On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

I’ve always loved this story, this seemingly mundane little narrative of Jesus’ first miracle, the first of seven that the writer of the Gospel of John tells his readers, signs meant to show that this Jesus is indeed the Messiah. This story about a wedding at Cana that Jesus, his mother and his disciples attend, it just seems such an interesting way to make a case that this particular man was God’s choice to save humankind. It’s a wedding, folks, just a wedding and the miracle itself, the turning of water into wine so that the party can go on, well, it just seems like a pretty minor miracle in the great scheme of things. No one is healed, there is no aha moment, not really, and if you think about it, most if not all the people are oblivious to what just happened, that a miracle had taken place in their midst. Now, certainly, there have been many scholarly attempts to bring symbolic meaning to this story, everything from the meaning of the good wine being served later in the feast to the use of these of huge stone water jars used to religiously clean oneself. I think there is something to many of these interpretations, these lenses we put onto the text – certainly, the Gospel of John tells all sorts of stories about Jesus that are riff with symbolic meaning, which is one of the reasons it is so beloved by so many. There is a lot to work with as a preacher in this text, but what I’m going to do is back off from all the potential symbolism, and simply go with the story itself, and see if there is something there for us, something so ordinary and yet extraordinary, found not in symbolic interpretation of various words and things, but just in the simple story itself, this story of Jesus turning water into wine so that the party could go on.  

But remember this about John’s telling of the Jesus story – remember that Jesus has quite literally just come out of the desert and he has just begun surrounding himself with his earliest disciples. In John’s telling of Jesus’ story, there are no birth stories, no mangers, not even forty days in the desert like you find in the other three Gospels—Jesus simply arrives on the scene, almost as if he came directly out of heaven—“In the beginning was the Word,” so says John (1.1).  And now he is at this wedding, at this pretty raucous party, I suspect, and one that could have lasted at least a few days if not a whole week. Jesus just blended in because he hadn’t really begun his ministry, though he begun to call the first of his disciples—the folks at the party didn’t know who they had in their midst because he hadn’t quite showed the world who was, not yet anyway. But there is one person in that room who knows, who knows what Jesus is capable of, the potential that he has, the gifts he possesses. That person is Jesus’s mother, who is, oddly enough, never actually named as Mary throughout the whole Gospel of John. Nevertheless, the writer of John hints that she knows her own son—mother’s usually do, don’t they?   

So, Mary asks Jesus to do something about a problem that has happened at the wedding—the hosts, the people throwing this wedding party, they’ve run out of wine, and they’ve run out of it way too early. This was a social disaster of the first magnitude—I mean, I know that we get what it means to be socially embarrassed, but in the ancient world, in Jesus’ day, it was a really bad fo-pau, because being a good host was very much emphasized, being a people immersed in a desert environment. This hospitality could even be a matter of life and death because your life might very well be dependent on the kindness of strangers, the graciousness of your host. So, Mary just goes up to him, amidst the loud and partying crowd, him perhaps at a table, maybe soaking it all in with his disciples, maybe laughing, surrounded by these men who have become his disciples, and she tells him that there is no wine left. A simple statement, really, and yet, like any mother, those innocent words are loaded with a lot more meaning—and a whole a lot more baggage than the statement of some simple facts—you know what I mean, don’t you?  She didn’t ask him to do anything and yet…she did, didn’t she? Again, you’ve probably experienced that as well—I know I have—ours Mothers or even fathers saying something seemingly simple and innocent, just a statement, really, but you know she means something else, she’s trying to tell you something or ask something from you without actually saying what she wants. And Jesus also knows that she’s not just giving him an update on the going-ons at the party—he knows that she expects him to do something about this, for whatever reason. And Jesus just simply responds that it’s not his problem and that this wasn’t the right moment—my time has not yet come, he says to her.

And yet so many of us are disturbed by this rebuke of his mother Mary, including myself, and I think it would have also disturbed the first readers of this text, in a culture that highly valued respecting one’s parents – so much so that in the Scriptures a child who disrespected their parents could lose their life by stoning. This is not stone-worthy disrespect, but it feels so out of character for Jesus for some reason. But one of the things John does throughout this Gospel is to slowly reveal Jesus to his readers – and at times, I think he even writes the story in such a way that Jesus himself is learning about who he is and what is right and what is wrong. Even if we believe that Jesus is God made flesh and bone, Jesus is still as human as we are, in need of learning from God and listening to God. Like so many of us would, he simply says that this whole mess of wine running out, it’s just not his problem, I didn’t create it, and I don’t need to fix it. In fact, that is what we tell ourselves all the time, when it comes to those moments when we abandon compassion, and ignore the need to live out justice. Not my problem, not my mess.

I don’t know how many of you have dogs but if you do, you of course know that they are in need of walks, sometimes 2 or 3 times a day. We’ve got a new young dog we’ve named Bernie who needs at least 3 walks a day, and so as Bernie gains some weight after spending most of his life in a kennel, I’m using these walks to get some exercise and maybe lose a few pounds. I always have a pocket full of plastic bags, ready to scoop up the gifts he litters the lawn of our neighbors, as others do when their dogs do the deed in front of the parsonage. Most people are really great about picking up their dog’s “stuff,” shall we say, but not everyone, and I’m always surprised to find “stuff” in the yards of other people – someone walked their dog, let her do her business, and then just left it there. It annoys me to no end – it’s so disrespectful to the homeowner, and, frankly, it makes us dog owners look awful. I totally understand why some people have put up signs asking us to not have our dogs do their business on their lawns – sure, it may be to protect the plants or yard, but I suspect they’ve just had enough of people letting their dogs do their business and not picking it up. So, sometimes, when I have some extra plastic bags, I’ll clean up after the dogs of strangers, even though it’s not my responsibility, even though it’s not my problem, not my yard – and I usually grumble doing so, cursing out these irresponsible dog owners in Christian love!  But, you know, sometimes in life you have to just pick up other people’s “stuff,” because, well, this is your neighborhood, and these are your neighbors, and I don’t want to leave “stuff” in their yards, even if it’s not my dog’s stuff. Lots of things are not our fault, nor our responsibility, but to be a good person means, at times, cleaning up the messes that are not our own, cleaning up other people’s stuff.

And I think that is what Jesus is doing here, or will be doing here in a few moments, and that is cleaning up a mess that is not of his making. That is the lesson he is meant to learn here, in this almost silly little miracle, this simple miracle that saves both the party-givers and the steward from a public relations mess, a shameful moment in a culture steeped in the honor/shame dictums of its time. His mother is teaching Jesus, yes teaching him, which is what mothers and fathers do, that when someone is in need, like with these party-givers, one should help out, and though it seems trivial, the helping of this family, helping this steward, it matters, it really matters. And something does shift in Jesus – he changes his mind, he understands what his mother is trying to show him, the truth about our responsibility to one another, to be compassionate, to be kind, to be helpful, to pick up each other’s stuff, when, for some reason, good or bad, others just can’t clean it up or won’t pick it up. So, despite what Jesus has just said, despite the fact that he has told his mother that he is reluctant to use his gifts at this moment and for this meaningless reason, still, he does it—he changes huge vats of water into wine, and it ain’t the cheap stuff, the Gallo wine by the gallon stuff. This is good stuff, the stuff you usually serve early on in the party, when everyone is sober, not the stuff you serve at the end, when people really don’t know what’s being served to them or probably don’t care at that point and couldn’t tell the difference anyway—you see that kind of reaction in the text itself—“you have kept the good wine until now,” the chief steward says to the bridegroom.

So, Jesus learns that we are indeed our brother’s keeper, despite Cain’s insistence that we aren’t, and Jesus knows that now, not in theory, but in his bones, and he learns that lesson well, as he will continue to love well, and deeply and do the things that help out the other, even the ones that are irresponsible, who are seemingly not deserving of his help. But I want to point something else here that is just as important as this moment of learning for Jesus and that is where the learning itself took place, the space and place and moment Jesus learned this lesson about picking up the messes of people whom we are supposedly not responsible for. He learns this lesson at a party, a rollicking, joyous moment of celebration, where family and friends celebrate a new couple and the joining of two families into one, where laughter filled the air, and joy permeated the rooms.  Jesus learns the lesson within a cocoon of joy, of human happiness. And I think that is purposeful, that the writer of John puts this moment into this place for a reason and that reason is this: even in the midst of sharing with the world what seems unbelievable, the Gospel itself, the truth that God loves us, just loves us, period, in the midst of a resistance to that message that ultimately costs Jesus his own life, there can be and maybe must be joy to be had, joy to be experienced, joy to be shared.

This past week there was a 47th Ward Aldermanic Forum for the 9 candidates who are hoping to replace Ameya Pawar.  I was a part of the planning team that put it together, along with the local Indivisible chapter, Forward Chicago, the League of Women Voters, Northcenter Neighborhood Association and the group I am part of, the 47th Ward Clergy Coalition. It was a new thing for me, this planning of a forum, and I Iearned a lot, but what I found so interesting was the unusual, surprising joy I found in the work itself. It was surprising because, well, have you ever tried to plan an event with 13 people at the table, all with competing ideas about how it ought to be done? I suspect many of you have, and you know what a joyless thing such a thing can be. Despite the struggles, debates, disagreements had at those planning meetings, it ended up being such a positive experience for all of us, and hopefully for the 400 or so that attended the Forum. It was a joyful evening, and such a blessing to get to know people I probably would not have met if not for this event. The work, the work of doing something for others, and even for ourselves, there must be joy in it, and there can be joy in it.

Tomorrow is Martin Luther King’s birthday, a day when we celebrate the good work of this fighter for justice, for racial and human equality. His work back then, as it is now, is serious, serious work, and dangerous, the kind of thing that will get you killed, something Jesus knew all too well. The FBI believed that MLK was a threat to this country, which he was because he threated the white hegemony of his time, and so they often bugged his offices and hotel rooms, his phones, anything they could do to spy on the civil rights movement, as embodied in the Rev. Dr. King. From books and reports that I have read, when listening to the conversations of Dr. King and his colleagues in the struggle, the FBI was surprised by the amount of laughter they heard on the tapes, on the recordings. I suspect they were surprised that these supposed enemies of the state could laugh so easily, could express such joy and fealty during a time of intense scrutiny and challenge by the forces of Rome, shall we say, the forces of Empire, so to speak. Even then, when all the principalities and powers were arrayed against them, Dr King, and others, they laughed, they knew joy, they found a wedding in Cana to attend, because, after all, as the Bible says, “weeping may last through the night but joy comes in the morning.” (Psalm 30:5).  

Certainly Dr. King invited us to do the work of justice with and beside each other and it was and is serious work, an overwhelming work, sometimes a thankless one and, if we are to be honest, sometimes an unsuccessful work. But in the midst of the work sometimes you just have to keep picking up other people’s stuff, knowing that they’re just not going to pick it up themselves, knowing they’re not going to do the right thing, the neighborly thing, the just thing. Some people will not learn, refuse to learn, unlike Jesus, who learned from everyone, it seems, including his mother. But in the picking up after the messes and stubbornness that we and other leave behind, let’s not forget the joy, the human joy, that can be found in work that is not always successful. There is much to be had, this joy that God invites us into, as we keep learning the lessons of compassion and understanding over the years. This is God’s good world, always – and despite the fact that there is more brokenness and evil and injustice in the world than many of us can imagine, God’s initial words at the time of creation still remains true – God looked over her creation and declared that it was good, so very good. Mary Oliver, the wonderful poet, died this past week, breaking the heart of many of us who love her poetry so much. We’ve heard it here in our past Modern Lessons many times.  She was interviewed some years ago and she shared these words with the interviewer: If you suddenly and unexpectedly feel joy, don’t hesitate. Give in to it. There are plenty of lives and whole towns destroyed or about to be. We are not wise, and not very often kind. And much can never be redeemed. Still life has some possibility left. Perhaps this is its way of fighting back, that sometimes something happened better than all the riches or power in the world. It could be anything, but very likely you notice it in the instant when love begins. Anyway, that’s often the case. Anyway, whatever it is, don’t be afraid of its plenty. Joy is not made to be a crumb. Friends, let’s not forget that truth, that there is plenty of joy to be had, as we do our work, with our plastic bags in yards that are not our own, as we do the larger work of justice with God and with each other. Amen.