Apologies for the delays in uploading more podcasts!

I have two submissions ready to go, but honestly, these last two weeks have been a bit on the…full side of things, and it turns out that finitude doesn’t negotiate.

However, below is an upload of a sermon I’ll offer tomorrow at a local congregation where I’m honored to be preaching and presiding while their esteemed pastor is away.

I hope to upload the sermon I preached last Sunday, and reflections on Epiphany, on Monday, for they are, I believe, relevant given both MLK and Inauguration Day.

With that, the sermon, more or less, tomorrow, based on John, Chapter 2, verses 1-11.

Grace to you and peace from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ!

Today we recall a miracle, as it’s been called, namely Jesus changing the water into wine: it’s known as Jesus’ first miracle, and it’s only retold in John.

And tomorrow, we recall Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Believe it or not, there’s a line between the two, and it begins with points anchored in two teesy weensy little Greek words found in our text, nun and arti, both of which are translated into English as ‘now.’

So this last October, my father George Madsen died.

Dad was a biblical scholar, and happily for me today, his nerdy niche was the gospel of John.

In fact he spent all four years of his dissertation on ‘nun’ and ‘arti’; not just where they were found in John, not just where they were found in the New Testament, not just where they were found in Greek translations of the Old Testament, but just…where they were found, anywhere, in ancient history. Talk about a low fun threshold.

Dad lovvveeed details, so this was right up his alley.

I do not love details.

I’m allergic to them, in fact.

So in contrast, my dissertation was on…God.

Dad did ‘nun’ and ‘arti,’ and I did God. And suffering.

The apple didn’t fall far from the tree, buuuut it sure did roll a bit!

So Dad’s whole thing, you see, his whole dissertation, and his whole theology, was based on the very biblical notion, especially seen in John, that the in-breaking of the reign of God is happening now.

We don’t have to wait for it.

And in fact, if we do sit around waiting for it, not only have we missed experiencing it, but we’ve also missed participating in it, and I do believe that ticks God off.

A couple of summers ago, I was invited to write on this very text for Gather Magazine, the ELCA women’s mag. I totally depended on Dad’s expertise for that piece, and earned major daughter points for not just lugging his dissertation around, but actually reading it.

I learned that Dad had discovered that every single time that ‘nun’ or ‘arti’ shows up in John, Jesus is on the scene. And almost every single time that a ‘nun’ or ‘arti’ shows up, and Jesus shows up, something happens in the lives of the people around Jesus.

That’s to say that the presence of a ‘now’ is a heads-up that something new is going to happen to those present, and to those to come.

Dad was, and I am, of the mind that the notion of the ‘now’ is the pivot point not just of this passage, but of all of John.

In fact, rather than simply a passing phrase, like “Now as I was saying,” or “Now I understand!” or “Come on now,” John tends to wield a ‘now’ with intention.

How’s that?

Well, Chapter 1 of John sets the stage: John the Baptist is in the house.

He was sent to tell something new: “He himself was not the light,” we hear, “but he came to testify to the light” (John 1:7). John the Baptist was adamant that people understood that he was not the Messiah, but on the other hand, his cousin sure was. “Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (John 1:29, also 36).

Here, in other words, is the Messiah.

What the early Johannine community knew, but not all of us do, is that the word ‘Messiah’ means “the one for whom we are waiting,” or “the promised one.”

The Jewish people believed—and still do!— that they have been promised that the Messiah will arrive.

But John the Baptist, and John the Gospel writer, were making the case that the One for whom we have been waiting, the Messiah, is here now.

So right after the story of John the Baptist’s announcements—and right before we hear about his beheading—we hear about the calling of the disciples, and then, then we get the wedding at Cana.

Each word—nun and arti, that is—appears once in the Greek text of our passage today.

Poor ‘nun,’ though, got missed in translation. It’s hiding there, though, right in verse 7: “Jesus said to them, “‘Fill the jars with water now. And they filled them up to the brim.”

Don’t wait. Do it now. Let’s get this miracle show on the road. There is celebration still to be had!

There’s an urgency to his command: we can’t wait!

And Jesus was right. We can’t.

It’s worth noting here that this water, it wasn’t like water that anyone can saunter up to on at, say, a hotel lobby, the kind with lemons and cucumbers floating about in it to offer calm and refreshment in a plastic cup.

No, this was sacred water. Water dedicated to holy ritual.

So when this guy Jesus turns holy water into holy wine, people, well, they took notice.

Which is when we get our ‘arti.’

The ‘arti,’ the ‘now’ in verse 10, surfaces when our groom, after tasting the water-now-wine, says to Jesus, “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.”

My father said that it’s not quite clear what the tone here is, right? Like, was the guy joking with Jesus? “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…you big lug you!”

Or was the groom super ticked, like ““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?????” Like,“Seriously, dude: I coulda used your help here.”

However you read it, though, the ‘arti,’ the ‘now,’ set up a clear contrast to the earlier ‘then’ when the bad wine was served up.

It points to a commencing not just of another hoist with better booze, the ‘now’ points instead to a revelation:

That was then. This is now.

The Messiah is here.

~~~~~

Tomorrow we remember Martin Luther King Jr.

Had he been sitting on Dad’s dissertation committee, although he probably would have had a couple of decent quibbles, I’m pretty sure he would have liked what Dad did with the notion of the Now.

Why?

Because King knew how to wield a Now too, just like John.

I want to read two excerpts from his speeches.

The first is from the Freedom Rally in Cobo Hall in Detroit in 1963, just two months before the March on Washington. 125,000 people showed up, the largest rally in the Civil Rights movement up to that point. While it stood on its own—King called it “one of the most wonderful things to have happened in America”—it was also a bit of a warmup for DC, not least of all in terms of King’s speech.

Here’s a small section of it:

“And so we must say: Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to transform this pending national elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. Now is the time to lift our nation, now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of racial justice. Now is the time to get rid of segregation and discrimination. Now is the time.”

These words are set in the context of King noting how whites were saying that civil rights for blacks were moving just too fast. Wait, they said. Slow down.

King? Yeah, he was of a different mind. The time for civil rights, he believed, was now.

The intervening months before the March on Washington did not change his mind.

Here he gave his famous I Have A Dream Speech, and he is all the more committed to the sacrality, and the urgency, of the Now.

“We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is not time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

Now is the time to make justice a reality to all of God’s children.”

~~~~~

Sisters and brothers in Christ.

We Lutherans do some mighty fine work teaching the world about justification.

We are justified, we preach, teach, and believe, the key message of a different Martin Luther, one who revolutionized the world in a different way 500 years ago.

There is nothing, he taught, nothing that we can do to earn God’s grace, for grace is a gift.

Works, we Lutherans preach, teach, and believe, are in vain, and in fact indicate vanity, because they presume that our efforts are somehow mightier, heftier, worthier than God’s abundant mercy and love.

This teaching is most certainly true. Jesus is risen, after all! This is the good news: not our capacity to “be moral,” or “live right” or “do good things,” but that death no longer has the last word!

But allllssssoooooo, what’s also true, alas, is that we Lutherans have therefore an unfortunate knack of dissing works, and dismissing them.

Anything that smacks of works tends to at least get the theological stink eye, it might even be called heresy, because (insert stamped foot) we are saved by grace, and not by works.

Which is true, yeah…but left there the focus of our belief system is only a) on us and our lives, and b) on what happens after our deaths.

It’s about me, and then.

Rather than we, and now.

I know you’ve heard me say before, and you will hear me say again, that the Greek word which we translate as “salvation” is “soteria.” It means heath, healing, and wholeness now.

It does not mean what will happen then, when we die. It means what will happen now, when we live.

So sure, we aren’t saved by works.

But our works can, by the grace of God, and do represent, usher in, offer up salvation, as in health, healing, and wholeness to those in need now. Second to last thing:

I realize that tomorrow we are inaugurating a new president, one who will preside over a new era of US politics.

But our text from John announces that now, Jesus has inaugurated the reign of God, a reign defined by justice and peace, grace and mercy, abundance and not scarcity, joy and not fear, welcome and not exclusion, and salvation: health, healing, and wholeness.

As with all presidencies, our faithfulness is first, foremost, completely, and only to that inaugurated reign.

A last thing, a related thing, and very much not a small thing:

We dare not forget that Jesus’ mother Mary in this passage had words for the steward, and words for us.

Do what he tells you. Or, to put the emPHAsis on a different syLAble,

Do what he, no one else, but rather what he, Jesus, tells you. Now.

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