God’s Most Annoying Miracle

First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
The Second Sunday after Epiphany - January 14, 2007
Rev. Rob Brink
[Texts: Isaiah 62:1-5 / John 2:1-11]

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to the single most annoying miracle in the entire Bible.  If you’re familiar with the Bible, you know that’s quite a claim because there are some seriously annoying miracles in this book.  For example: Elisha, the prophet, makes an iron axe head float by throwing a wooden stick into the water above it.  If he’d been Charlton Heston he would have said, “Let my axe head go!”  and the water would have stood up five stories tall on either side of the axe head and a light from heaven would have shown down on it, and it would have floated up into the air and hovered back to his hand, and the instant he plucked it out of the air, the water would come crashing down and Heston would have slumped to the ground, exhausted.  Now that’s a miracle.

What does Elisha do?  He asks the guy where the axe head fell, and then he throws a stick in the water above it.  What, like the iron is just sitting there at the bottom of the river, until it looks up and sees the stick and says, “Wow, so THAT’S how you float!  I always thought it would be so hard.  But hey, if Mr. Stick can do it... I can too!”  Make the blind see?  Cool.  Let the lame dance?  Excellent!  Trick an axe head into floating in a river?  That’s kinda lame.  The Bible has some truly amazing miracles, and some pretty annoying ones, but the wedding at Cana has got them all beat.

 Obviously, this miracle annoys the religious conservatives.  What exactly was Jesus doing at a party anyway?  Good Christian boys don’t party, and they certainly do not go to parties with girls and dancing and alcohol.  He even brings along his disciples; what kind of example is that?  He doesn’t just make wine; he makes really great wine.  He doesn’t just make really great wine; he makes gallons and gallons of really great wine.  Couldn’t he have just turned water into Welch’s Grape Juice?  Wouldn’t that have been fantastic enough?  Couldn’t he have made a tray of tiny little shot glasses and passed it around so that everyone could have just a taste?  Nope, he takes six great big jars, has them all filled to the brim with water, and then turns all of it into wine.  For a religious conservative, that’s annoying.

But Jesus is an equal opportunity kind of guy.  He also annoys the religious liberals.  I mean, come on!  A miracle?  That is sooo pre-modern.  Obviously, an “educated” person doesn’t believe in such mythology.  Let’s skip ahead to the ethical teaching, the practical guidance for living a good moral life.  Oh wait. There isn’t any!  There’s no parable, no explanation, no moral, nothing - nothing but miracle.  Annoying.

 But let’s not stop there.  Who else does Jesus annoy in this text?  He annoys the Catholics because he tells Mary to leave him alone.  Then he annoys the Protestants because five seconds later he goes and does what she wants anyway.  He annoys the Charismatics because he makes no mention of the Holy Spirit, while performing an obviously Spirit-filled act.  But let’s not limit this to a religious discussion, what about political movements?

He annoys the socialists because obviously he can make free food, and rather than caring for the plight of the poor and the hungry, he makes wine for a party.  He annoys Marxists because he gives buckets of wine to guests who have already managed to drink the room dry; does that sound like a fair distribution of goods to you?  He annoys the capitalists by giving away the wine away rather than selling it.  And worse, by making so much wine of such great quality, he financially supports the first few years of this young couple’s marriage, which sounds a bit like welfare.  This has got to be the most annoying miracle ever!

 Honestly?  That’s what I love about it.  Jesus doesn’t actually DO anything.  He doesn’t fill the jars, he doesn’t pray out loud, he doesn’t draw out the water, and he doesn’t serve it himself.  When the master of ceremonies mistakenly congratulates the bridegroom for saving such amazing wine till last, Jesus never corrects the error.  He never takes the credit.  For all these reason, I think this is the absolutely perfect beginning to Jesus’ ministry.  It is a microcosm of the kingdom of God, a tiny picture of Jesus’ great dream for the world.

I want a Jesus who’ll dress like me, walk, talk, and act like me.  Rich American Anglos want a rich, white, Jesus.  So we all go to our Bibles, and guess what we find?  Jesus was a moderately affluent, well-educated, articulate teacher who wants everyone to be good, productive citizens.  Everything seems great, until we stumble across a story that annoys us.  All serious students of Jesus will sooner or later walk away shaking their heads, because he breaks every boundary.  He will not stay put within the walls of our worldview.  He is more than a liberal or a conservative, more than a Protestant or a Catholic, more than a socialist or a capitalist, Marxist, or an anarchist, or any other “ist” you care to mention.  He is the truth within each of those things, and the truth beyond them.

So now there is no more room for hate.  We can no longer pretend that women don’t count, or children don’t count, or old people, or sick people, or poor people, or people with different colored skin.  And just as truly, when we are abused or ignored, we can never again accept it as if it were our due.  When we are born, we believe the world revolves around us.  As we grow, we slowly begin to include more people in our circle.  Maybe it stops at Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters.  Maybe it ends with extended family or a circle of friends.  These few are worthy of our trust and our concern; those others are not.  But Jesus says family means everyone, even people we fear, even people we despise.  As his follower, I’m required not only to endure their presence, but to reach out to them, to offer forgiveness for their wrongs and beg forgiveness for my own.  I must pray for them!  This is extremely annoying.

 I want a Jesus who will stand up and be counted, who will punish the wrong, who will lift up the right, who will make it clear once and for all if there really is a God.  This Jesus would appear to every individual on the earth at least once during their lifetime, offering each of them in their own language conclusive proof of his existence and his love.  This Jesus would either fix me so that I no longer do wrong, or fix my conscience so that I no longer feel shame.  And what do I get instead?  A secret kingdom, locked in place and time, witnessed to most frequently by shepherds, prostitutes, and fishermen.  I get a Jesus who offers no conclusive proof, who shuns the spotlight, and speaks forever in maddening parables.

So now I must be a secret disciple as well.  I must pray in secret, fast in secret, do good in secret, sacrifice in secret and expect neither reward nor recognition.  Even God’s love is no reward because it comes to all of us regardless of whether we’re obedient or not.  I must be a secret disciple, concerned not with the outward appearance of a virtuous life, but with the inward reality of a clean heart and mind.  I can preach a thousand sermons, read my Bible every day, have perfect church attendance, stay away from drugs, stay out of jail, and contribute positively to my society, but if there is no love in my heart for God, for humanity, and for all of creation, then all of my amazing good deeds are worth absolutely nothing.  This too is extremely annoying.

 I want a Jesus who will baptize my status quo, who will say, “You’re ok.  I’m ok.  Let’s leave well enough alone.”  If God wants to make some changes here and there, that’s fine, but lets take it slow and keep the disorientation to a minimum.  After all, I’m not as bad as THOSE people.

I’m perfectly content to enjoy my quiet party.  Then Jesus arrives.  He’s brought some hilarious friends along, he’s telling stories that are blowing people’s minds, and everyone is raving about this amazing new wine.  And where am I?  I’m off by myself, in a corner, bored, nursing the same cup of cheap wine that I’ve had since the party started.  So Jesus comes up and offers me a cup of this new wine, and says, “Take.  Drink!”  And I say, “Nah, I’m fine.  Wouldn’t want to insult the host, or let this cup go to waste.  You know, it’s a real shame to waste good food, so many starving people in the world, and could you please tell your friends to keep it down?  This was a nice party until you brought THEM in.”

Here I sit, in the middle of Jesus’ first miracle, surrounded by song and dance, food and wine, laughter and wisdom.  All I have to do is join the party.  But there is this perverse little part of me that would rather sit, bored, sipping droplets out of an empty cup.  Because to join the festivities would be to admit in front of God and everyone that I’m not the life of the party, my cup really isn’t full, I’m not really in charge, and I’m not any better than you.  Part of me is so arrogant, that joining Jesus’ party is actually a hard choice to make, and that is the most annoying thing of all.

The kingdom of God, Jesus’ dream for what this world could be, is communal, secretive, and transformative.  Isn’t it therefore utterly appropriate that his first miracle would be to transform water into wine in the back room of a wedding reception?  It’s the most annoying miracle because it’s typical of our most annoying savior.  As one author put it, he loves us as we are, and he loves us too much to leave us that way.  I’d add that he loves us too much to leave us alone.  He’s always there, pestering us with grace, annoying us life and forgiveness, hounding us with love.  He never kicks in the door, but he never goes away.  He just stands there knocking, waiting for us to love him back.