A Fourth Church Sermon by Judith L. Watt | Sunday, January 20, 2019

Sunday, January 20, 2019 | 8:00 a.m.

Judith L. Watt
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 36
John 2:1–11

The question should not be “What would Jesus do?” but rather, more dangerously, “What would Jesus have me do?” The onus is not on Jesus but on us, for Jesus did not come to ask semidivine human beings to do impossible things. He came to ask human beings to live up to their full humanity; he wants us to live in the full implication of our human gifts, and that is far more demanding.

Peter J. Gomes, The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

When I was a new pastor, I took part in our synod-sponsored program for newly ordained pastors in Illinois and Indiana. Many of us have done the same if our first call was in this synod. The program is meant to offer support and mentoring. One of the facilitators for my group, a seasoned Presbyterian pastor now retired, said something one evening during one of our retreats that has stayed with me. I’ve thought of his statement almost every single winter over the twenty-five years since I heard him first say it. You might think that since his statement made such an impression that it might have been about ministry, maybe something about the blessings or the challenges of the calling. Or some pithy advice about doing funerals or weddings. But that evening this is what he said: “I love to drink wine in the winter, because when I do, I can picture the hot sun of summer beating down on the grapes in the vineyards, doing their magic in preparation for this wine that I’m drinking now.” So you might wonder what my strong memory of this statement says about me. Yes, it’s true. I enjoy a glass of wine. But also this mentor of mine was describing a miracle.

Today’s story from John is also about wine and the rapid-fire miracle of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding because the hosts had run out. It is a story that is appropriate for this space of time we are in—the Sundays after Epiphany and before the beginning of Lent. If you are not familiar with the meaning of the word epiphany, an epiphany is an appearance, a manifestation, a demonstration, and in this story and others between now and Lent, we are focused on what happens between the one big spectacle of Christmas and the other big spectacle of Easter. We are looking at what Jesus did and said and taught during his life, the epiphanies he offers as to who he is. It’s all the stuff that’s not stated in the Apostles’ Creed, the creed we say almost every Sunday, which goes from one phrase—“born of the virgin Mary”—to the very next phrase—“suffered under Pontius Pilate.” No information about Jesus’ life in between. That’s what these Sundays after Epiphany and before Lent give us a chance to do: a chance to look at who Jesus is, what he did, and what he said.

In this story, Jesus’ mother had been invited to a wedding in Cana. And Jesus and the disciples, the ones newly called into his ministry, maybe part of his new pastors group, were there too. Weddings in that day were not just one-day affairs. They lasted at least seven days, with relatives coming and going and coming again to feast and to drink and to celebrate. For some reason, the wine had run out, and Jesus’ mother tells Jesus about it. I imagine her sidling up to Jesus and whispering in his ear. “Honey, they’ve run out of wine.” He responds in a way that sounds harsh to our present-day ears, as though he is annoyed. “Woman, what does this have to do with you and me?” This doesn’t stop her. She just turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”

Every commentator on Jesus’ harsh response to his mother has some rationale as to why he responds this way, different theories or explanations about what it really means that he responded by calling his mother “Woman,” various attempts to soften his response or give it symbolic meaning. The fact is, because there are so many different explanations, I don’t think anyone really knows for sure why he responded as he did. To me, it’s as though Jesus responds, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” “What do you expect me to do about it?”

What I think is that Jesus’ mother, Mary, believed in Jesus before he believed in himself. It’s a radical thought, I know, because we like to see Jesus as always knowing and always fully functioning. And maybe I’m totally wrong about this, but to imagine Jesus’ mother knowing already that her son could fix the problem makes sense to me—not only because long before he was born, she sang the Magnificat and proclaimed who he would be, but also because I know how most mothers are with their sons. I remember my own mother commenting every time we drove into Chicago, pointing to what was then the United Insurance building on the river. “There’s John’s building.” She meant, “There’s the building John works in.” But her pride in my brother came through, and it always sounded as if my brother, John, owned that whole big building. I think Mary knew already what Jesus was capable of, before he had admitted it.

And so he responds harshly and says, “My hour has not yet come.”

That phrase—“my hour”—signifies the hour of Jesus’ death. My hour, my crucifixion, the end of my time here in this world, has not yet come.

Why would Jesus respond like this? Did he not understand how anything he might do would help or what his mother was asking of him? Had he not grown into his full calling? Was he scared he’d fail? Or did John put these words in Jesus’ mouth as irony, to point out to us that there’s more to the story of Jesus than his hour? That there’s more to the story of Jesus than the hour of his death on the cross? There’s a lot that happens before that hour arrives. Is John trying to wake us up to the fact that we’d better pay attention to the present and the signs right in front of us and also to the opportunities now rather than wait for “the hour,” the perfect hour, the right hour?

Regardless of what Jesus really meant in this story, his words, “My hour has not yet come” have made me think of how often we are paralyzed from moving forward, taking a first step toward something. We are either hindered by thinking our actions won’t make a bit of difference or by not knowing why anything we might do would be important. We are flummoxed by thinking we lack skill or ability. We are paralyzed by not knowing what our own callings as human beings are. These days I think we are overwhelmed by the enormity of the problems we see before us and the enormity of the division that exists, the injustice that is so evident. It’s so easy to become discouraged.

Just recently I found myself thinking and actually realizing in a new way how sad I am that racism and all sorts of isms, but especially racism, won’t be eradicated by the time I die. All those isms will still haunt this world. It was a despairing realization.

And yet, there is so much harm that is done when we don’t take a first step—the first step toward a dream, the first step in making amends, the first step, albeit little, in showing kindness or the first step in changing any sort of injustice. I don’t really know if Jesus was overwhelmed by what his mother was asking him to do or if he felt he wasn’t ready. But I know that that’s often how we feel.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s words from his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” that you just heard speak to the harm and hurt that’s caused when action is not taken. He said, “For years now I’ve heard the word ‘wait.’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with a piercing familiarity. This ‘wait’ has almost always meant ‘never.’”

The hour has not yet come for racism to be crucified and buried, never to rise again. I wish that were not true. But that doesn’t mean the hour of our doing something isn’t here. In the way we vote. In the way we white people look at our own fragility on the subject of race. In the way we interview and hire. In the way we decide to take steps to engage in more mixed-race relationships. In the way we take steps toward dismantling the racism we see in ourselves and in our own institutions, even the church. That’s what the Racial Equity Council here is doing. Taking steps. Not waiting until the final hour but seeing what it can do and what we can do now—steps taken now toward that final hour.

I love the hope that comes in one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s speeches to a bunch of junior high students in 1967. “Be a bush if you can’t be a tree. If you can’t be a highway, just be a trail. If you can’t be a sun, be a star. For it isn’t by size that you win or fail. Be the best of whatever you are” (a speech before a group of students at Barrett Junior High School in Philadelphia, 26 October 1967).

At that wedding so long ago, Jesus eventually listened to someone who believed in him and then acted. He listened to someone who believed there was a solution. And when he changed the water into wine, he provided for a need in the most ordinary of circumstances—enough wine to last for the rest of the wedding celebration. It was not just ordinary wine, but very good wine, the kind of wine people relish. What he also did was protect the hosts of that wedding reception from shame, because in that day if a host ran out of provisions at a wedding celebration, their entire family experienced community shame for years to come. In a way that is hard for us to understand today, but the shame was real. So we can choose to think of what he did at that wedding—changing water into wine—as a miracle, which I guess it was, or we can choose also to think of what he did at that wedding as even so much more: showing the abundance of God and God’s protection for God’s people in need. When we take those same kinds of steps—providing for a need to be filled, adding joy to this world, protecting another from unmerited shame, real miracles take place. Even twentieth-century scientist Albert Einstein said, “There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

On this day before the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birth, I think it’s important to remember his work on behalf of civil rights and the ways he moved a people and a nation to strive for a better way to live. But I also I think it’s important that while he strived to erase the unwarranted shame brought upon his people, despite all he did to move a nation to a better and more humane way of being, his most important gift to us was his obvious reliance on God in every action. King was a public Christian. Even in his first speech as leader of the Montgomery bus boycott, he said, “We must keep God in the forefront. Let us be Christian in all our action.” He reminded the world that God is active in history whether the world recognizes God’s presence or not. And he reminded the church that God created and loves the world and calls us to engagement in the world on behalf of the poor and powerless, that God calls us to take steps, even when it seems our hour has not yet come. Amen.