Poolesville Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
01.20.13; Rev. David Williams
How do you know when a new thing has begun? How can you tell when a new phase of life has started?
Oh, there are moments when things seem to change, or places we go where things are supposed to be different. Like yesterday, when I turned forty four, one of those birthdays that isn’t exactly an earth-shaking milestone. Ten? Yay! Double digits! Thirteen? Yay! You’re a teen. Eighteen? Yay! You’re an adult. Twenty one? Yay! You’re going to need some ibuprofen. But forty four? It means you’re sort of but not quite in your mid forties. If forty four was a car, forty four would be a rental Chevy Cobalt. But there are marks and moments of real change, signs that let you know without a shadow of a doubt that the life you lived before is not the life you’re living now.
One such moment came for me while watching Mystery Science Theatre 3000. That show, in the event you’ve not had the pleasure to encounter it, was a product of the 1990s. The core concept behind MST3K is pretty basic.
A hapless guy and his robot pals are trapped on an orbiting space station, where a group of diabolical scientists force them to watch the worst movies in the history of film-making. And so the show involves you watching them as they watch terrible movies and make merciless fun of them.
It’s been a favorite in my household for years, as my boys have watched Mike and Joel and Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo...also a robot...make endless and hysterical wisecracks about whatever stupid thing it is they’re watching. This, of course, trained my boys to make endless and hysterical wisecracks about whatever stupid thing it is I’m saying, which in retrospect might not have been the best parenting strategy.
But before children, Rache and I would watch MST3K together in our apartment in the evening, every time it came on in that pre-DVR era. It was just a part of our regular pattern of life.
And then, well, then we went to the hospital early one morning. When we came back, we had with us a remarkably large baby. We rode home in our green Saturn wagon, carseat firmly ensconced in the back, and the whole thing felt vaguely surreal. We returned to that little apartment, and though it had been carefully prepared for that nine pound fifteen ounce bundle of Sam, it was hard to come home and feel things were different. Here we were. Here was our home.
For a while, it felt normal, just like every other day in our home. We fed him, and changed him, and he went right to sleep in his bassinet. We ate dinner. We cleaned up after dinner. We sat on our sofa. And when we clicked on the Tee Vee, what was on but Mystery Science Theater 3000? It was just as life had been before, we thought, as we settled in to watch the show. As we settled back in to watch, it was almost like nothing had changed.
That lasted about five minutes. That evening, that moment of MST3K, that was the mark and the sign that what had been our life was forever changed.
Of course, my wife might argue that the birth itself was probably more significant, but still.
Signs matter. And one such moment of marking and definition comes from John’s Gospel today. This should come as no surprise, because John’s Gospel is all about signs. Each of the other three Gospels see the story of Jesus as a chronology, playing out the message of Jesus across time and space. Mark and Luke and Matthew see things in pretty much the same way, which is why they’re called the “synoptic” Gospels. They “see together.”
John approaches the message of Jesus differently. The Gospel of John is divided up into two sections. The second section runs from chapter thirteen through to the end of the book, and is known as the Book of Glory. While this section includes the story of Jesus’ death and resurrection, it focuses on the intimate teachings of Jesus, teachings that describe his relationship with God, into which he invites us all. It’s full of poetry and mystery.
The first section of John’s Gospel is called the Book of Signs. It includes chapters one through twelve, and is defined by seven events in the life of Jesus. These events are semeion, moments in the story of Jesus that are important not just because of what they are, but because they point to something deeper and greater than themselves. Today’s reading includes the first of those signs, the changing of the water into wine at Cana. The other signs in John include the 2) healing of a royal official’s child in John 4:46-54, 3) the healing of a paralytic in John 5:1-18, 4) the feeding of the 5000 in John 6:5-14, 5) Jesus walking on water in John 6:16-24, 6) healing the man born without sight in John 9:1-7, and finally the cycle concludes with 7) the raising of Lazarus from the dead in John 11:1-45.
I hope you got all of those down, because next week there may be a pop quiz.
What today’s story gives us on the surface is the story of a wedding, and of a mother, and of the beginning of a new phase in the life of Jesus. The wedding is at Cana, about twenty klicks to the north of Nazareth. We don’t hear whose. What we do hear is that at some point during the festivities, they run out of wine.
Mary comes to Jesus, and tells him, simply, that they’ve run out. The response of Jesus... “Woman, what concern is it to you and me? My hour has not yet come,” might seem a little mouthy, even if you are the Messiah. But she makes it clear that she isn’t telling him exactly what to do. She’s simply informing him, and then opening the way for him to restore the celebration.
The story we then hear is a miraculous one, as Jesus takes what was at least one hundred and twenty gallons of water and turns it into one hundred and twenty gallons of exceptionally good wine. John doesn’t tell us much about what happened to the party after that, but that’s probably for the best.
What John does tell us is that this event was a sign, something that indicated the importance of the message of Jesus. The wedding at Cana is, first and foremost, a sign pointing to the change involved following the path taught and lived out by Jesus. It’s not the fulfillment of that path, although it does evoke it. The jars used for purification and the wine that would fill them remind us of the Eucharist, pointing us towards the change and transformation that all of us seek in Christ.
This story points us towards a reality that...as of it’s place in the story spoken by John...had not yet occurred. It’s hour had not yet come. But it was coming. It would soon be there.
In our own lives, there are events and moments like that. Keep your eyes open. Stay aware of them. And when you encounter them, let yourself be guided.
Let it be so, for you and for me, AMEN.
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