Monday 18 January 2016

God's Overflowing Grace

As weddings usually go there is something likely to go wrong, some mishap or other, something unexpected.  From my experience as a clergy,  I remember the wedding rings being dropped and rolling across the floor just as the groomsmen went to hand them over for the blessing, or they have been left back at the house with someone having to return to look for them, another time the groom just as he was about to repeat his vows looked like he was going to fall over and I realized he was about to faint, and of course there is always the bride who comes late and the poor groom left waiting is about to have a panic attack thinking he has been left standing at the alter.   All sorts of things go wrong at weddings, and the wedding in Cana was no different, only here it was to run short on their supply of wine. (John 2: 1 -11). 

While that would be no big deal perhaps in our culture, someone would more then likely no where they could quickly to get more if they wanted it.  But For Mary, the mother of Jesus, this seems to be of great concern and  goes to jesus telling him “they have no wine.” Jesus however doesn’t seemed to be so bothered by it has his mother, and says to her, “woman, what concern is that to you and to me?”   My hour has not yet come."

Our first inclination is to think that was not a nice way to answer his mother. However, when we hear these last words,  knowing Jesus often spoke this throughout the gospels leading up to the time of his death on the cross, “my hour has not yet come,” we think that perhaps he is referring to this here. That it is not time for him to begin his ministry of revealing who he is as God’s Son.  And perhaps this so-called crisis, of not having enough wine for the wedding festivities was not of the miracle producing nature.

Mary however is not put off by what Jesus says, instead like any mother when she expects her Son to listen to her, she says to the servants, “do whatever he tells you.”  In other words now my Son, listen to your mother and get on with it.  She wasn’t about to take no for an answer. 

And in short order it seems Jesus does just what his mother had asked of him, he produces the new wine.  Why did Jesus hesitate in the first place, and why did he change his mind?  Was his mother so convincing? or might it be that he realized what was asked of him, was not about the wine at all, but about the life of this young couple, the impact this so called inconveniece as we might consider it, would have on their lives. 

In the time and culture of Jesus day running out of wine at a wedding feast would not only have been an inconvenience for this young couple and an embarrassment they would no doubt have to live with for the rest of their lives. Wine was a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, hospitality and joy, and so for this young couple to run short on wine, it was to run short on blessing. 

This couple was probably from a poor family, they likely did not have much to start out with, and to run out of wine meant that their lives were off to a poor start without God’s blessing.   In providing the wine  Jesus was not only helping them save face so to speak, but showing God’s blessing toward them.   God understands our needs, and responds to them, no matter how great or how small they may be, but also no matter what importance or lack of importance they may seem to someone else. They are important to God.

Jesus saw the importance in the need for this couple.  God’s grace is like that, it shows up in the ordinary events of our lives.  The wine was a gift not only for the party, in that Jesus provided more wine for the festivities,  but a gift of blessing for their lives, a way of revealing God’s grace toward them.  

In the season of Epiphany we look for God’s revealing, how God is made known to us in the scripture, what it says about God and who God is.  The miracle of turning the water into wine at the wedding in Cana, had much to say about God, that can be a blessing to our own lives.

When Jesus told the servants to fill up the purification Jars with water, it says they filled them to the brim, they were overflowing. Jesus didn’t just provide a few extra bottles of wine, for the wedding, which likely would have been sufficient.  These jars held twenty or thirty gallons, and that amount of wine, added up to about another 1000 bottles of wine.  I read somewheres, it said, this was more wine then the crowd could have drunk not only during the three days of the wedding feast, but even over three weeks.

That’s a lot of wine, why the abundance, why not give just what was needed.  Perhaps Jesus was doing a turn around on his mother, “you asked for it, you got it.”  We know that is not the case, this is a miracle of gigantic proportions, this is how God works.  God doesn’t just give in small quantities, or qualities, but like the overflow of wine that was pouring for the people there, God pours our his love abundantly toward us, our God is a generous God.  

No wonder when Paul in one of his letters complains about the thorn in his side,  he says the Lord says to him, “my grace is sufficient for you” (2 cor 12:9).  God blesses us above and beyond any thing we can ask or imagine. 

And that is just it we can’t imagine it, but we can know it through our experience.  Can you imagine the thoughts of the bridegroom when the steward called him over after tasting the wine.  This poor young fellow was probably expecting to hear the servant say the wine barrel was gone dry, and instead he says 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”  (2:10).
The Bridegroom must have been as we would say, blowin’ away by this, astonished, flabbergasted, call it what you like, but he knew then what it was to be truly amazed by God’s grace.  Even if he didn’t know where it had come from at the moment, for it says the steward didn’t know, maybe the servants who had drawn the water told him about it later, as it says they knew.   In whatever case it is no doubt he would have accepted it graciously, thanking God for not small miracles in this case but for a big one, because God didn't just give him more wine, and not only an abundant amount but gave his best. Now that is a awesome God.  A God who loves beyond all measure.

And we can testify to that in our own lives. We all know things that have happened perhaps in our own lives that have revealed God to us in a way that we cannot deny, we cannot let it go because we know something out of the ordianary, or extraordianary has happened.  That young couple would no doubt have remembered the miracle at their wedding perhaps going back to it many times over, throughout their lifetime, remembering God’s goodness towards them, and if so, it is likely their lives were ever more lived out in gratitude toward God.

That is what grace does, it doesn’t end with the event, or what happened, how God revealed himself to us, it is extended, shared, throughout our  lives in our response to it .  This was the first of Jesus signs, it says, in Cana of Galilee, revealing his glory,  and the disciples believed in him. 

Jesus gives us all we need to know his glory, the disciples were his followers they saw, and they believed, we too see and believe, because we know God is made present to us in the Eucharist, in our gathering together, in our baptisms, in our lives, wherever we are, and it is there we are to expect him to show up, and be present to us, just as Jesus was at the wedding in Cana. 

He was there, not all who were there knew who he was, not all, perhaps only a few there knew a miracle had taken place right in their midst,  but for those who did, God’s grace was made known in a powerful way.

 It is expecting God to be in all of our lives, in all places, and in all that we do,  that we  learn to discern his presence and goodness towards us and in the world, and know we are never away from him. God’s grace overflows freely toward us. 


Amen. God bless.




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