A Homily/Sermon for the Marriage of Sarah Klint & Jonathan Frankel
July 7, 2007 - Geneva National Golf Club, Lake Geneva, WI
John 2:1-11 -- The Wedding at Cana
Aside from any that I have been an “official” part of recently, I know that I for one have been to quite a lot of weddings in the past few months. There’s even another wedding going on as I speak at the church where I serve as pastor down in Rockford. It must be the season, as they say, for those of us in our 20s, since I know that Sarah and Jon have said that they’ve had a wedding or a bridal shower or something wedding related practically every weekend for the month or more leading up to this day.
Anyway, across all these weddings that I’ve been some part of lately, I can say that nothing quite like this story from the Gospel of John has come true—none of them have run out of wine (or beer or whatever they were serving) during the festivities. This was fortunate, I think, for the sanity of the people putting on these receptions—and perhaps also fortunate the next morning for drug stores selling Excedrin.
And yet, even though I’ve never seen a wedding that has run completely out of wine—and I’m not led to believe that it happens all that often—still this story is one that comes up in connection with weddings. Of course, that’s because the story is not really about the wine running out. I’m not sure it’s about the so-called ‘miracle’ of Jesus turning water into wine, either.
Rather, this is a story of transformation. Jesus took some old clay jars and rededicated them for a new purpose as the container for something new and wonderful. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here at this wedding feast: that these old and honored traditions of wedding celebration—the dresses, the food, the pictures, the party—that these can hold and celebrate the new marriage we witness today. But even more than that, we pray that these lives before us, Sarah and Jon, and the life they have shared together up to this point, that they can be transformed into containers for something new and wonderful by what they do today and by the power of God we invite upon them today.
This is also a story of abundance. Jesus did not simply make a glass of wine or a bottle of wine or even a jug or a keg of wine. He made somewhere upwards of 150 gallons of wine. In the time when this story was written, wine was a sign of God’s kingdom—God’s reign of abundant love, abundant justice, abundant mercy, and abundant peace. Our prayer this day is for that kind of miracle to happen here too. In a world filled with broken relationships, nations at war, and people hungry and oppressed, may the love we witness and celebrate, the risky commitment Sarah and Jon are about to make, and the feast we are about to share, may these things be signs and foretastes of that God’s coming kingdom. And even more, may the new stage that Sarah and Jon are entering in their relationship, may it help them partner with one another and with all of us as we work together with God in bringing about such abundant love and justice and mercy.
Finally, this story of abundance and transformation is the story of Jesus and of the God we know through him. Taking the old clay jar and making it the vessel for something new—this is a glimpse of who God is. Transforming something as ordinary as water into the abundant wine of a new life of peace, mercy, and justice—this is a glimpse of who God is. And, of course, as the story began, this all happens “on the third day”, a reference, I think, to that first Easter day when Jesus was raised after three days death—Christ’s self-giving love on the cross and powerful triumph of new life on Easter being the surest glimpse of who God is. And so, our prayer this day is for this kind of miracle to happen here too: that among all these friends and family gathered and amidst our acts of promising and praying and celebrating, that the presence of the God of new life will be known to each of us.
Sarah and Jon, I don’t hope that you run out of wine, but I do indeed hope this story comes true today. Amen.
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wine. Show all posts
Sunday, July 8, 2007
Sunday, January 14, 2007
"What a Guest!" - A Sermon for the 2nd Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
“What a Guest!”
A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 14, 2007
Those of you who were here two Sundays ago likely remember the somewhat unusual sermon preached that day. In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard about Jesus at age 12 in the temple, sitting among the teachers listening and asking questions. And so, in some sense creating a sermon together in our midst, we did likewise, sitting among each other as teachers, listening to one another and asking questions that lay deep on our hearts. There were many good questions that we shared in that time, many of them the sort of questions for which the only answer is a lifetime of living the journey of faithful exploration, discernment, and discipleship.
Questions usually have multiple layers. For instance, when someone asks “why did God let this happen?”, there’s almost always a deeper, more critical question lurking underneath it; that is, “how can I go on now that it has?” We like to hide those more vulnerable places, too afraid to even ask about our true yearnings. Or sometimes, the questions we ask reveal the doubts and anxieties we have ourselves.
One of the questions shared two weeks ago is just such a question, I think. As I recall, it went something like “how can Christianity compete in a world with multiple major religions?” Or, bringing the scale down a little bit, many people today ask about how the mainline Protestant churches—churches like ours: a part of one of the historic denominations of this country, rooted in historic traditions and practices, and yet vitally open to differences in theology and beliefs and faith—how can mainline-liberal-progressive churches like ours survive in the midst of the so-called competition from our more charismatic conservative-evangelical counterparts? That is, how can Church Street [our congregation] compete with Colonial Village [Heartland Community Church]? Even for all the very respectable pragmatic concern behind questions like these, I’m inclined to think that they’re not the real matter on our hearts. Or at the very least, that there is something deeper behind them.
What might that be, you ask? I think rather than surviving or competing against others, we want to know that there is new life possible here. We want some sign that our faith has not been in vain, and that indeed a living, vital relationship with God can be had. We seek to see that these vessels we call church—this path of belief and practice, this community of people—that these are still good and still have purpose, and that these can still bear the presence of God to us and others. With our anxieties and doubts combined with the trappings (or sometimes the baggage) of our traditions and history, we might just be a bit like empty jars at a wedding feast.
It’s a little interesting when you look at this story from the Gospel of John to see what the author spends their time telling us about. For the first few verses, they zip right through with plot—there’s a wedding feast in the town of Cana, Jesus is there with his mother and his newly called disciples, the wine runs out, and Jesus and his mother get in a little tussle about what to do. (This latter piece will have to be for another sermon.) And then, having zipped right through all this, in the middle of the story we find the author of John spending an awfully long time telling us about … jars, of all things. How many there were (six), what they were made of (stone), how big they were (20 or 30 gallons each), and what they were for (the Jewish purification rites). In pausing here, on something seemingly insignificant, we see a little glimpse into how Jesus works. He takes something old and solid and good—remember, just last week we heard of Jesus going through a Jewish purification rite himself—these old, solid, good things he transforms into the vessel for the gift of something new and wonderful, and does so in abundance; I mean, 120 to 180 gallons of wine is a lot of wine. I must note, here that, while for us today we see wine can have a dark side that people sometimes must struggle with, the people first receiving John’s gospel drew upon many images from the Old Testament and from their culture of wine as the sign of rich, abundant new life. And so, the miracle here is not simply that water was turned into wine, but that Jesus takes old, solid, good things that stood empty and waiting and makes them into the bearers of new life, and new life in abundance. What a guest!
And so, what about us? Is there new life to be seen here in this old building, in this solid community of people, in the midst of good things created for purposes of perhaps times past? Well, is that not what we’ve already seen? Have we not seen the Spirit, the continuing presence of Christ, in the creation of our unique Congregationalist and United Church of Christ traditions out of a past that wasn’t working anymore? Do we not know of the Spirit calling out to the church to open itself to women and gay people and persons of color—and seen ourselves rise to that purpose? Have we not heard of the Spirit calling to out to a congregation to open its doors to it’s community and provide a safe place for neighborhood children to gather (that would be us, you know)? The story goes that St. Jerome, the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin, was once asked whether all of that wine got consumed at the wedding feast. His response? “We are drinking from it still.” Indeed, right here, in the story of this denomination and this congregation, the festive drink of new life has flowed abundantly.
The Spirit still calls to us today, asking this old stone jar to be re-dedicated to bear the fruits of new life. And like the apostle Paul looking upon the church in Corinth, I look out among us and see a treasury of gifts to be used in the service of this task. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesy, discernment, even miracles—these gifts are here, among you—each of us having been given something by the Spirit. In Corinth, there was an ongoing debate over which gifts were the best, and Paul wrote to tell them, ‘No, even those gifts that some of you seem to think are least important—all of them are gifts of the Spirit, and thus all of you have something to offer in the service of God.’ All of you. All of you.
Having been so abundantly gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, we cannot help but be standing ready for Christ to be the guest among us, transforming us to new purpose, calling upon us to bear new life ever again. But wait, there is something more that happened at the wedding feast that day. Remember that chief steward? What was it that he said? Oh, yeah—at this wedding, the best wine had been saved for last. What makes us think that it will not be so with the new life that we shall bear, too?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
A Sermon for the Second Sunday in Ordinary Time, Year C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
By The Rev. Matthew Emery
Preached at Second Congregational United Church of Christ, Rockford, IL
January 14, 2007
Those of you who were here two Sundays ago likely remember the somewhat unusual sermon preached that day. In the reading from the Gospel of Luke, we heard about Jesus at age 12 in the temple, sitting among the teachers listening and asking questions. And so, in some sense creating a sermon together in our midst, we did likewise, sitting among each other as teachers, listening to one another and asking questions that lay deep on our hearts. There were many good questions that we shared in that time, many of them the sort of questions for which the only answer is a lifetime of living the journey of faithful exploration, discernment, and discipleship.
Questions usually have multiple layers. For instance, when someone asks “why did God let this happen?”, there’s almost always a deeper, more critical question lurking underneath it; that is, “how can I go on now that it has?” We like to hide those more vulnerable places, too afraid to even ask about our true yearnings. Or sometimes, the questions we ask reveal the doubts and anxieties we have ourselves.
One of the questions shared two weeks ago is just such a question, I think. As I recall, it went something like “how can Christianity compete in a world with multiple major religions?” Or, bringing the scale down a little bit, many people today ask about how the mainline Protestant churches—churches like ours: a part of one of the historic denominations of this country, rooted in historic traditions and practices, and yet vitally open to differences in theology and beliefs and faith—how can mainline-liberal-progressive churches like ours survive in the midst of the so-called competition from our more charismatic conservative-evangelical counterparts? That is, how can Church Street [our congregation] compete with Colonial Village [Heartland Community Church]? Even for all the very respectable pragmatic concern behind questions like these, I’m inclined to think that they’re not the real matter on our hearts. Or at the very least, that there is something deeper behind them.
What might that be, you ask? I think rather than surviving or competing against others, we want to know that there is new life possible here. We want some sign that our faith has not been in vain, and that indeed a living, vital relationship with God can be had. We seek to see that these vessels we call church—this path of belief and practice, this community of people—that these are still good and still have purpose, and that these can still bear the presence of God to us and others. With our anxieties and doubts combined with the trappings (or sometimes the baggage) of our traditions and history, we might just be a bit like empty jars at a wedding feast.
It’s a little interesting when you look at this story from the Gospel of John to see what the author spends their time telling us about. For the first few verses, they zip right through with plot—there’s a wedding feast in the town of Cana, Jesus is there with his mother and his newly called disciples, the wine runs out, and Jesus and his mother get in a little tussle about what to do. (This latter piece will have to be for another sermon.) And then, having zipped right through all this, in the middle of the story we find the author of John spending an awfully long time telling us about … jars, of all things. How many there were (six), what they were made of (stone), how big they were (20 or 30 gallons each), and what they were for (the Jewish purification rites). In pausing here, on something seemingly insignificant, we see a little glimpse into how Jesus works. He takes something old and solid and good—remember, just last week we heard of Jesus going through a Jewish purification rite himself—these old, solid, good things he transforms into the vessel for the gift of something new and wonderful, and does so in abundance; I mean, 120 to 180 gallons of wine is a lot of wine. I must note, here that, while for us today we see wine can have a dark side that people sometimes must struggle with, the people first receiving John’s gospel drew upon many images from the Old Testament and from their culture of wine as the sign of rich, abundant new life. And so, the miracle here is not simply that water was turned into wine, but that Jesus takes old, solid, good things that stood empty and waiting and makes them into the bearers of new life, and new life in abundance. What a guest!
And so, what about us? Is there new life to be seen here in this old building, in this solid community of people, in the midst of good things created for purposes of perhaps times past? Well, is that not what we’ve already seen? Have we not seen the Spirit, the continuing presence of Christ, in the creation of our unique Congregationalist and United Church of Christ traditions out of a past that wasn’t working anymore? Do we not know of the Spirit calling out to the church to open itself to women and gay people and persons of color—and seen ourselves rise to that purpose? Have we not heard of the Spirit calling to out to a congregation to open its doors to it’s community and provide a safe place for neighborhood children to gather (that would be us, you know)? The story goes that St. Jerome, the early church father who translated the Bible into Latin, was once asked whether all of that wine got consumed at the wedding feast. His response? “We are drinking from it still.” Indeed, right here, in the story of this denomination and this congregation, the festive drink of new life has flowed abundantly.
The Spirit still calls to us today, asking this old stone jar to be re-dedicated to bear the fruits of new life. And like the apostle Paul looking upon the church in Corinth, I look out among us and see a treasury of gifts to be used in the service of this task. Wisdom, knowledge, faith, healing, prophesy, discernment, even miracles—these gifts are here, among you—each of us having been given something by the Spirit. In Corinth, there was an ongoing debate over which gifts were the best, and Paul wrote to tell them, ‘No, even those gifts that some of you seem to think are least important—all of them are gifts of the Spirit, and thus all of you have something to offer in the service of God.’ All of you. All of you.
Having been so abundantly gifted by God’s Holy Spirit, we cannot help but be standing ready for Christ to be the guest among us, transforming us to new purpose, calling upon us to bear new life ever again. But wait, there is something more that happened at the wedding feast that day. Remember that chief steward? What was it that he said? Oh, yeah—at this wedding, the best wine had been saved for last. What makes us think that it will not be so with the new life that we shall bear, too?
BLESSING AND HONOR, GLORY AND POWER BE UNTO GOD, NOW AND FOREVER. AMEN.
Sermon ©2007, Matthew C. Emery. All Rights Reserved.
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