A Fourth Church Sermon by Calum I. MacLeod

January 18, 2004 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

The Guest

Calum I. MacLeod
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 36
Isaiah 62:1–5
John 2:-1–11

“You have kept the good wine until now.”

John 2:10 (NRSV)

O God, the light of the minds that know you,
Joy of the hearts that love you,
And strength of the wills that serve you,
Help us so to know you
That we may truly love you,
And so to love you
That we may fully serve you,
Whom to serve is perfect freedom.
Amen.

I’m sure many of you were here in the sanctuary on Monday evening to take part in the forum led by church historian and Presbyterian pastor Bruce Rigdon. The forum was entitled “The Da Vinci Code—Decoded.” Carol Allen has mentioned already that if you have read the book and missed Monday’s event, then there are audio tapes available of Bruce Rigdon’s excellent analysis of this hugely popular book.

It was quite amazing—there were 1,100 people in the sanctuary on Monday evening. It seems that you just put up a sign on Michigan Avenue that says “The Da Vinci Code—Decoded” and 1,100 people stream through the doors of the church. Extraordinary.

I even considered during the week that I might change my sermon title for today—call it “The Da Vinci Code—and the Wedding at Cana,” or something like that, just to see if we could get a few more people through the doors. (Maybe you’ll find out in the next few weeks that the “Da Vinci Code” keeps coming up in sermon titles!)

It was a very interesting evening—not only because of Rigdon’s excellent analysis, but because, as one of my colleagues on staff said, this fine historian and Presbyterian pastor also managed to get a little sermon in his presentation. He was asked a question at one point, and in response he offered this little formula, which I offer to us today to reflect on as we begin to look at this text from John.

Bruce Rigdon said, in response to a question, “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”

He was challenging a view that he said was prevalent while he was being educated for ministry thirty or forty years ago, a view that looks at faith and the religious life through the same lens that we have in the scientific worldview: the rational viewpoint that seeks explanations, proofs, rationality. Rigdon spoke about how in his own ministry, as he has gotten older, that rational, scientific worldview has had less of a part in his faith life. The language of faith for him has become much more the language of aesthetic, of beauty, we might say of metaphor or poetry.

So he was offering the suggestion that when we gather in a place like this to hear God’s word and to reflect on it together, we’re not bringing that scientific worldview with us, the one that we probably live with most of the week.

Now, to be clear, this is not an anti-intellectual stance. It’s not that we somehow check our brains with our coats at the church door or that when we come here we enter some vacuum of forgetfulness or that we pretend to live in a prescientific age. It’s more that the questions that we ask of the text, of the tradition, of ourselves are different from those that are asked in the science laboratory. We’re not interested so much in how did something happen as why.

This may be particularly relevant on a morning such as this with this story that we are reflecting on, the story of the miracle of the changing of water into wine at the wedding feast in Cana. A very fine New Testament scholar called Gail O’Day has written some commentary on this passage. She acknowledges that the modern reader or hearer may find the miracle “puzzling at best and offensive at worst.” She goes on to say that the essence of any miracle is that it “shatters conventional expectations and explanations.” And then she lays out this challenge to we who would read the text: “The task is to struggle with what this miracle says about Jesus,” to struggle with the meaning of the changing of water into wine and what it tells us about Jesus.

Let’s attempt to clear up a couple of things as we look at the text, at the story itself. One would be to say that the miracle at Cana is not primarily about weddings or about marriage. Now there is certainly a tradition in the church, a metaphor that’s used in some parts of the church—particularly in the Roman Catholic tradition—that would use this story and talk about marriage as being an image of the relationship between Christ and the church. The church is sometimes called the bridegroom of Christ and Christ the groom. That’s maybe something for another day and another sermon, but it’s certainly in the tradition. You heard it in the Old Testament reading that the church puts together with the Cana reading, that reading from Isaiah about God’s relationship with God’s people being described in terms of marriage.

I often use the wedding at Cana at the beginning of a wedding ceremony. I’d say something like this: “Jesus Christ was a guest at the wedding in Cana in Galilee and Jesus Christ is a guest here at this wedding through his Spirit, to enrich our love and our joy.” It is a way of recognizing the presence of Christ in the gathered community.

But for this morning and our purposes, the wedding piece of this really is almost incidental. It’s the context, it’s the setting in which the banquet is taking place where Jesus will provide the wine.

So it’s not about marriage. And then the second thing I would say is, it’s not primarily about drinking either. I’m sorry to disappoint you all. You know the old line, “Oh well, you know I can, it’s fine to drink. Jesus did it, didn’t he? Jesus changed the water into wine”—as if this were some kind of daily occurrence that Jesus performed, a scenario something like Peter coming back from the supermarket and forgetting the wine for dinner. Jesus says, “Don’t worry, just bring me some water and I’ll change it and we’ll be fine.” That’s not what we’re about today.

That approach does, however, remind me of a dinner I was at once at a rugby club in Scotland. Rugby players are notorious for their drinking, so when the chaplain to the rugby team was asked to say grace, this was the grace that he delivered at the start of the dinner:

Jesus save your Lord divine,
who changed the water into wine,
look upon these noble men,
who are going to change it back again.

A little irreverent, I know. (Don’t tell John Buchanan that I said that from the pulpit of Fourth Church.)

So the miracle at Cana is not about weddings and it’s not about drinking. It’s about epiphany. The church has always read this story in the season just after Christmas around the Festival of Epiphany. The church has understood epiphany as being a threefold piece that lifts up three stories from the New Testament. Epiphany means appearance, a revelation. It’s about the recognition of God in Christ, about the wise men coming to Bethlehem and recognizing the Messiah. We read that two weeks ago. The baptism of the Lord was the text for last week. And then the third is this text, the miracle at Cana. For John, it’s the first “sign” that proves the indwelling of God in Christ; the result of the miracle is that the disciples believe that Jesus is the promised Messiah.

The text itself is puzzling. We might find it difficult here to think about how Jesus treats his mother. It’s interesting to note that in John’s Gospel, the mother of Jesus is never named, is always just referred to as “the mother of Jesus.” Jesus has this almost harsh disengagement from his mother when she says that the wine has run out. One of the members at the earlier service came up to me and said, “You’ve got to realize that his mother was a strong Jewish mother and she knew that even though Jesus disagreed, he would still do as she asked.” But there is paradox here in that Jesus initially seems to say no but then goes on to fulfill the request by providing wine miraculously.

There’s a great sermon by Martin Luther King Jr., whose life and ministry we celebrate this weekend. In the sermon, he talks about God having a tough mind and a tender heart—there’s an excerpt on the front of the bulletin this morning. [“I am thankful that we worship a God who is both toughminded and tenderhearted. If God were only toughminded, he would be a cold, passionless despot sitting in some far-off heaven “contemplating all” as Tennyson puts it. . . . But if God were only tenderhearted, he would be too soft and sentimental to function when things go wrong and incapable of controlling what he has made. . . . God is toughminded enough to transcend the world; he is tenderhearted enough to live in it. He does not leave us alone in our agonies and struggles. He seeks us in dark places and suffers with us and for us in our tragic prodigality.”]

King talks about God being toughminded enough to transcend the world and yet tenderhearted enough to live in it. That could be something of a commentary on the miracle at Cana. The transcendent aspect warns us not to domesticate Jesus or sentimentalize Jesus. Then there’s this reversal in the text, a reversal in the central figure, Jesus, who has been invited, along with his disciples, to the wedding. Jesus comes as a guest but then takes on the role of the host, of the provider, the one who has the best wine, the wine that’s kept until the end and shared; Jesus moves from the role of guest to host.

I wonder how you would respond if I asked you this morning to brainstorm what your image of heaven might be. When you think about the promise of eternity, of eternal life in Christ—how do you picture that?

We might start off with pearly gates and St. Peter—the New Yorker cartoon view of heaven: haloes and harps and things like that. And then perhaps we’d go deeper and reflect about some of the scriptural images, some of the ways in which the Bible talks about God’s promise: a beautiful city perhaps; restoration of something broken; or a lush garden, a return to Eden, a theme used so often by the Scottish poet Edwin Muir in his poetry; or a place of peace, like the well-known paintings of ‘The Peaceable Kingdom,” where the once-violent animals are now lying together in harmony.

I wonder if anyone would offer a dinner table or a great banquet as an image of heaven. This is actually one of the most frequent images that Jesus uses when he talks about the reign of God which is ushered in by Jesus Christ and yet is also the promise of that which is to come. It is like the story he tells in Luke of the banquet that’s thrown but none of the invited guests want to come. They’re all too busy, and so the doors are thrown open and those who least expect it—the outcasts, those on the margins—are welcomed in to share the bounty that Jesus offers (John 14). And it’s not only in the stories that Jesus tells; it’s also in Jesus’ earthly ministry and life. A friend of mine once said in a sermon that in the Gospels, Jesus eats more than he prays. Like when he sees Zaccheus and says, “I’m coming to your house for dinner.” And so Jesus embodies and lives out this central image of the reign of God. It repeats itself in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000 and the 4,000, a vision of inclusion and bounty. This first act, this first sign, the presence of Jesus at a banquet in which Jesus is the host who provides the wine, points us towards that vision: a vision of wholeness and fullness and justice for the world and for God’s people. It seems to be saying that when we’re out, when we’ve got nothing left, when we’re out of hope, when we’re out of peace, when we’ve got no love left, that Jesus, the host, comes bringing those things in fullness to us. And that sense of excess is not just by chance here. William Barclay, the well-known Scottish professor of New Testament, in his commentary says, “No wedding party on earth could drink 180 gallons of wine. No need on earth can exhaust the grace of Christ.” That sense of fullness, of excess, is important.

I’ve been reading an American poet quite a bit recently, Richard Wilbur. I only came across him recently, but I understand he is quite well-known. He was, I believe, Poet Laureate of the United States in the late ’80s. He wrote a lovely poem on this theme called “A Wedding Toast.”

So John tells how, at Cana’s wedding feast,
The water-pots poured wine in such amount
That by his sober count
There were a hundred gallons at the least.
It made no earthly sense, unless to show
How whatsoever love elects to bless
Brims to a sweet excess
That can without depletion overflow.

A sweet excess—that’s what is brought by Jesus to Cana. And every time we come across something like this in the New Testament—a story of feeding, of Christ’s presence at a table—it should always take us to the time that we come together with Christ around the table in the sharing of communion, when we come to this table placed centrally at the front of the church.

One of the things I love about Fourth Presbyterian Church is that even when we’re not actually sharing bread and wine together on Sunday morning, we have the table there and we have the symbols of communion to remind us that even though we won’t actually take bread and wine, our worship is done in the context of our being fed, of our coming into community around the table. It points forward to that time when we will meet Christ in bread and in cup. It points forward to the promise of the great banquet of eternal life, to a sense of Jesus being the host, the one who cares for us.

There’s a great story that Martin Luther King Jr. tells in another of his sermons. He talks about the Montgomery bus protest in Montgomery, Alabama, and tells of one of the people who was there in the movement with him, an old African American woman, Mother Pollard they called her. King says that,

Although she was poverty-stricken and uneducated, she was amazingly intelligent and possessed a deep understanding of the meaning of the movement. After having walked for several weeks, she was asked if she were tired—with ungrammatical profundity, she answered, “My feets is tired but my soul is rested.”

And King goes on to tell how he was speaking at one of the mass rallied later on a Monday evening. He says,

I attempted to convey an overt impression of strength and courage although I was moderately depressed and fear stricken. At the end of the meeting Mother Pollard came to the front of the church and said, “Come here, son.” I immediately went to her and hugged her affectionately. “Something’s wrong with you,” she said, “you didn’t talk strong tonight.”

King says he sought further to disguise his fears. He said,

“No, no, Mother Pollard, nothing’s wrong, I’m feeling as fine as ever.”

“You can’t fool me,” she said, “I know something’s wrong. Is it that we ain’t doing the things to please you or is it that the white folks is bothering you?”

Before I could respond she looked directly into my eyes and said, “I done told you we was with you all the way.” And then her face became radiant and she said in words of quiet certainty, “but even if we ain’t with you, God’s gonna take care of you.”

That’s what the miracle of the wedding of Cana means. It means “God’s gonna take care of you and me.” It means that God’s promise to the least and the last, to the lost and the lonely, and the depleted and those who’ve run out of steam, is that there is fullness. It’s said so beautifully in a prayer that I love very much. It’s a communion prayer written by a Mexican woman called Elsa Tamez.

Come on, let’s celebrate the supper of the Lord,
Let’s make a huge loaf of bread
And let us bring abundant wine
Like at the wedding at Cana.
Let the woman not forget the salt,
Let the men bring along the yeast,
Let many guests come—the lame, the blind, the crippled, the poor—
Come quickly,
Let us follow the recipe of the Lord.
All of us let us knead the dough together with our hands
And let us see with joy how the bread grows
Because today we celebrate the meeting with the Lord.
Today we renew our commitment to the kingdom.
Nobody will stay hungry,
Nobody will be thirsty.

Thanks be to God.

Amen.