracles in the gospels are about helping people in need-healing the sick, exorcizing demons, even bringing the dead back to life. But here at the wedding in Cana, and a few other places, like with the feeding of the 5000, and similar feeding miracles, Jesus seems to be acting not to relieve suffering, but to bring more joy to the world. There is a party going on, and Jesus acts to extend it. Community has been created, in all its tenuous, frail, and breakable forms, and he does what he can to help it continue, to flourish, and to grow.
We had a great party last week around my ordination, thank you all for your part it in it, and as I was thinking about this text this week, I kept coming back to the Christian blessing of celebration. The message of this text, and many texts like it are that it is faithful to rejoice. Its hard to really be clear enough about this- Jesus created something like 150 gallons of wine. Wedding banquets in the ancient near east were ridiculous. I confess to a certain amount of skepticism about our current cultural habit of spending large amounts of money on weddings-(the American average is 20,000$ before ring and honeymoon), but in Israel at Jesus’ time, a wedding would have been a saving’s goal for years. Parties went on for multiple days, they were the source of much of the meat in an average family’s diet. Everyone in town was invited. They were always scheduled to coincide with times of the year that were slow times in the fields, so that people would not have conflicts with their schedules.
Now, from this perspective, celebration is a lot of work and a lot of money. And it remains that way today- I know that the social committee puts in a ton of effort for every potluck, cooking before hand, skipping Sunday School, doing dishes while the rest of us are shooting the breeze. I want to honor that work.
And historically, there have been deep gender divisions when it comes to celebration, with women doing most of the work, and men bearing many of the rewards, so its not surprising that its Jesus’ mother who noticed they were running out of wine, and Jesus who thought it was no big deal.
But I think it is important to notice that Jesus puts his energy into making people happy. He puts his energy into joy. Healing, cleansing demons, etc., those are all great, because they demonstrate the power of God, and they fit into the whole ‘fixing that which is broken thing’ but this is something different. This is a miracle just for joy’s sake, like walking on water for Peter, its about blessing gathering and human relationships, reminding us of what’s important, and how to shape our lives.
So often church has been defined as an agent of duty, of struggle, of effort. We are encouraged to feel guilty when we aren’t working, to push ourselves to the limit. The ‘Protestant work ethic’ has even been labeled as core to the United State’s economic success. The church can focus on what we as individuals do wrong, and the labors that we ought to be engaged it to help bring about the kingdom, to evangelize to those who are lost, to do God’s work.
But Jesus also said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. 30For my yoke is easy and my burden is light."
When the party was running out, and his mother asked him to help, he poured out abundantly the resources necessary to continue to celebrate. He blessed the joy of the wedding just as clearly as he condemned the usury and injustice of the temple only a few short verses later, and invited all of us to celebrate both the work that we do, and the joy that we share together as sisters and brothers in God.
Amen?
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