“They Have No Wine”

Sermon Preached By The Rev. Bruce Sanguin
January 14, 2007

Isaiah 62: 1-5          John 2:1-11

It was disastrous. Running out of wine at a wedding brought lasting shame to the family. It wasn’t simply a miscalculation of how much they would need. No, it’s more likely that given the widespread poverty of the day, the parents had provided all they could. It just wasn’t enough. And now everybody in the village of Cana would know.

Mary, a guest at the party, notices the impending calamity.  She approaches her son and requires him to step up – and she does so in no uncertain terms.  Don’t be fooled by the indirect nature of the request: “They have run out of wine.”  Mary’s not merely making idle conversation with her son.  This is not just a matter of passing interest, and Jesus knows it. Any son of any mother would know what she was getting at – the meta-level of communication was clear to Jesus: “You, do something!”

There are a few places in the New Testament where Jesus comes off as shockingly human. This is one of them.  He’s not exactly thrilled with his mother. “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come. It sounds like something I might say. In fact, even I wouldn’t say this to my mother. I hope I’d be a little more polite, even if I did think she was imposing her agenda on me. Jesus apparently was on a tight schedule. Whatever he meant by his “hour”, this wasn’t it. He had it all mapped out in his head, how it was all going to unfold. And apparently it didn’t involve rescuing the parents of this couple from shame or keeping the party going.  Dare we say it? Our Lord comes off as a bit arrogant, perhaps even petulant. Maybe he doesn’t like being told what to do by his mother.  But then, what are mothers for – if not to teach their sons a thing or two about getting over themselves?

Now, we have no way of knowing if this story is literally true – none of the other gospels record it. But we do know that it represents a dynamic of the spiritual life we all face. When’s the last time you were asked to step up and do something – even though it wasn’t a part of your plans?

Last Friday evening, I received a call from Peter, our administrator. He was just getting ready to go home to start his weekend, closing up the Center and checking the doors of the church one last time. There on the front steps of the church was a young woman trying to sleep. It was a bitterly cold evening.  Peter asked me for phone numbers of shelters in Vancouver. To make a long story short, Peter ended up driving this young woman around downtown Vancouver most of the night, until they finally found a Presbyterian church that had a space. Now, Peter is a kind soul, but I can tell you that this is not the way he expected to spend his Friday night after a long week at work.  It was not his hour either.

But you see, it was the young woman’s hour of need. Her wine had run out. Sometimes, being a Christian means stepping up even when it doesn’t fit our schedule. The fact is, we all need the voice of Mary, pointing out to us the obvious need that is staring us in the face. Sometimes we just don’t want to be bothered – or we hope somebody else will deal with it. Think of Mary’s voice as the voice of the Cosmic Mother. It’s the voice that interrupts our agenda with God’s agenda.   

Today, that voice is coming to us from Mother Earth. Terry Glavin, author of Waiting for the Macaw, calls our age the Age of Extinction. Father Thomas Berry says that we’re living through the sixth great extinction in the history of the planet. The other five have been the result of natural causes. This one is our own responsibility. It’s not that humans are bad by nature. Rather, our knowledge has run ahead of our spiritual wisdom. We have forgotten how to live upon the earth. And so, the wine runs out each and every day for entire species of plants and animals.  The wine is running out on the Bengal Tiger, the Sea Tortoise, the Spotted Owls, the Kihansi Spray Toad, and the Marlin. Is it petulance, indifference, or just plain not wanting to be bothered that causes us to act as though this is no concern of ours?  That’s when Mother Mary comes through as the voice of the earth: she looks at us, or should I say, “through us”. She sees through our addiction to convenience, past our Blackberries and the timelines we’ve created in pursuit of the good life and interrupts our plans by reminding us of what we already know – the wine has run out.

Sometimes, it’s our own wine that runs out.  Notwithstanding the endless needs of the world, some of us have given so much of ourselves that there is nothing left to give. Yet, we keep trying. Mary speaks to us from deep within, pointing out the obvious – we have nothing left to give. For those of us in this situation, the party stopped a long time ago. Instead it has become an unrelenting obligation to take care of others. Still, we do not welcome the voice of compassion when it’s directed at ourselves. We push it away, like Jesus. “What concern is my fatigue to me?”  You may not think that the hour to love yourself has arrived just quite yet – but Mary, the voice of the Cosmic Mother begs to differ. The need in this case is not out there. It’s within your own soul.

Jesus steps up, just as his mother knew he would and orders that the stone jars, used for purification rites, be filled up with water. Stone, not clay, because clay was too porous – you’d risk contamination from outside elements.  The symbolism is clear – if the celebration is to continue, it will begin with purification.  Which leads to the question of what it is within us that is in need of purification. I want to suggest that collectively, the purification we’re being asked to undergo is learning to distinguish between our needs and our wants. We’re so inundated with advertising everywhere we turn – the purpose of which is precisely to blur the line between need and want – that our judgment is truly contaminated.

Did you read the article in the Globe and Mail yesterday about the folks who call themselves Compacters? (Globe and Mail, Consumed with Not Buying Anything, Social Trends, Saturday, January 13, 2007, F6). Seven thousand people around the world made a resolution not to buy anything for an entire year – save food and underwear.  I’m not saying we should all go out and join up. But what they seem to be doing on our behalf is resetting the gage that measures when enough is enough. We need help. There is plenty of research now revealing that happiness and money are correlated only up to a surprisingly low level of income. Shortly after we reach above the poverty line – the correlation begins to break down.  It’s not that there’s anything inherently wrong with money, and it’s not that those of us with lots of it can’t be happy. Of course we can – but if we are it’s not the money making us happy. It’s the quality of our relationships, the integrity of our values, the sense that we’re making a contribution to the common good, and our joy in sharing the wealth liberally, that is making us happy.

 Jesus turned these waters of purification into approximately 600 bottles of wine! The symbolism in the Jewish tradition of this story is clear. Abundance of wine was associated with a new age, in which God would act to bring wholeness and healing to the people. God would restore right relationships – with God, neighbour, self and the earth. Listen to the prophet: “The time is surely coming says the Lord when the mountain shall drip with sweet wine and the hills shall flow with it; when my people shall plant vineyards and drink their wine” (Amos 9:13, 14) Again, Isaiah says: “On this mountain the Lord will make for all people a feast of rich food, and well-aged wines, well-aged wines strained clear… Let us rejoice and be glad in God’s salvation” (Isaiah 25: 6-10).

The Good News is that just when we’re ready to settle into sadness and hopelessness, the Holy One is just getting started. God saves the best for the last. A new age dawns. Have you noticed the proliferation of stories concerning politicians who are realizing that global warming is a real and present danger? I’m reading more stories like the one this past week about the city of Riyadh, in Saudi Arabia. The local Princes have hired a couple of Canucks to help them purify the river Hanifah. It’s 120 km of toxic dump, but they’ve put over half a billion dollars to cleaning it up. Already native birds and animals the people thought had disappeared forever are returning.

Have you noticed as well all this talk about the year 2012, which according to Mayan prophecy will be a turning point on the planet earth? I don’t put a lot of stock in setting these kinds of precise dates, but it does seem to be in the air that humanity is on the verge of a break-through of spiritual awareness. More people are becoming aware of their authentic spiritual natures; more of us are unprepared to trade the abundant life of the spirit to chase after paper money; more and more of us are falling back in love with the planet and the gift of life on earth; corporations, like Honda and Toyota are leading the way around green technology; we’re looking for alternative ways of life that leave time for deep, authentic relationships.  There is a purification of consciousness going on throughout the world. God is on the move. Drink deeply my friend of the wine of spirit, which our Lord offers.  Become intoxicated by it. The party is just getting started.