John 2:1-11

Click here to view the full video, titled "Enough" 

 

 

Few things kill a party quicker than running out of… well, anything. When I was in Jr. High- we called it Junior High back then, not Middle School. When I was in Jr. High, I got the bright idea to have a party at my house. Unlike some of the parties that took place there when I was in High School, I actually told my parents that I wanted to have a party at our house. I even thought it would be a good idea for them to be there. It wasn’t for my birthday. It was just because. Because it was the end of the school year. Because I thought it would be cool to throw a party. But in all honesty, because if I was someone throwing a party, in those few brief weeks leading up to it, people would know who I was. I was the guy throwing a party. My classmates would want to know me so that they would be included on the guest list. And if I was the one throwing the party, I couldn’t be left out.

There are all kinds of stories and studies about the technology that allows us to do any number of things by ourselves that used to include other people. Increasingly people, and young people in particular, are finding it possible to spend less and less time with anyone else. What that means is that for as much as so many new technologies allow us to connect, we find ourselves ironically more isolated than ever before. Which can be convenient. When you don’t have to answer to anyone else, when you don’t have to be accountable to anyone else, when you don’t have to take into consideration someone else’s feelings, life is just so much easier. You can truly believe that you are master of your destiny and captain of your fate because there’s no one around to suggest or require anything else. That’s the upside.

The downside to all that autonomy, however, is that it can be very, very, lonely. So much so that the US Surgeon General’s office released a report on the epidemic of loneliness and its adverse health effects and outcomes. Still, sometimes it is easier to be alone and in control than it is to feel left out. And like I said, at the wise old age of twelve, my solution to not being left out was to throw a party. It was great. People came. It would be a fun way to kick off the summer vacation,, even if the girls didn’t want to eat in front of the boys. But it didn’t take long for this obnoxious kid that I’d played baseball with, but didn’t really like, to find me and tell me, “you had better do something, this party is going downhill fast.” Apparently, we had run out… of what? Fun? Music? A reason to be there? What? I didn’t know.

John tells this seemingly random story about a wedding that Jesus attended. In all the gospels it’s the only story we have of Jesus doing something so relatable. Jesus went to a wedding? Whose was it? What side did he sit on? Was he a friend of the bride, or the groom? Maybe he didn’t know either that well. Maybe it was a family thing that his mom told him he had to go to for some distant cousin down the road from Nazareth in Cana. So, they’re all doing the electric slide, or whatever dance was popular back then when there’s a crisis. It’s nothing earth shattering. The armies of Rome haven’t swept through bringing mayhem and destruction. Wild fires aren’t raging through the village. Still, it’s a crisis. They’ve run out of wine. And nothing kills a wedding party in first century Galilee quicker than running out of wine. It is the nightmare of every Father-of-the-Bride. Because a wedding is more than a good excuse for a week-long party, it is a ceremonial rite that joins together two lives, two families. It’s a hopeful act. The bride and groom stand up and make promises about a future that they cannot begin to truly imagine. So what does it say about you, what does it say about your marriage and your future and your family if you run out of wine? Of course, it isn't just fathers of the bride who worry about this sort of thing. We all do, in one way or another. We all reach that point where we worry about whether there will be enough. There are the obvious worries of people who work hard day in, day out. Will there be enough to pay the rent, pay the note, pay the bills, buy the groceries? Will there be enough to send the kids to college, to buy a new car? Will there be enough to retire, visit the kids, pay for the prescription? But it never seems to stop there. You pay the bills, you get the car, you put away the money for retirement. Is it enough? You get the newest gadget. You wear the best names. You fill the house with more and more stuff. Is it enough? But it isn't just stuff. I was talking to a young adult once who was struggling to figure out what to do with her life. On the one hand she loved the work she did, the difference it made in the lives of the people she worked with. She might never make headlines, or the big bucks, but it gave her joy. Still, there were those other voices, you know the ones, saying that she needed to get married and have a family, settle down, have some security. She didn't know if she wanted all that. “I love what I do,” she confessed, “but sometimes I wonder, ‘is that enough?’” I once did a funeral for a man who had been estranged from his only daughter for most of her adult life; ever since she married a man who was Catholic. He never really forgave her for that. Now she stood in the Funeral Home making decisions about his casket and the burial plot. She spared no expense. When it was all decided, she turned to the funeral director with an anxious look on her face. “Do you think it's enough,” she asked. And the truth is, you can make your plans, and save your pennies, and do your best, and it still won't be enough. You see people who stack up piles of cash, multiple homes, and cars. They have the perfect life, and the perfect job, and the perfect family, and they go right out and wreck it all, chasing whatever it is they think they don't have, because it is never enough. You might have heard that the Chinese symbol for ‘crisis’  is actually the combination of two other symbols, the one for ‘danger’  and the one for ‘opportunity’. Whether it's a wedding feast, or your life, the crisis of running out, of not having enough, is both a danger and an opportunity. A friend was telling me about the African American church that he attended occasionally while he was in seminary. It was a nice break from his own structured, liturgical tradition, with its carefully written prayers and defined order of worship. At this church, he observed, it wasn't uncommon for something unexpected to happen in worship only to have the preacher exclaim, “it ain't in the bulletin!” He began to notice that it was almost always the case that whatever it was that wasn't in the bulletin turned out to be the thing that blessed him the most in those worship services. I suspect there are more than a few of us who would be a little put off by something that's “not in the bulletin.” We like our world to be ordered and predictable. But that's our order, not necessarily God's. God is rarely predictable. It's the things that aren't in the bulletin, the crises in our lives that disrupt what we think we want that give God the opportunity to bless us in unexpected ways. It's in those moments that we have the opportunity to see in a way we may not have seen before. A while back, there was a series on the radio titled, “Losing my Religion.” It focused on the increasing number of individuals who, when asked, list no religious tradition, or practice for themselves. One of the stories in the series chronicled people who were raised in a particular tradition but now no longer believe. Several of them cited a traumatic crisis that shook their faith, and caused them to walk away. Each of them said in some way that they felt they could no longer believe in the God that they had been taught to believe in. For some people losing the image that you have of God, the idea that you've constructed in your mind, feels like the loss of God entirely. It's one thing to run out of wine, but what happens when you run out of faith? Well, it turns out, the thing that feels so dangerous- losing the God you've always believed in- is just the opportunity God needs to show you who God truly is. Ultimately, that's what happens in Cana on the third day. What a curious detail John throws in there at the beginning of this episode. Could it be that this story is about so much more than water and wine? What happens is that there is a celebration that is about to die because they have run out. It's a party that is going downhill fast. There is only one person who can save it, only one person who can save them from everything that they lack- enough wine, enough stuff, enough importance, enough forgiveness, enough faith, enough love. And what he offers is something miraculous, more wine than they could ever hope to drink. Do you understand what this story is about? Jesus is quite literally the life of the party, the one whose presence in our lives has the ability to transform our every deficit into a surplus beyond measure. He takes what is dead, and on the third day raises it to abundant life. He did it for this wedding. He did it for the world. That means he can do it for you too, in the moment of crisis, where the danger you fear becomes the very opportunity God needs to show you a whole new kind of life.