Scriptures: Isaiah 62:1-5 & John 2:1-11

"The Delight of the Lord"

If you were to do a "person on the street" style interview asking anyone who came along to recall some miracles of Jesus, either specific ones, or kinds of miracles, I suppose you would hear that Jesus healed sick people, restored the sight to blind persons, cast out demons. You might hear of dead people being raised.

What I doubt you would hear, even if you stood out there for a long time and interviewed a great number of people, is the miracle we just read about – the turning of water into wine. It’s not that it is such an obscure miracle; most people who have spent much time in and around a church have heard of it, it is just that it doesn’t seem all that significant. In light of all the human need and suffering that Jesus responded to in all those other miracles, how important, really, can it be to turn water into wine?

The writer of the fourth gospel knew all about those wondrous, compassionate miracles that Jesus performed in response to the overwhelming need he encountered as he traveled about the Palestinian countryside. Yet he chose this very different miracle to introduce us to the miracle working Jesus.

The setting is a joyous occasion, a wedding feast. Jesus and his disciples are guests. In the course of the celebration a minor complication arises, the wine runs out. I’ve never been to a wedding reception where the bar ran dry. I expect if that happened, it might be time to go home anyway. These guests still feel like celebrating, and Jesus is asked to come to the rescue. He finds some ceremonial jars used for purification rites, and has them filled with water. The water is turned into wine and the celebration is able to continue.

The guests are surprised at the quality of this new wine. Ordinarily the best wine would be served first, and then later when everyone has had a good quantity of the fine wine, or is drunk as the reading says, lesser wines would be served. This new wine, however, was much better than what had been being served. There was an abundance of excellent wine to continue and even increase the celebration. The wedding feast was assured of being a glorious success!

The image of a wedding feast turns up often in the gospels. Jesus told several parables and stories about weddings and wedding feasts. The wedding and wedding feast are common fixtures in the Old Testament as well. The prophet Isaiah promises

those who are returning from exile that they shall no longer be named "Forsaken," but shall henceforth be called, "My Delight is in Her." The prophet goes on to talk about God’s relationship with Israel in terms of marriage. God will marry Israel, and give her a new name.

Weddings were elaborate affairs in the life of the ancient near east. They would often last seven days – mirroring the duration of creation. Marriage was a form of creation. A new relationship, a new life, a new family, a new name. So when scripture speaks about God and people in terms of marriage, the indication is that God is doing something new and wonderful. A new creation is coming into form.

That is why John chooses this miracle to announce Jesus’ ministry. Jesus initiates a new creation, a creation of abundant grace and goodness. What Isaiah reported as God’s promise, John tells us is fulfilled in Jesus. This would be fleshed out through the life and ministry of Jesus, but here at the very start, the writer wants to make clear how extravagant and wonderful is this new thing that God is doing.

There is an abundance about this miracle. In fact the abundance is the impressive thing in this miracle. Six stone jars each holding 20 –30 gallons, as much as 180 gallons of wine! That is an amazing quantity of good wine. Much more than anyone could have expected. It is a sign that God means it when the prophet says "the people whose name was ‘Forsaken,’ will now be named ‘My Delight is in Her.’"

They will not simply survive, make do, find some comfort and relief from their suffering; they will flourish in the goodness and grace of God. The people whose land was called desolate, nothing, the dust heap of the world, shall now be called Married. And married not to some poor lost soul who can barely support them, but to God, who can and will give them everything desirable! There is an extravagance in the promise just as there is in the miracle.

This first sign Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and his disciples believed in him. I hope you can believe in the extravagant grace and goodness of God today. I believe that in order for anyone to be a good, faithful disciple of Jesus Christ, a belief in this extravagance of God is absolutely necessary. It is important that we believe in God’s power to change things, to accomplish God’s will, but it is even more important to have an awareness of the extravagant goodness of that will, which reaches to all persons. It is vitally important to have a sense of the overabundance of God’s grace.

Tomorrow our nation celebrates the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. If ever a people were desolate and forsaken, African Americans were such a people. Torn violently from their homelands, despised, oppressed, denied justice, hated, with no way to escape, African Americans knew what Isaiah was speaking of when he used Desolate and Forsaken as names for a people.

Out of his certainty that God was a God of abundant goodness, abundant graciousness, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was empowered in the name of Jesus to seek a new day, a new name, a new status, a new situation for his people.

We honor him, because out of that belief and hope he called all of us to become something better, something far better than what we were. That vision of a God who desired an abundance of goodness for God’s people, enabled Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to keep hoping and believing through all the obstacles and all the dangers he faced.

As Jesus’ ministry unfolded he encountered incredible odds, overwhelming suffering, disbelief in his mission. Both he and his disciples needed to be assured that God’s grace was greater than the evil that opposed it. And it is not different for us. There is much to convince us of the desolation and forsakenness of life. Even we relatively wealthy Presbyterians have a full share of problems and difficulties.

And if we open our eyes very wide and look around, the suffering and trouble of the world can become overwhelming to us. We have the ability to avert our eyes; we can walk on, but that is hardly answering Christ’s call to discipleship. What we are called to do is to believe the good news of God’s extravagant gracious salvation for all people, and acting out of that belief, seek justice and peace, spreading God’s love and grace wherever there is desolation and forsakenness.

So drink heartily of Christ’s new wine, there is an abundance. Go forth assured of God’s determination to save, to raise up, to throw a grand party where there was formerly desolation and forsakenness. And join Christ as disciples bearing this Good News.

Thanks be to God.

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