“Come to the Party!”
First Congregational Church – Wauwatosa, Wisconsin
2nd Sunday after Epiphany Reflection (annual meeting) – January 17, 2010
Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.
[John 2:1-11]

“Come to the party!” Those are certainly welcome words; words that we like to hear. Being invited to a party means that there is something to celebrate; a reason to come together for a good time. When the invitation to a wedding comes it means that love has drawn two friends to a new level of relationship. A wedding brings a man and a woman together opening the possibility of new life, which is why in the Greek Orthodox Church there is the custom of the ‘stephano’ or crown: the couple is crowned as part of the ceremony to signify that they are “king and queen of creation,” privileged to co-create life with God.

Jesus and his mother were invited to a wedding Cana, the Gospel of John is the only one to record it. John comments that this party was where Jesus did his first sign. Like most things in the Fourth Gospel there is a great deal intended under each statement. To say this was the “first’ of the signs means that, while there are other signs to follow, this one sets the tone; from the outset of his ministry Jesus reveals a God of abundance, a God who celebrates and gives life.

Jesus and his mother come to the party and she overhears the news: “the wine has run out.” In soon-to-be twenty-eight years of ministry I’ve don a lot of weddings and have attended a fair number of wedding parties – and parties in general, for that matter. So, I can say with confidence that such an announcement would tend to pour cold water on the party!

Having observed the debacle, Jesus’ mother goes to her Son, pulls him aside and says, “They have no wine.” While I would love to talk more about the exchange here – because Jesus is not being disrespectful or dismissive, as some intimate – I can’t because of time. But there is a point here that I think the storyteller-theologian John Shea comments on beautifully picking up on the theme of co-creation: “. . . The wedding symbolizes how God and people are united in love to co-create spiritual life. The mother of Jesus is the spokesperson for the people side of this divine-human relationship. She is humanity aware of its lack, conscious that it cannot live to the fullest without continual communion with God. So she speaks to Jesus, he God side of the divine-human relationship, the haunting and poignant words of all human insufficiency. ‘They have no wine.’ Humans have lost their union with God and, by implication, their communion with one another. Without this spiritual union the wedding of life cannot continue. . . . The answer to the question, ‘What concern is this to you and me?’ is: everything. The very reason for Jesus’ being is to supply wine for the imperiled marriage of divine and human life. The mother of Jesus knows who to come to when the wine runs out.” Even though, as Jesus points out, it is not his hour, the fullness, still, he acts and acts to demonstrate God’s abundance in the midst of life, even where we see only scarcity or need.

I read something by James McBride Dabbs that, unfortunately, reflects on how many folk view our Christian faith as a less-than-abundant, less-than-joyful, even irrelevant experience. Reflecting on life in rural South Carolina Dabbs wrote: “Religion was a day and a place: religion was Sunday and the church: almost everything else was life. Religion was a curious, quiet and inconsequential moment in the vital existence of a country boy. It came around every week, but it didn’t seem to have much to do with the rest of life, that is, life.” That first sign at Cana tells us that if people have that view – it’s not because God hasn’t/doesn’t try to reach to them and change it. The water into wine is more than Rowan Atkinson’s wickedly humorous reading or re-telling of this story in which Jesus is asked if he hires out for parties, though I do think the Lord finds it amusing (you can find it on You-Tube). What that first sign at Cana says is that God wants to have much to do with life, with the every day, that joy is to be found in it and that Sunday is simply our day to give God thanks for ALL of it.

You see, one of my favorite Church Fathers Irenaeus said, “God’s glory – human beings fully alive.’ Cana is the foreshadowing of what will be proclaimed by Jesus in his teaching and in his life: “I have come that they might have life and have it to the full.” The King James it renders it “more abundantly.” That’s why those six empty stone water casks speak volumes. They were intended for ritual cleansing, for making the outside clean, but instead they give forth the best wine a party ever knew. Just as each of us can have the “water of life” bubbling up from within us, those casks bubbled with, as the Psalmist said, “wine to gladden the heart.’ Our Christian faith isn’t about scarcity, but abundance; not about emptiness, but fullness. If God can be so joyful, so loving, so generous – how can we not be as well?

Robert Hotchkin, a theologian at the University of Chicago, said something profound: “Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to veritable orgies of joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.” True! Amen! Jesus’ ministry began at Cana, at a party, and our lives, our ministries – because we are all of us ministers of God’s Good News -- should reflect that abundance and that love Cana represents.

So, come to the party and live as though we believe that the grace revealed at Cana – the Divine desire for communion, relationship with humanity – is real. Live the love and the abundance Jesus revealed. Come to the party by living the abundance in the every day – be gracious, be kind, be unselfish, be other-centered, and be concerned for the common good. Come to the party, live that life and see what a difference it can and will make in a world that seems to always be running out of wine and keeps missing the good stuff that is so very close to hand. Come to the party!