Cana: More Than a Preview of Coming Attractions

[This was shared this morning, the inaugural Sunday for the new facility of Living Water Lutheran Church, during both worship services.]

John 2:1-11

On ATT Uverse, like every other cable and satellite service, I suppose, there's a channel devoted entirely to showing movie trailers, previews of things to come. This morning’s gospel lesson, in which Jesus turned water into wine at the beginning of His ministry, is a preview of things to come.

Jesus shows us what life in His kingdom will be like once He has been glorified. In other words, once He has died, risen, ascended to heaven, and returned to establish what Revelation calls “the new heaven and the new earth.”

He even hints at one of the most important ways He intends to come to us even today.

The lesson begins: “On the third day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus also was invited to the wedding with his disciples.”

There are lots of theories offered by scholars, but “the third day” here seems to refer to the third day of Jesus’ public ministry, three days since He first began calling people to follow Him.

But, of course, no one can miss the symbolic importance of “the third day.” It was on the third day after Jesus’ crucifixion that Jesus rose, confirming His power over all that destroys us, demonstrating that He has the power to bring forgiveness and new life to those with faith.

The events on this third day will foreshadow Jesus’ authority over the world, life, and death.

Verse 3: “When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’ And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.’”

Imagine a wedding reception at which the chicken that served as part of the main entree ran out. It was a crisis!

Jesus’ mother--never referred to by name in John’s gospel--apparently seeks to spare the hosts from a similar embarrassment. She runs to her son, who she knows is more than just a nice boy from Nazareth, to lay the crisis before Him.

Has it ever struck you as a little funny that the first of the seven signs that John reports Jesus performed in order to point to His deity, came not in response to some death-dealing cataclysm, the lives of hundreds of people at stake, but in order to spare a bridal family embarrassment at a wedding? It seems a little silly, even though it does serve to demonstrate that the God we meet in Jesus Christ cares about even the seemingly inconsequential things in our earthly lives.

But I think Jesus sees the silliness in all of this too, because He says to His mother, in what I believe were playful tones, “Woman, what does that have to do with Me? I came to save people from sin and death and you want me to save a party? Besides, my hour”--by which in John’s gospel, Jesus always means the hour of His crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension--”my hour hasn’t arrived yet.”

Sons can get away with that kind of thing with their moms often. My sisters still get a little irked when they tell me even now, “You could get away with anything with mom. She’d get mad at you and it wouldn’t be long before you’d have her laughing and telling you you could do the very thing she’d just said no to.” (I always ask then, "What's your point?")

Mary ignores Jesus’ teasing, turns to the servants, and says, “Oh. Do whatever He tells you.”  

Now, while the rest of this incident remains joyful, here’s where it really gets interesting. Verse 6: “Now there were six stone water jars there for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. And he said to them, ‘Now draw some out and take it to the master of the feast.’ So they took it.”

Water from stone jars was used in the Jewish rites of purification over which the Pharisees often made such a fuss with Jesus. In a sense, these jars represent the worst of Jewish religiosity. At its worst, Jesus’ fellow Jews had boiled their relationship with God down to rules: rituals observed, laws obeyed.

They used water to clean their hands, but inside they were corrupted by unrepented sin, selfishness, greed, and hatred for outsiders.

Their faith had become as empty as the stone jars at Cana.

In Matthew 23:27-28, Jesus scorned such false faith: “Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! [Jesus said] You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.”

But Jesus isn’t one to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Jesus has come to salvage and make new that which has been corrupted by sin, decimated by death and the darkness of this world. Jesus has come to make all things new.

So, Jesus orders the jars to be filled, as they’d probably been filled many times before.

Yet this time, there’s a twist in the plot. This is no same old, same old.

Verse 9: “When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.’”

Truer words were never spoken. In Jesus, God saves the best for last.

He takes what is ugly and makes it beautiful.

He takes those who are empty and fills them with the very life of God!
He can even, as He is doing today, take a building that once was dedicated to evil, the promotion of sin, and the defiance of God’s will, and use it instead, to His glory, use it as His launching pad for His people to spread the good news--the gospel--of new and everlasting life for all who believe in Jesus Christ here in our neighborhoods and in all the world.

The New Testament book of Hebrews says: “In the past God spoke to our ancestors through the prophets at many times and in various ways, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed heir of all things, and through whom also he made the universe.” [Hebrews 1:1-2]

The turning of water into wine then, is more than just a neat trick. It is, as John tells us in verse 11, “the first of [Jesus’] signs,” an event  that “manifested [revealed, made plain] His glory.”

It's the beginning of what the scholars call the messianic feast, the banquet of love to which all who believe in the God we know in Christ will come.

In Isaiah 62:5, God promises a day in which, “as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.”

And John would later glimpse the feasr from the Island of Patmos decades after Jesus’ resurrection: “the wedding supper of the Lamb!” to which all who have endured in trusting in Christ are invited. [Revelation 19:9]

Even now, even today, Jesus invites you and me to enjoy more than a preview of the great heavenly banquet as heaven comes to earth and another miracle occurs: We receive Christ’s body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine and we receive His forgiveness and new life.

In it, Christ once again comes to us in the midst of our earthly lives to give us Himself, His strength, His peace, so that we can face anything!

Through this feast, allows us to enjoy more than a preview of when we will see God face to face, when we will be one with God and neighbor, when suffering, tears, and pain will be behind us.

Today, He will gift us with the privilege of partaking of the feast alongside all the saints of every time and every place.

As surely as at the wedding in Cana, in the bread and the wine, on this joyous day, Jesus comes to us and gives to us, as the old liturgies put it, “a foretaste of the feast to come.” Amen

5 Interesting Things About the Wedding at Cana

A wedding at Cana is remembered as the occasion for Jesus' first miracle, when He turned water into wine.

Here are five interesting things about John 2:1-11, in which the incident is recounted.

1. John begins the account with the words, "On the third day..." Most scholars now believe that this represents the third day of man named Nathanael following Jesus. How Nathanael came to do that is recounted in John 1:43-51. It appears right before the account of the wedding in John's Gospel.

Coming at the beginning of Jesus' earthly ministry, the phrase, "on the third day," foreshadows Jesus' resurrection, which comes on the third day from His crucifixion.

2. There is whimsy in this incident, underscoring that Jesus is both true God and true human. Here we see Him as God and as a human being.

Jesus' mother presents Him with a dilemma: The supply of wine for the celebrants of a wedding banquet, the kind of event which typically ran for about a week in those days, had given out. Implicit in Mary's statement of fact apparently, is a request that reflects her understanding of Who Jesus is, the "Word made flesh," God in human skin.

But Jesus is also her son. Like generations of sons before and since, Jesus is playful in His response to Mary. I think we can well imagine a teasing tone in Jesus' voice and a smile on His face when He tells her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to Me? My hour has not yet come." (More on that below.)

Also, like generations of moms, Mary takes her son's teasing in stride and, certain that He will respond to her request, turns to the servants and says, "Do whatever He tells you."

Even if you don't believe that Jesus teased His mother here, you have to admit that choosing to reveal His divinity for the first time through an act that allowed a party to continue and prevent its hosts from being humiliated, seems, on the face of it, a whimsical choice on Jesus' part. But God isn't just solemn Lord of the universe; He's also the author of joy.

3. The "hour" to which Jesus is referring undoubtedly is the hour when His divinity was to be fully revealed. Of course, His divinity would be at least intimated soon. After all, who but God could turn water into wine?

But Jesus' divinity would not be fully understood until after His resurrection. Many still refuse to understand it or believe it. To those who paid attention though, miracles like this one served as signs of Jesus' identity and mission. They still serve the same purpose today.

4. The water turned into wine reminds us of the two Sacraments of the Church: Holy Baptism and Holy Communion.

The first is our port of entry into the Church. (By "Church," I'm not referring to a denominational organization or a specific congregation, but the Church composed of those who turn from sin and persist in believing in Jesus as their only God and Savior.) Holy Baptism is what Jesus is talking about in John 3:5, when He says, "No one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and the Spirit." In Baptism, the Holy Spirit claims us as children of God. Of course, like all children, we may run away from being God's child. We may opt out of trusting in the God Who claims us in Baptism. But Baptism assures us that, as the old saying puts it, God is absent from our lives, it wasn't God Who moved.

The second is the sustenance Christ gives to us along our journey as believers. In a mysterious way we can't explain or articulate, Christ comes to us in Communion, offering us forgiveness of sin as we receive His body and blood in, with, and under the bread and the wine. This is what Jesus meant when, at the Passover He celebrated with His disciples just before He was arrested and executed, He handed them bread and said, "Take, eat; this is My body," then handed them wine and said, "Drink from it all of you; for this is My blood...which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." (Matthew 20:26-29)

The Lutheran movement of which I'm a part has always said that it's pointless to argue over how many Sacraments there are. But we also believe that three things make a thing a Sacrament, a mysterious means by which God's grace in Christ is imparted to us:

• It was instituted or commanded by Christ.
• It entails a physical element.
• It comes with the promise of forgiveness of sin to those who receive it with belief.

Interestingly, John's Gospel is the most sacramental of the for Gospels found in the New Testament. Yet, in it, we find no command from Jesus to baptize and He doesn't mention Jesus' institution of Holy Communion during his account of the Last Supper. John, the consummate artist, emphasizes the importance of the two sacraments by not including overt references to Jesus instituting either of them.

5. This incident, coming at the beginning of Jesus' ministry, is the start of what biblical scholars would call an inclusion which culminates at John 19:34. In this latter passage, wanting to confirm that Jesus, then hanging on the cross, is dead, a soldier pierces His side "and at once blood and water came out."

Ancient writers often used inclusions in order to emphasize an important theme. There are many of them in the Bible and an inclusion can encompass both large and small sections of Scripture. They offer a good interpretive tool for those who want to understand God's Word.

Everything within this particular inclusion, the story of Jesus' time on earth, helps us to stand in awe of the incredible fact that God took on human flesh to make His grace, power, and love accessible to all who believe in Him (see John 1:1-14; 3:16; 14:6).

Today, although we can't see Jesus, Who is alive and ascended to heaven, He remains accessible to us in Holy Baptism and Holy Communion, among other ways. We also can experience Jesus, of course, in the Bible, God's normative and authoritative book for us; prayer in Jesus' Name; and the fellowship of other Christians. But the Sacraments, with their physical elements, have about them the mystery of the God, Who is Spirit, taking on flesh to become "the Lamb of God."

So, this passage, laden with whimsy and taking place at a party, also foreshadows Christ's death for the sins of humanity and His resurrection. It also points to the fact that all who believe in Jesus will, one day, be guests at a party--a banquet, a celebration--that never ends. (See also Luke 15:22-23.)

There's a lot more to be said about this passage. But this post is only about five interesting things. You might want to explore and reflect on the passage for yourself, using a good commentary like IVP Bible Background Commentary (New Testament) by Craig Keener.

Aiming Toward, "MIssion Accomplished!"

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, earlier today.]


John 17:1-11
Please pull out the Celebrate insert from your bulletin and look at today’s Gospel lesson, John 17:1-11. Keep it handy.

In this lesson, Jesus does an extraordinary thing: He lets us listen in on His personal prayer to God the Father.

Now, I don't know about you, but there are things in my personal prayer time that I want to keep strictly between God and me. I don't want anybody listening in.

But Jesus has no secrets. The Word made flesh, is an open book.

The entire Bible, in fact, reveals that God has always been an open book. The New Testament book of Romans reminds us that, “…what can be known about God is plain…, because God has shown it…”

We see God's openness in other ways. The Bible affirms, for example, that God’s law—His will and His commands for humanity—has always been written on our hearts, giving all of us a strong hint, long before we even hear the Name of Jesus, that there is a God Who made and cares about us.

But more than that, God has taken the time and effort and sacrifice to live out His love for us and make it possible for all who turn from sin and believe in Him to live with Him eternally. God has lived His love for us out loud for everyone to see!

In the prologue to his account of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection, John the Evangelist says, “The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.”

John goes on to say of Jesus, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known.”

Jesus has no secrets. Jesus is in the disclosing business.

So, what exactly does He disclose to us in today’s Gospel lesson?

First: He discloses a heart filled with celebration.

One of my nephews, Andrew, is graduating from high school. There’s going to be a celebration later today. The unspoken theme will be: mission accomplished. That's the theme of all graduation parties!

(And sometimes, their theme is "Shwew!")

In His prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus takes a victory lap. He exults in His accomplishment on earth even before He goes to the cross or is raised from the dead.

Jesus knows that He already is what He was sent into the world to be: “the way, and the truth, and the life,” the only way for human beings to know God and the only way to the life that the life-giving God of the universe gives to those who repent and trust in Christ.

Look at what Jesus says He has already accomplished at the moment He utters His prayer.

• In verse 6: “I have made Your Name known to those whom You gave me…” 
• In verse 7: “Now they know that everything You have given me is from You…” 
• In verse 8: “for the words that You gave to me I have given to them, and [they] know in truth that I came from you…”

Jesus’ earthly life had a mission. He came to make God known. All that he said and did was bent to that purpose.

In this prayer, Jesus rejoices in the strength that God the Father and God the Holy Spirit had given Him to accomplish it all and He prays, in essence, “Father, mission accomplished!”

As He prays, Jesus knows, of course, that He has one thing left to do on this earth, one more definitive act disclosing Who He is and Who God is.

He must die.

He must give His life for those given to Him by the Father.

This is the ultimate thing that Jesus discloses to all who are open to the truth. Martin Luther said that if we want to know what God is like, we only need to look to Jesus on the cross.

And that’s why with jubilation, Jesus, God on earth, intent on doing God’s would, on the Friday we call Good, having fully disclosed the heart, mind, and will of God, decide on the cross the moment at which He would breathe His last, call out to the Father, “It is finished,” (“My mission is accomplished.”)  and then give His life to God.

The Father wouldn’t let this be the end for Jesus, though. The sinless Savior Who offered His perfect life as the perfect sacrifice for our sin could not remain dead. He had to be raised up so that all people would know about their chance to turn to Him (turning away from their sin), entrust their lives to Him, and live with God eternally.

So, in this prayer, Jesus celebrates what He accomplishes for the glory of the Father and for our eternal good.

And then: Jesus discloses a request to the Father.

In verse 5, Jesus asks, “Father, glorify Me in Your own presence with the glory that I had in Your presence before the world existed…”

The glory of God was displayed in Jesus in many ways. It was seen when...

• He fed 5000 people with a few scraps of bread and some fish
• He turned water into wine
• He raised His dead friend Lazarus from the grave
• He gave sight to a blind man
• He empowered a paralyzed man to walk again.

The glory of God was seen in Jesus too, when at the waters of the Jordan River, where He was baptized, and on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Voice from heaven said, "This is My Son; listen to Him!"

And yet the glory of God disclosed in Jesus on all those occasions and others we might name, were mere hints, dim reflections, brief tastes of the glory Jesus once enjoyed as God the Son in the halls of heaven before the creation of this world!

Now, in this prayer, having accomplished all that He had set out to do in taking on human flesh, Jesus asks the Father to give that glory back to Him again.

The Father will do just that when He raises Jesus from the dead on the first Easter Sunday and so, makes the Name of Jesus the Name to which eventually, every knee will bow and every tongue confess, “that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of the Father.” 

(It turns out that even those who reject Jesus and will tragically, live with the consequence of their rejection of “the only Son of God” will also, in the end, acknowledge the glory of God seen in Jesus.)

If there is one thing more than any other that Christ’s Church needs today, it’s a renewed sense of the glory of God! 

I’ve mentioned before the woman who approached me after worship one Sunday in a former congregation. She was upset with the words of Psalm 111:10: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom...” (The same words appear also in Proverbs 1:7 and 9:10.)

She affected that voice that some people use when trying to show their piety and said, “I don’t think that we should be afraid of God.” Look, Jesus says that we are His friends when we keep or strive to honor His commandments. He promises to stick closer to us than a brother.

But Jesus, God in the flesh, is not our buddy, not our rabbit’s foot, nor our ATM, nor our good luck charm.

He will be there to judge us at the end of history.

Paraphrasing Bill Cosby’s Cliff Huxtable, Jesus brought us into this world and He can take us out.

He is God almighty.

He alone deserves all our allegiance, honor, loyalty, and thankfulness because, through His “amazing grace,” He saves all who trust in Him from sin and its consequence, death.

We must understand that the God disclosed in Jesus Christ is not a salesperson with whom we can negotiate a price, but the Lord of the universe and that to have Him and the eternity only He can give, we must bow, we must surrender to Him.

It's when we understand this that we’ll be on the road to the wisdom that leads to life.

In this prayer in today's Gospel lesson, Jesus, Who laid His glory by for His time on earth, is reclaiming that glory.

But here’s the really astounding thing.

It’s a theme of the New Testament that the life of Jesus is replicated, reenacted, in baptized believers in Him. All who are baptized and live in daily repentance and renewal can say with the New Testament, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ Who lives in me.” 

This is what Luther was getting at when he said that whenever the devil came knocking at his heart's door with temptations, announcing that he was looking for Martin Luther, Jesus went to the door in his place and said, "Martin Luther used to live here. But now I live here. Now, go away and don't come back any more!"

It was because of Christ living in him, that the first century preacher Paul, before his death, could write to the young pastor Timothy with the same sense of fulfillment and jubilation we see in Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel lesson on the brink of His death.

Listen closely to Paul's words (this is from The Message translation):

I’m about to die, my life an offering on God’s altar. This is the only race worth running. I’ve run hard right to the finish, believed all the way. All that’s left now is the shouting—God’s applause! Depend on it, [God is] an honest judge. He’ll do right not only by me, but by everyone eager for His coming.

In his wonderful book, Radical: Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream, Pastor David Platt talks about how many American Christians think that Jesus’ call and command for radical discipleship, including the call to love all the world and to carry the good news of Jesus to all the nations applies to other people, not us.

In taking this attitude, millions of Christians turn a deaf ear to the needs of 4.5 billion people who may die today without ever hearing the Good News of new life through faith in Jesus Christ.

And in thinking that Jesus’ call only applies to some spiritual elites, we also deny ourselves the very sense of fulfillment and the enjoyment of God’s glory that Jesus exults in in today’s Gospel lesson and that He wants us to have!

We, each of us, need to consider how we can restructure our personal lives to fulfill the mission Christ has given to each of us, so that we too can exult in the sense of fulfillment from a life spent in giving God glory.

We may not be able to go to foreign countries in pursuing God’s intentions for our lives.

But each of us is called to fulfill the whole mission of Christ’s Church in our own individual lives. Our sponsorship, through World Vision of three year old Toiba in Kenya, involvement with CHAP, the 30 Hour Famine, the PPSST Food Drive, the upcoming local mission trip, Friend Day in November, upcoming servanthood evangelism events, and above all, our personal willingness to share Christ with the spiritually disconnected, are all ways in which we can lead the life of purpose that gives God glory that Jesus Christ wants each of us to experience.

We need to encourage one another in living out our Christ-given mission to the whole world. It’s to help us fulfill this single mission that Jesus prays in verse 11: “Holy Father, protect them in Your Name that You have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.”

When I come to the end of this life, I want to be able to pray with the same sense of jubilation and fulfillment we see in Jesus in our Gospel lesson.

I want to be able to look back on a life in which I loved God, loved the world, and took my part in making some disciples of the world’s 4.5-billion unreached people.

I want to be able to say, “Mission accomplished.”

How about you?

If it’s your desire to fulfill God’s purposes for your life, ask Christ to live fully in you…and then go wherever He leads you. Amen

Epiphany Signs Christ Gives Us to Do

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

Luke 4:14-21
This Epiphany season, as we said last week, is a time when we look at many incidents from Jesus’ time on earth that unscramble our picture of Him, helping us to understand that in Jesus Christ, we meet more than just a human being; He’s also God and the world’s long-promised Messiah, Savior, and King.

But the first sign of Jesus does in the lesson and the others we're told about are very different from a voice shouting God the Father’s pleasure with God the Son on the banks of the Jordan or from Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding, which are the signs we attended to over the past two Sunday. The signs in today’s lesson are simpler.

The first one narrated by Luke here comes in a visit home, the reading of a Bible lesson during worship, and a plain, yet forceful statement Jesus makes about Himself.

After being baptized and then propelled by the Holy Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted, Jesus had done some teaching and healing. His hometown was already abuzz with word about Him. When it reached Nazareth that Jesus was on His way, the hometown crowd was excited. Luke tells us: “When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day…He stood up [and read from the scroll]: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’”

And then, Luke says that Jesus “rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down.” In what must have been a moment of high and silent, drama, Jesus then told His townspeople--and us--"Today, right at this moment, in your hearing, all foretold centuries ago has taken place.”

The words that Jesus read in worship that day were from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah. You can read them today, in chapters 58 and 61 of Isaiah’s book. Jesus claims that He is the anointed king (that’s what the word Messiah in the Hebrew of the Old Testament and the word Christ in the Greek of the New Testament, mean, Anointed One) come to usher in the reign of God. And to prove it, Jesus asks the Nazarenes to consider the signs they’ve heard reports of Him doing: He proclaims good news to the poor; sets captives free; lets the blind see; and He springs the oppressed from their imprisonments. All of these things, Jesus says, are signs of Who He is and Who He came into the world to be for all of us.

These signs should be especially interesting to us because Jesus, later in His ministry, made the stunning claim that in His Name, His Church—you and I--would do the works that He does and, He said, even greater works.

In the list of signs Jesus gives today, there are no miracles of loaves and fishes, no thunderstrikes from heaven, just the tough, healing love of God meeting real people in their everyday lives.

These are signs that Christ wants to perform through you and me. Through simple signs lile these, people see the God we meet in Jesus Christ and come to believe in Him. Jesus wants to empower you and me to do the signs about which He spoke at Nazareth in order to point the whole world to the hope and life that only Jesus gives.

Jesus, for example, wants to set captives free through us. The word that Jesus uses for free here, aphesis, in the original Greek of the text is the same word He uses for forgiveness. It literally means release. In Christ, we are released from the debt we owe for our sin. Followers of Jesus are meant to show others that Christ can release them from their bondage to sin, to fear, and to needless guilt.

True story. “Carl Coleman was driving to work one morning when he bumped fenders with another motorist. Both cars stopped, and the woman driving the other car got out to survey the damage. She was distraught. It was her fault, she admitted, and hers was a new car, less than two days from the showroom. She dreaded facing her husband. Coleman was sympathetic, but he had to pursue the exchange of license and registration data. [The woman] reached into her glove compartment to retrieve the documents, which were in an envelope. On the first paper to tumble out, written in her husband's distinctive hand, were these words: 'In case of accident, remember, Honey, it's you I love, not the car.'”

Every Sunday, you and I pray the prayer our Lord taught us, including the petition, “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.” In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus teaches us that, “if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you; but if you do not forgive others, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” For you and me, sharing with others the freedom from captivity to sin that Jesus brings also sets us free from the paralyzing, gut-wrenching resentments and grudges that can rob us of life and joy when we fail to forgive. Jesus wants to free us from captivity to sin. And through us, Jesus proclaims release to other captives.

Jesus also wants us to bring good news to the poor. The poor were certainly a priority for Jesus and, as you read both the Old and New Testaments, God's revealed Word, you see that the poor has always been a priority for God.

And it's interesting to notice that when Jesus was born, He wasn’t entrusted to parents who were wealthy people. Instead, He was born into poverty. Mary, the mother of Jesus, saw this as especially fitting. Remember how, in the words she spoke to her relative, Elizabeth, Mary said, “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty”?

Jesus’ people, grateful for the free gifts of forgiveness and everlasting life, are called to share their blessings and to make the poor a priority. That’s what we do in our servanthood events and it’s what I hope will also be reflected in our generous midweek Lenten offerings for relief to the impoverished and beleaguered people of Haiti, starting on February 17.

Tomorrow night, our servanthood team meets again to plan our next outreach event. You’re invited to participate in the planning, as well as the actual outreach events themselves. Last year, when we collected food for distribution by Hocking County Job and Family Services and later, infant formula and diapers for distribution by the health department and by the agency for Developmental Disabilities, your response and involvement were fantastic! The team meets at 6:00 tomorrow here in the fellowship hall. I hope you can make it.

Through us, Jesus also wants, in the words He quotes from Isaiah, to “proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

What does that mean?

The Old Testament book of Leviticus said that every fifty years in Israel, all debts were to be forgiven, all land restored to its original owners or their heirs, and all slaves were to be set free. It was called the Jubilee year.

Fifteen centuries after the laws in Leviticus were given to God’s people, Jesus proclaims a kind of permanent Jubilee! He says that He’s come to forgive all debts and all sins for all eternity. This is a free gift for all who turn from sin and who entrust their whole lives to Jesus Christ.

I find that this message of new life for all who believe in Jesus is news of which the world never tires and for which its need never lessens. A few years ago, in my former community, I met with a professional man on community business. I’d known this man for years. He was someone I had long suspected was dealing with unresolved guilt and questions about his relationship with God that he didn’t have the courage to face. As we were wrapping up our meeting, I put my arm on his shoulder and told him, “You know, the welcome mat is always out for you at our church.” He smiled and said, “I like your style.”

I don’t know if I have any style. But I do know that what I wanted to convey to that man was God’s favor, that God was for him, that God wanted to deepen His relationship with him through the fellowship of a caring church family, and that whatever secret guilt he may have harbored could never be big enough or awful enough to keep the forgiveness of Jesus from him if he wanted that forgiveness.

And that’s true for you and me as well. Every time we come to God in repentance, He declares a jubilee. Christ died on the cross to pay the penalty in full for all of our sins, no exceptions. When we confess our sins and ask God to help us walk away from them, forgiveness is total.

Our friends, neighbors, and coworkers need to know that just as much as you and I do. Whatever your style, whether you’re shy or bold, old or young, you can convey that message to the people in your life. You can declare an everlasting Jubilee free of the weight of guilt to everyone you know!

When Jesus went to worship with the people of His hometown, He told them that they could know He was their Messiah because He set people free through His love, He made the poor His priority, and He showed them that God was for them.

In His Name, you and I can do the same things today, showing people who might feel distant from God and isolated from others that their loving God and His Church are here for them always.

In ways as simple as those used by our Savior, we can be signs of Who Jesus is and of all that He wants to be for everyone for all eternity. Amen

God Revealed in Joy

[This was shared during worship with the people of Saint Matthew Lutheran Church in Logan, Ohio, this morning.]

John 2:1-11
During last week’s adult Sunday School class, I mentioned that the Gospel lessons for the Epiphany Season each year remind me of the jumbled images you see projected on Jumbotrons at a major league baseball game. A picture of a ball player, cut into maybe sixteen squares, is shown. Gradually, the squares are put in their right places to, eventually, reveal a clear picture of the player.


Each Sunday’s Gospel reading in the Epiphany season, in effect, moves another square into place and we see more clearly Who Jesus is and what He means for us.

Of course, because Jesus is the Word made flesh, truly God and truly human, there are mysteries about Him we will never fathom.

Nowhere in Scripture am I more struck by the unknowable mysteries of Jesus, than when I read today’s Gospel lesson, John 2:1-11.

The incident itself is probably familiar to all of us. It happens early in Jesus’ ministry. He and his five disciples—more would be added later—are invited, along with Jesus’ mother, to a wedding in Cana, a town not far from Nazareth.

Wedding feasts in those days usually went on for seven days. While drunkenness was always prohibited to God’s people, wine was served with every meal.

At some point during this particular feast, the wine gave out. For some reason, Jesus’ mother got wind of this crisis and went to Jesus. She hoped that Jesus would do something about the situation. It would have been considered deeply embarrassing for the bridal family to run out of wine.

Jesus’ initial response to His mother is jarring. “Woman,” He says to her, “what has this got to do with you and me?” That always reminds me of the way my grandfather addressed my grandmother when he was upset with her. She was no longer Evelyn, but Woman, as in, "Woman, what do you want from me?"

I think that Lutheran pastor Deb Grant helps us to understand Jesus’ reaction. She says, “Mary was the first to believe that Jesus was the Son of God. She knew his potential. She knew he was capable of great things and had yet to reveal them. Jesus abruptly puts her in her place. It sounds rude to us. The time was at hand…for Jesus to fulfill God's purposes for him. It was important that Jesus [make] clear to Mary that she had no authority over him. The best thing that Jesus could do for his mother was to be her savior.”

Mary seems to understand this. She doesn’t argue with Jesus; she simply turns to the servants of the bridal family, telling them, “Do whatever he tells you.”

You know what happens next. The bridal family has six stone water jars on hand, jars used for religious purification rites. Jesus tells the servants to fill the jars with water. The water turns into wine.


Our Gospel lesson closes by saying that when the newly called disciples see this, Jesus’ glory is revealed to them and they believe—or trust—in Him.

What about this event caused the disciples to trust Jesus as Messiah, as the Lamb of God Who takes away the sin of the world?

We could spend ages on those questions. But I want to suggest something about this miracle—this sign pointing to Who Jesus is—that may have convinced the disciples to believe in Jesus.

Consider the trip Jesus and the disciples took to get to the wedding at Cana.* Just a few days before, they would have walked near the town of Scythopolis, a place where the Greco-Roman deity, Dionysus, also called Bacchus, was worshiped.

Dionysus was the god of wine and he was always associated with celebrations. It was said that once, he even turned water into wine.

Many people in that region, their lives dependent on agriculture and wanting to cover all their bases, not only worshiped the God of Israel—the one God of all creation, who had told His people, “I am the Lord, your God...you shall have no other gods”—also worshiped Dionysus.

Before the eyes of the disciples and all the wedding guests, Jesus did in real life what some thought that a false god no one had ever seen had done. This is one of those epiphanies, among the lights of revelation from God, that John referred to in the prologue to his gospel when he wrote, “No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, Who is close to the Father’s heart, Who has made Him known.”

This is all more than a historical jaw from a pastor interested in history, by the way. Even today, we struggle with whether we’ll depend on the God revealed to us in Jesus and the Bible, or if we’ll hedge out bets, mixing in other deities or dependencies.

A woman I know was on vacation with her family out West. She talked her husband and kids into going to some area that New Agers claimed had a particular spiritual aura. It was said that if you walked around the area, new peace and success would come to you. As they traversed the terrain, this woman’s enthusiasm grew. “I can feel it!” she would say. “Can you feel it?” Her oldest child, a kid who had just been confirmed, wasn’t buying any of it. “No, Mom, I don't feel it” he said. “What are you looking for? Don’t you know that because of Jesus, you can talk with God any time? What more do you need than that?”**

Nothing, really! But that doesn’t keep some Christians from hedging their bets, adding a little bit more to their Christian "religion," as though we needed anything other than the God we meet in Jesus Christ.

Some Christians, for example, pray on Sunday and then consult their horoscopes in the Monday papers.

Or, they pray for daily bread and then base the value of their lives on how much money they make.

Or, in the case of even some theologians and pastors, they sing, “Glory to God in the highest” and then dare to replace the revealed Word and will of God with their own thoughts, feelings, and interpretations.***

Many Christians divide their loyalties more innocently, worshiping with their congregations one day and then, thinking that they can’t bother God, relying on themselves or their own ingenuity the rest of the week.

The Old Testament prophet Elijah described this sometimes-depending-on God-and-sometimes-turning-to-other-little-gods as “limping.” “How long will you go limping along with two different opinions?” he asked the people of Israel. “If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal [a false god of those times], then follow him.”

Jesus made it very clear that He came to bring God’s grace and truth to the world, but to receive Him means to lay aside all bet-hedging. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life,” Jesus tells us, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.”

The early disciples, Peter and John, after Jesus' resurrection and ascension, were told by religious authorities, on pain of death to never speak the Name of Jesus. They said they couldn't comply with their command. "We cannot keep from speaking about what we have seen and heard," they said. "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved."

The fact is that relying on anything other than God results from our desire to control our lives. We would rather have little deities we can manipulate than surrender our lives to the God we know in Jesus, acknowledge our sins, trust Him to bring forgive us, and to take us through good times and bad, all the way to eternity with God.

When the disciples at Cana saw Jesus turn water into wine, they saw the God Who had true dominion over the world. And they saw something about this God that I hope you see as you live from day to day.

In his book of daily devotionals, Hope for Each Day, evangelist Billy Graham, asks, “Have you ever watched a young couple communicate their love for each other without even a word?...Every glance, every touch, every smile conveys love. People deeply in love find absolute bliss simply being in each other’s presence.” He goes on to say that for those who have come to know God through Jesus Christ, “simply being in the presence of God brings joy.”

When Jesus turned water to wine at Cana, He showed us that God is the One Who can bring joy to us. The wine ran out and Jesus replenished it with even better wine.

When our capacity to cope with life runs out, Jesus gives us more strength than we imagined possible.

When our patience with family members or work situations runs thin, Jesus can help us endure.

When we grow weary, Jesus can renew our strength.

When our hope is gone, Jesus destroys our despair, stands by us, and throws down new bridges at the ends of what seem like dead-end roads. (There are many in this sanctuary this morning who have experienced these things.)

And when we die, the risen Jesus gives all who believe in Him life that never ends! All who follow Jesus know that God is the great joy-bringer!

In the marriage liturgy we use any time a couple is married here at Saint Matthew, there’s an ancient prayer we offer. It begins, “Eternal God, our creator and redeemer, as you gladdened the wedding at Cana by the presence of Your Son, so by His presence now bring your joy to this wedding…”

Jesus’ disciples knew that they were in the presence of God that day at Cana because they understood it’s always God’s will to bring us joy. In Psalm 16, King David wrote, “In your presence, there is fullness of joy; in your right hand are pleasures evermore.”

The past week brought sad days to our world. The earthquake in Haiti is heartbreaking.

And contrary to what some--like people whose initials are Pat Robertson--might say, the multiple tragedies that have befallen Haiti in recent years are not punishment from God.****

We live in a fallen, imperfect world where bad things happen. All human beings are born into sin and all of creation groans under the weight of an old world that is dying. Those groans--encompassing the tragedies and difficulties that come to the world world from which none of us is immune--are, the Bible tells us, the labor pains of the new heaven and new earth that Jesus will one day establish.

We await the return of Jesus, when He will set all things to rights and death and tears will be no more.

Even now, in the midst of the Haitian disaster, we see God’s Spirit moving in the hearts of millions—through their prayers, contributions of money, and acts of compassion—to bring joy and restoration to the people of Haiti.

Jesus' miracle at Cana is a sign that one day, God’s joy will have the last word in our world. It presents a clear picture of God showing us that beyond the wants and needs of this world, there will be a marriage feast which has no end.

In Jesus Christ, the whole world is invited to that feast.

You are invited. Amen

*This is discussed extensively in Following the Way: The Setting of John's Gospel, written by my late seminary professor, Pastor Bruce Schein. Rare is the day that I don't rely on his scholarship, remember his passion for Jesus Christ, or both.

**This is a true story, but I've changed a few details in order to protect the innocent...and the guilty.

***I once heard a Bible scholar from a major university report matter-of-factly that he and a group to which he belonged had cast votes on what in the Bible they believed. They voted, for example, that the resurrection had never happened, that Jesus never performed a miracle, and that Mary didn't become pregnant with Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit. I wondered why he and his colleagues even bothered being church members.

***On his 700 Club TV show, Robertson claimed that Haiti's poverty, history of repressive governments, and numerous natural disasters resulted from the country having made a "pact with the devil." If acquiescence to the devil, the sinful world, or our sinful selves resulted in the kinds of experiences which are the lot of ordinary Haitians everyday, I would have died long ago. Jesus says that it rains on the just and unjust a like. And the Old Testament figure of Job, about whose piety even God bragged, was not immune from unspeakable tragedy.

In Scripture, wealth is usually associated with insolence and with heedlessness to God. Jesus saw the wealth of the rich man asking about how he could have eternal life as an impediment to his relationship with God, so much so that Jesus said that the rich man needed to give away all he had before he could meet God in eternity. Wealth in itself wasn't (and isn't) the problem. Abraham, the founding patriarch of God's people, the Jews, was wealthy, for example. The problem was the role that money played in the life of the man who approached Jesus.

This is why Jesus later observed to His disciples that it will be harder for wealthy people to enter eternity than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. Wealth is a powerful addiction, a consuming god that can create the false impression that it bestows all the blessed gifts to which we can aspire.

The poor know better. While no one wants to be poor and it's up to those of us with wealth to share our blessings--I say this from the perspective of a lower middle class American, wealthy by the world's standards--with others, the poor aren't addicted to their wealth. In that sense, they are more open to trust in God, not less.

Faith Tidbit #21

Jesus' turning water into wine (John 2:1-11) and the moment when water and blood came from the lifeless Jesus' pierced side (John 19:34), form what the scholars call an "inclusio" in the Gospel of John's account of Jesus' earthly ministry. Jesus came to earth to give eternal life to all who believe in Him. Christ's life comes to us in Holy Baptism (water) and Holy Communion (wine/blood and bread/body). In Baptism, God claims us His children and in Communion, God sustains us with the very body and blood of Jesus. Through these gifts, we experience the truth of Jesus' words, "I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly" (John 10:10).

Sign at a Wedding

[This message was shared with the people of Friendship Church during worship celebrations on January 13 and 14, 2007.]

John 2:1-11
I lost count of the number of weddings over which I’ve presided long ago. But I will never forget the strangest wedding I ever did.

It was held in the building of the congregation I formerly served as pastor and the bride and groom were bikers. Neither they or any of their guests wore leather for the ceremony. But I can tell you that the parking lot was packed with Harleys and that the couple rode off to the reception on a bike, he in his tux, she in her wedding gown.

None of that was so strange. But other things made the wedding strange. For example, near the end of the ceremony, when I told the couple that they could kiss, after a time, I started looking around for a water hose to douse them. Their kiss seemed to go on forever and was...a bit demonstrative.

After we finally got them untethered, I signaled the bride to get her flowers from the maid of honor so that she and her new husband could process out of the sanctuary. But the handoff between the bride and friend was no simple thing; instead, they high-fived each other, apparently signaling the triumph that the bride had snagged her groom.

And you should have heard the motorcycles as they all collectively roared to the reception hall. It wasn't your standard issue wedding.

But as strange weddings go, nothing can match the one told about in today’s Bible lesson. On the face of it, it’s a simple miracle story...if any miracle story can be described as simple. But when we consider the story of Jesus turning water into wine during a wedding feast in the town of Cana, we’re likely to come away with more questions than answers. Frankly, I can only speculate on how to answer most of them. We might be tempted to give up on understanding the whole incident except for the words that come near the end of the lesson:

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

Last week, we mentioned that Epiphany is the season of the Church Year devoted to looking at the ways in which Jesus cast light on His deity. All the lessons from the Gospels during Epiphany are designed to show us that Jesus is God-in-human-flesh, the promised Christ, and the Savior of the world. Apparently, what Jesus did at the wedding at Cana caused the five disciples--He hadn’t yet called the other seven--to believe in Him. Why?

Weddings can be expensive propositions. We parents of young women who've gotten married know about that, don't we?

I’ll never forget sitting with Paul, a member of our congregation, as we waited to close up the building where his daughter, Tiffany was married. The photographer seemed to take hours snapping pictures. (Even though he said that he was going to take all of the pictures before the ceremony!) Meanwhile, the limo set to take the bridal party to the reception was waiting in the parking lot. Paul tapped the seat in which he sat and said, “Come on folks, the meter’s running!”

As concerned as we bridal parents may be about our expenses though, we all try to have enough of everything on hand so that the celebration is enjoyable for everyone. We do that just to be good hosts. Running out of wine at a wedding may not seem like a big deal to us. But in first-century Judea, that would have been a major, humiliating social no-no. Then, wedding feasts went on for a week. And while drunkenness was frowned on, wine was part of things the whole time, served at every meal to every guest. Guests invited to the feasts often forwarded wine to the groom just to make sure there was enough wine on hand. If the wine gave out, all the guests might wonder what sort of cheapskate this guy was and what he did with the gift wine.

So, by turning water into wine, Jesus did spare His guests humiliation. But He did a lot more.

He showed Himself capable of meeting our needs with extraordinary blessings. It’s like John writes in the opening chapter of his Gospel, “From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.” Just as Jesus would later turn a few crumbs of bread and some fish into a feast for five-thousand and more, He turned water into an overabundance of wine. He proved that He was able to bless us even when all seems lost. Just yesterday, I got an email from a Christian woman who’d read a four-part series of articles I wrote on my blog two years ago, called When Tragedy Hits the Innocent. Listen to some of what she wrote:

...our only child...went to live with Jesus in July of 2004. I have always known that God was with me, but I had lost my best friend, after watching him face the ravages of Muscular Dystrophy for 24 years. My lifetime of belief in God assured me that he was with God and that his wheelchair and pain and dependence on others were gone and he was free of everything that held him back. I could see him running all over heaven, laughing as he visited with my father and grandparents and his good friend Ron, who also left behind a wheelchair and weakened muscles. I knew all the right "answers" but I was still so heartbroken I couldn't get past the grief. I wanted him back. I knew that God knew best, but I had firmly believed when I closed my eyes that day and opened the Bible, putting my finger down on whichever passage God wanted me to and it said, "Your faith has made you well," that my son would be cured of this awful thief that was robbing him of his strength. But I was wrong, and my special gift from God had been ripped away from me. I never gave up on God, but I have to admit there was a very strange feeling there. I kept believing in Him. I kept praying. He kept loving me. I thought maybe He was punishing me for something. I didn't really know who I was or where I was or even IF I was. I was just numb, and I became numb to the world. I wanted to stay inside and do nothing but think of him and look at his pictures. God let me do that for a short time, and then He reminded me how much He loved me...[God’s Word] made me realize that I was the one who had moved, not God. My heart is still broken. I know I will never get over this loss. But I feel the love of God so strongly and it gives me a comfort I can't find anywhere else. He is all I need. I know that, and I will never forget it...

In the midst of great need, God blesses greatly. Jesus’ disciples knew that and so, began to recognize that Jesus was more than just a teacher. More than just a man.

But the mysterious incident at Cana gave the disciples--and us--another reason to believe that in Jesus, we see God. It’s this: Good wine was always seen as a sign of the end times when God would set all things right between Himself and those who believed in Him. Hundreds of years before Jesus’ birth, Amos said that with His coming, “...the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.” And Joel said, “In that day the mountains shall drip sweet wine...”

God, it seems, always saves the best for last--things like forgiveness, hope, and everlasting life with God. One Biblical writer--the preacher in the book of Hebrews--told his fellow Jewish Christians: “Long ago God spoke to our ancestors in many and various ways by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoke to us by a Son...”

Jesus is speaking to you and me today. He can turn our water into wine. He’s the God Who can meet our deepest needs with His abundant grace and goodness.

The question for us, as for the disciples on that day in Cana, is a simple one: Do we believe in Jesus?