The wine of the Kingdom

A sermon preached at Keble College, as guest preacher for the evening Eucharist, 20/01/2019. I don't usually start sermons with jokes, but after the way this one was received, I see why people do!

Epiphany 3

Isaiah 62: 1-5

1 Corinthians 12: 1-11

John 2: 1-11

+May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Strength and our Salvation.

As part of my role at Christ Church, I’m chaplain to the cathedral school where the choristers, as well as about a hundred other boys, go; and every week I take an assembly for the Pre-Prep boys. And this week I told them the story we’ve just heard.

On reflection, 4 to 7 year olds may be the wrong audience for a story that is essentially about how very nice a good bottle (or three) of wine is. It certainly seemed that way when one boy stuck his hand up and told me his dad had drunk a whole bottle of wine the night before.
At this point I tried to catch the teacher’s eye for some guidance. Unfortunately she was quietly dissolving into giggles and no help at all. So I weakly said “oh, that’s maybe not a good idea” and looked desperately for another child with his hand up.

There was one. I asked him what he wanted to say.

“Chaplain, how did Jesus turn water into wine?”

I would have rather dealt with the wine-drinking father at that point, but that opportunity had passed. So I said what my husband, a teacher, tells me to say. “That’s a brilliant question! I wonder what other people think the answer might be?”

If you are looking for impressive lateral thinking and command of a number of ingenious engineering and conjuring options, I commend to you the Pre-Prep boys of Christ Church Cathedral school. They came up with numerous possible explanations: the stone jars hadn’t been washed out properly; Jesus put food colouring in it; the wine hadn’t really run out. But none of those quite seemed to work. And eventually, one little boy suggested “Was it a miracle?”

To be honest, the fact that the suggestion was made at all felt like a miracle to me. But yes, it was a miracle. In other words, it was something that broke the laws of nature; something that in ordinary circumstances would be impossible; something that only Jesus could do, and Jesus could do only because Jesus was God. How did Jesus turn water into wine? Because Jesus can do miracles. How? Because he’s God.

The Gospel writer brings us here, slightly elliptically, when he explains why he’s told this story. “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

Jesus did this to show who he was, and what he was here to do. That’s why we hear this particular story at Epiphany: the season of seeing God’s glory, revealed in Jesus.

Jesus could have done all sorts of miracles to reveal his glory and the glory of God – but what he actually does is turn 150 gallons of water into wine. The glory of God, revealed in Jesus, is about extravagance. The American writer Annie Dillard comments that “the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation” – the beauty of a sunset, a dragonfly, a blossoming tree is entirely non-functional. Creation does not need to be beautiful; but it is. The wine of Cana didn’t need to be 150 gallons; and it didn’t need to be the best wine that anyone there had ever tasted. But it was.

Because that’s the glory that Jesus reveals: the glory that is extravagant, that’s beyond reason. Faced with a fairly small, very human problem, Jesus doesn’t even consider doing something that will just about tide them over; instead, he does something unreasonably, ridiculously generous.

That is the glory of God.

The glory of God is revealed in abundance, in generosity, in the extravagant gesture that is the very stuff of creation.

Later in the service, as Father Nevsky prays God’s blessing over the bread and wine – to turn them, as Jesus did water, into the overflowing abundance of God’s glory – he will use words for Epiphany season. “In the water made wine, the new creation was revealed at the wedding feast. Poverty was turned to riches, sorrow into joy.” It’s this sense of the new creation that the story is directing us towards – God’s glory has always been shown through the goodness and abundance of creation, but in Jesus that glory is displayed in a new way. Creation is made new. God is doing a new thing – and promising renewal, by his abundant love, to all people. God’s gift of the new creation is prefigured by Jesus’ gift of a thousand bottles of vintage Saint-Emilion.

I didn’t go into this in my assembly– I didn’t want to risk any other parents’ drinking habits being exposed in front of their children’s teachers.

Instead I asked the boys who their favourite character was.

But again, I was surprised. Several of the boys said that their favourite characters were the servants: the ones who filled up the stone water jars and drew out the water.

That surprised me because they’re not the most obvious characters in the story. In fact – like good waiters anywhere – they rather blend into the background.

And yet, the boys were completely right. Without servants – and specifically, without these servants who listened to Mary and Jesus and did what they were asked – there would be no story at all. The miracle; the abundance; the new wine and its new meaning – all depended on the willingness of these servants. Not just to listen and obey – but to realise that, even though they were working for someone else, the instructions Jesus would give were worth following. To commit, not just to putting a bit of water into those enormous stone jars, but to filling them up to the brim. And even more, to risk serving their boss a glass of water and telling him that it was wine.

And yet they put their fears aside. They committed to what Jesus asked, though it was difficult and risky. And because they did, water was made wine. Glory and abundance and new creation were revealed.

God’s glory and abundance, God’s extravagant gestures that are the very stuff of creation, are offered to us as a gift. But that gift is always contingent: God’s gifts are circumscribed by our own willingness to respond. Jesus depended on the servants. Only through them could the abundance of God’s new creation be brought about; only through them could the glory of God, doing a new thing in Jesus, be revealed. And while we are called to enjoy abundance, we are also called to witness to God’s abundance – and thus, like the servants, to reveal God’s glory in the world.

In a world where abundance is so far from normal experience; in a world where the economics of scarcity are used to keep people in fear. In a world that is fallen, where abundance is limited by greed, selfishness and sin.

It’s in this world that God makes wine from water.

It’s in this world where God calls us to taste his abundant life.

And it’s in this world that God calls us to take the risk of bearing witness to that message of abundance.

It will be risky.

But God’s abundance is real.

God’s wine is good.

God’s invitation to the new creation, where poverty is turned to riches and sorrow into joy, is an invitation to all people.

And we, who taste God’s abundance at this Eucharistic table, are commissioned to bear that invitation. To invite the world to taste and see how abundant the wine of the kingdom can be.