Significant and Wonderful
John 2:1-12
It feels like we have been working through this special weeks-long season of getting Jesus conceived, announced, embodied, born, honored, baptized, and launched – and now we have a few weeks on our journey together to slow down a bit and understand who this Jesus is as a healer, a miracle worker and a teacher before we launch our journey toward the cross in Lent, just 5 short Sundays away…if you can believe it.
Remember that in this journey we are sharing together as a community, author Brian McLaren is leading our reflections as we consider the wide arc of scripture, the stories we find there and the ways we find ourselves – individually and collectively - in the story of God that just keeps unfolding.
This week, we dwell in miracles.
We dwell in miracles while figuring out what they mean to us today.
Maybe you have experienced a bona fide miracle, an amazing change of circumstances for which there is seemingly no logical explanation. I had a spiritual mentor, Charlie, who kept a journal of every miracle he experienced – tiny to large – throughout his life. Some say that we will only see miracles if we are looking for them.
And maybe you haven’t personally experience a miracle. That is real too. Not everyone does.
I think it is important to begin there.
Miracles or the lack thereof can bring up feelings about why some people experience them and others do not.
Sometimes we hear the suggestion that you have to achieve certain things or live or believe a certain way to receive the experience of miracles.
I don’t find that very helpful, especially when trying to encourage others to learn more about God, put their whole faith in God’s grace, and to walk in the footsteps of Jesus.
I mean… What kind of God picks and chooses? Ranks? Leaves some people in the lurch for cause? Maybe WE do that as humans, but that is not how God acts in the world.
But what can we observe in the miracles that DO happen? What hope or direction or instruction might show up as we sit with amazing things when something does show up? How can we read the miracles we find in scripture so that we receive wisdom and solace and direction for this day?
Today, we have a chance to practice this as we remember two miracles stories that frame Jesus’ early ministry.
We’re going to walk through a process with each of these stories – naming the vital details, exploring what in context made those details important when this story was first told, and then think about what this story might say to us in light of what we’ve observed about the stories’ original importance and our circumstances today.
In our first passage from the gospel of John, Mary, mother of Jesus asks Jesus to do something about the fact that the party has run out of wine. And at first, Jesus asks why he should worry with that detail. But his mother moves ahead, notifying the servants to do whatever his son should ask. She’s got that mama wisdom that he’ll make it happen.
The servants fill vast stone jars with water. McLaren picks up on a significant detail here – those stone jars would be have been used to store water for purifying rituals. And here they are, filled with water that becomes wine for the party. Wine that saves the host from embarrassment. And not just any old wine, but the steward tells the bridegroom that this is the BEST wine. Wine that makes this celebration especially festive and good.
Jesus doesn’t make a fuss. He does as his mother asks. And wine shows up.
The vast jars, typically used to separate the ritually unclean from the clean have instead been filled with goodness for ALL who have gathered to share. And the blessing is not the cause of the party but it is icing on the cake – it is bumping up the celebration a notch.
The miracle isn’t for special people or even a particularly important moment or event, but it is evidence that goodness matters in the course of life for everyone present.
So with those details in mind, let’s ponder what this miracle might reveal for us or offer us today?
What is it that is running out in the banquet that is our lives – our individual lives and our collective lives? Where are the places that we are marking a division between those who are “in” and those who are “out?” How might those points of division be transformed as a source of goodness for all who gather?
I think about labels… maybe the weight right now of the labels “liberal” and “conservative.” What is the dividing line between those two things? Is there a way for whatever that division is to become some source of blessing to all of us?
When I think about those labels in the context of our faith, I sometimes think the holy scriptures themselves become the dividing line, how we read it, how we interpret it, how we apply it to our daily lives. But what if the bible is a vessel overflowing with goodness for all who show up to it? How might our discussions be more like wine that brings us together and creates honor and goodness rather than separating us? Wouldn’t that be a blessed event? Sending us out into the world full of goodness to share?
In the gospel of Mark, the miracle of Jesus casting out demons takes on a different kind of emotional weight than a story about water, wine and a wedding.
The author of this gospel tends to load sentences with a lot of subtext. We’re told here that those who gathered at Capernaum were astounded by Jesus’ teaching because he taught as one with authority. That FEELS like a little back handed slap at the scribes referenced, who would have been teachers too.
The nuance of the word authority here – the Greek exousia - is important to biblical scholars because this word suggests a KIND of authority that is granted through social interactions and experience – as in this Jesus’ teachings have proven authoritative in real time to those around him and therefore they trust his teaching because they are experiencing them to be true.
Capernaum is in Galilee, away from Jerusalem and the seat of religious power surrounding the Temple. Remember last week we noted that John’s appearance in the wilderness was something of a protest – taking him away from the traditional power structures. Perhaps Jesus is received with authority because he isn’t part of the Temple hierarchy and is willing to walk these dusty wilderness parts with the other folks that are already here.
Jesus encounters a man in the synagogue. The text identifies the man as one with an unclean spirit. The voice coming from the man asks what Jesus has come to do, asking if he has come to destroy “us,” whoever “us” is. It could be that “us” points to the scribes, the folks with status, identified as the religious elites.
The MAN himself isn’t voicing this doubt or skepticism about Jesus – something possessing the man is speaking through him. Jesus knows he’s not just talking to the person that belongs to this body. There is something else going on here, and so he commands the unclean spirit or demon come out.
And in that moment, Jesus demonstrates the very authority that people were beginning to hear about. They experienced his power and authority in that moment as they watched the negative energy or spirit or demon leave the man.
Now today, we understand mental health very differently. People with various diagnoses are sometimes prone to speak in voices that are not true to their healthy selves. But we have to be able to name that which is impacting us so that we can get the help we need to be healthy and well.
But also, sometimes there are attitudes and experiences or beliefs or anxieties infecting our soul, causing us to speak in a voice that is not our God-given voice.
I wonder…
Where are places of sickness or separation in our lives? Both individually and collectively? Where are the places we might need to acknowledge an imbalance?
As McLaren puts it,
“What unhealthy, polluting spirits are troubling us as individuals and as a people? What fears, false beliefs and emotional imbalances reside within us and distort our behavior? What unclean or unhealthy thought patters, value systems, and ideologies inhabit, oppress, and possess us as a community or culture? What in us feels threatened and intimidated by the presence of a supremely “clean” or “holy” spirit or presence, like the one in Jesus?...In what ways might our society lose its health, its balance, its sanity, its “clean spirit” to something unclean or unhealthy?”
What demons are speaking into our world today?
And how might our faith in God’s authority and power restore us to health?
What would that look like right now?
Might it look like letting go of our racism, our classism, our sexism, our homophobia, our religious elitism, our individualism, our tendency toward violence?
Might Jesus be speaking into our lives too? Our individual lives and our collective lives, inviting us to health, inviting us to follow Jesus, to share the good news of lives turned around and changed in a word….
Be silent and come out…
This weekend we honor the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and we do it against the backdrop of an assault on our nation’s capitol that featured anti-Semitism, racism and flags and banners flying in the midst of it all to proclaim that Jesus is Lord.
On this weekend, we honor the work that King did to shed light on and call for an end to segregation and discriminatory practices that we like to think were a Southern thing, or a Jim Crow thing, or something “solved” by legislation and the courts, but we are remembering all of Kings’ legacy in the midst of a country that continues to be divided by skin color, ethnicity, money, power, opportunity and status.
It feels a little bit like the voice of a demon crying out within the body, both in hope and fear of the power of God to transform…have you come to destroy us?
I wonder…What if we let Jesus call this evil spirit out of us, and then we watched our collective body become still?
That seems like a miracle we need right now.
A miracle that calls us to our better selves. Each one of us.
And all of us collectively. To our better selves and our better community and our better whole.
It seems like the demons are known to us and have been named – their names are extremism, racism, anti-Semitism, classism. Are we willing to accept that there is an illness? An imbalance? A pollution?
Will they come out? Will they leave the body?
And do we believe that such miracles can happen and change us? Are we willing to call on such miracles, to participate in such miracles, to open ourselves to such miracles?
Come Lord Jesus.
May it be so.
Amen.
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