John 2:1-11

Everybody loves a wedding, even Jesus, it appears. According to our text this morning, so early on in the gospel according to John, Jesus and his disciples attended a wedding in a place called Cana of Galilee. The gospel says that Jesus’ mother was there and Jesus and his disciples were also invited. The good news is that one of the very first things Jesus did in his public ministry was to attend a wedding, to affirm that the love between a husband and wife was indeed something that was to be celebrated.

Did you know that Las Vegas, Nevada, is actually the city with the second most number of weddings annually in the world? Over 110,000 marriage licenses are taken out every year in Las Vegas. It will probably surprise most of you to learn that the city with the greatest number of weddings per year is Istanbul, Turkey, which according to the latest figures had 166,000 weddings per year. Here are some more wedding facts. There are about 2.4 million weddings that take place annually in the United States. In Canada as of 2002, there were 150,000 weddings annually. The average cost of a wedding in the United States is $22,000 USD. Its probably pretty close in Canada. The average cost of a wedding in Japan is close to $94,000 USD. The average number of guests invited to wedding is 175 and in the United States weddings are a $70 billion a year industry. Most of that money is spent on the reception, close to 30%. The rings account for 11% of wedding costs, the photographer almost 7%, the bridal gown over 6%, music 5%, flowers 5%, the invitations under 3% and clergy and ceremony fees around 1%. Though the bride’s dress, whether bought or rented, averages around 6% of the wedding costs, surprisingly, or perhaps not, the groom’s attire only account for around 0.8% of the total. Finally and very interestingly, 67% of women continue to wear the same fragrance they wore on their wedding day. I can see the minds whirling into action right now as the women think whether this is true for them or not and as the men try in vain to remember the name of the fragrance at all.

Weddings take a lot of planning. They do today, they did in ancient Palestine. We know very little about weddings in first century Palestine, but we do know that often the wedding celebrations would last for a few days, perhaps even a week. Though many of the inhabitants of places like Galilee were poor, when it came to a wedding, they saved and saved so that they could really splurge. One assumes it must have been so for the couple who were married in Cana of Galilee. We know nothing about this unnamed couple and Cana appears on no map whatsoever. But we do know that Jesus and his disciples and his family were there. And then in the middle of this celebration, the gospel records that the whole thing came to a screeching halt. They had run out of wine!

Good planning is critical to a successful wedding. And now for this wedding celebration, all was about to come to an embarrassing end. And so Jesus’ mother took Jesus aside and casually said to him, “They have no more wine.” In a bit of a shocking reply, Jesus says in response to his mother, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” Though the response sounds unduly harsh, Jesus’ words are quite indicative of John’s gospel style, which pictures Jesus moving inevitably and inexorably towards his sacrificial death on the cross. The response of Jesus to his mother isn’t an answer to the specific question of a lack of wine, but it is a more theological statement about the entire ministry that Jesus has now embarked upon. John the gospel writer wants us to know that for Jesus there is always a bigger picture and the flow of that larger ministry is always dependent upon God’s timing. His hour has not yet come, but it will come and it will come at God’s choosing.

Having said that, Jesus’ mother seemed to know intuitively what needed to happen next. She instructed the servants to do whatever Jesus told them to do. Jesus told the servants to fill six stone jars, which were used for ceremonial washing, to the brim with water. Each of these jars held twenty or thirty gallons of water. And when they were filled to the top with water, the steward, or master of the banquet, was brought a taste of the water which was now turned into wine. Calling the groom aside, the steward said to him, everyone brings out the good wine first, until the guests have had too much and can’t tell the difference, then they bring out the cheap stuff. But you my friend, you have saved the best until now. Of course the groom was oblivious to what the steward was saying, but the celebration was able to continue without a hitch.

Now here’s a question. What do you do with 180 gallons of fine wine? Doesn’t this seem like overkill? John never tells us how Jesus turned the water into wine nor does he really care. The wine, simply by the sheer amount of it, serves a different purpose altogether. The focus isn’t on the miracle of turning water into wine, the focus is on who Jesus is. The gospel’s focus is on who this Jesus of Nazareth is, that he is God’s only son, sent to us as the ultimate sign of God’s generous grace. The beginning of the gospel of John is so majestic in its declaration of who Jesus is. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made and without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life and that life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it… the Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.

Jesus is God’s generous gift of grace to his creation. And the truth is that God’s grace made known to us in Jesus his son, points to a generosity beyond proportion. Into a world which would not recognize the true light, which would not receive the one through whom the world itself was made, God sent his son so that to all those who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, they would have the right to become children of God. Generosity at this level is hard for us to comprehend. And its made harder by the fact that our modern society tends to be more and more defined as a meritocracy. I confess that there is much good in using merit as a basis of discernment. I for one would hope that if I were facing surgery, that my surgeon would be someone who earned her medical degree because of her skill and merit. I would hope that my children’s teachers are among the best in their field, with a passion for education, for themselves as well as for the children in their care. And we could go on. But its when this idea of merit is taken to all encompassing levels that we encounter major problems. Its when we begin judging the nature of a person, not what they do but who they are, that the idea of meritocracy begins to be problematic.

One of the things which has confounded me over the years is the line on a job application form which asks, “expected level of compensation.” I have often wondered why that line is in the application form. Doesn’t the company know what they want to pay for a certain position? Would they pay you whatever you though you were worth? And what exactly do we think we are worth? Some of us may have an over inflated sense of what we are worth but I would guess that most of us would error on the side of modesty. Is the Prime Minister of Canada or the C.E.O. of a major corporation worth more than the clerk at 7-11? The level of compensation would indicate that they are. And in terms of what they do, it would be accurate to say that they are worth more. But what about our worth as people? Is the life of a impoverished refugee worth less than the life of a comfortable retiree? Is the life of a homeless, mentally ill, drug addicted man worth less than the life of a working mother who helps in preparing meals for the homeless through the Mustard Seed ministry? I would hope that as the Ministers of Grace, as disciples of Jesus, we would answer that all human life has equal value before God. There is not a single life on this planet, which has been lived, is being lived or is yet to be lived, that has not been, and is not, and will not be, created in God’s image. All human life has equal value before God. This kind of thinking isn’t natural to us. This kind of thinking comes as a result of a belief in something beyond just merit. This kind of thinking is rooted in the idea of grace. Jesus’ changing of the water into wine, not the actual changing itself, but amount which was changed, points to the nature of God’s grace. Merit says we get what we deserve. Grace says we get what we don’t deserve, we get what God desires to give. Go back to the couple at the wedding feast in Cana. They miscalculated the amount of wine they would need for the wedding feast. Perhaps it may have been due to unforeseen circumstances, but it could also have been due to frugality. Maybe they were hoping to save a little by serving a little less wine. Jesus’ response is to provide them with a massive amount of wine. When it is our nature to be frugal with our grace, God’s response is to be lavishly generous in his grace. We only need to look to Jesus to know that truth.

A merit based world tends to be driven by frugality. And isn’t that too often true of us, and even of the church? How often do we ask the question, how much will this cost and not whose life will be made better by this? For how many churches is the bottom still the budget and not compassion, community and hope? How often we do base the level of our grace on the perceived merits of those who we wish to help? We say we want to be good stewards of God’s blessings to us, good stewards of our resources. We don’t want to be wasteful. I asked earlier what do you do with 180 gallons of wine? Perhaps it was a bit wasteful, not an example of good stewardship, but my guess is that no matter how much of the wine might have been leftover from the feast, there wouldn’t have been a problem in dispensing with the amount leftover. Someone at sometime would have made use of it. I think it’s the same way with grace. If as the Ministers of Grace, we would be a people of generous grace, if we choose not to be frugal with our grace, my hunch is that the generosity of our grace will not be wasted, but that someone at sometime will make use of that generosity. I’m not speaking necessarily of a specific situation, but more of a way of being. As the Ministers of Grace, if we choose to be a people of generous grace, in every facet of our living, then the abundance of our grace will not be wasted. There’s never enough grace in our world to go around. There’s always the need for more. I suspect that none of us will ever have to worry about being too generous with our grace.

So this year, choose to be a people of generous grace. God invites us to move beyond our frugality and to live as a people of abundance. Perhaps we can begin with a person we know, who could use more than our merit based frugal grace. Perhaps we could give them the gift of a generous grace, not necessarily what they deserve, but what we can offer. Then perhaps we could widen that circle, bit by bit. I know that its not going to be easy, old habits of basing our grace on the merits of others die hard. But remember this. At the end of our reading from John’s gospel this morning it reads that, Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory, and his disciples put their trust in him. According to John, this miracle was a sign, the first sign, and signs always point to something else, something greater than the sign itself. Jesus told his mother that his hour had not yet come, but his hour would come and the sign of changing water into wine, the sign of changing a massive amount of water into wine, points to the massive, generous grace that would be offered to the world at the hour of the cross. Not what we deserve, but what God is gracious enough to give, his generous grace in the life of Jesus his son. As the Ministers of Grace, as disciples of Jesus Christ, my friends, may our lives, individually and as this compassionate community of hope, also reflect God’s invitation to be a people of generous grace.

Prayer:God of generous grace, in Jesus your son you responded to our need with such overwhelming love. We can do nothing to repay you, but we can respond to your grace by being conduits of grace in our lives. There is such a need for grace in our world, we need not fear that our generosity would go wasted. Move us to see people for who they are in your care, not only for what they do. Move us beyond our carefully guarded frugality and help us to love one another with the abundance with which you love us. Through Jesus our Lord we pray, Amen.
Offertory:Give us joy, O God, in giving! We celebrate and rejoice that we have something to give, and we pray that these offerings may help others celebrate this day and future days. In Jesus’ name, Amen.