Can’t you hear the music and the sound of voices? There has been dancing for quite a while now, several days, in fact. Everyone is having a wonderful time. The food has been plenteous. Until this point, the wine has flowed freely.
But now, Houston, we have a problem. There is a whisper, a rumor at first, that the wine has run out. This is unfortunate and unprecedented. It is extremely bad form and poor planning for the host not to have anticipated this possibility. The guests who have journeyed from far and wide to attend this several-day celebration will not be happy.
The rumor grows into louder voices of discontent. The wine has indeed run out. The music has come to a screeching halt. The dancing has ceased, and people are no longer just milling about aimlessly. They are threatening to riot if this problem is not solved soon, very soon.
Mary, Jesus’s mother, notices the problem. Discreetly, she finds her son, because he will know what to do. She knows that he will be able to do something. “Jesus,” she whispers urgently, “the wine has gone out.”
Jesus’s reply seems harsh, although it really isn’t. At first, he replies as some of us might be tempted to do upon learning that someone has not planned properly. “Woman, a lack of preparation on the part of the wedding host does not constitute an emergency on mine.” Fair point. Why should this crisis that stems from poor planning force Jesus into performing some miracle? He is not into parlor tricks. And besides, it is not yet the hour of his glory.
But then, after this equivocation, he does do something. Mary knew all along that he could and would. The other guests at the wedding are pretty clueless, though. Maybe the disciples know that Jesus will do something, maybe not. And, in the end, only the inner circle understands who it is that resolves this crisis and how he does so.
I wonder about Jesus’s initial comment, which seems to dismiss the request to fix the problem at hand. Is it simply his way of pushing reset on the whole situation? Jesus fully intends to do something, but he also needs to demonstrate in some way that the miracle he will perform is more than just a magic show. It is more than being a miracle worker on demand. The sign that Jesus performs is more than just a flashy display of power. The sign points not only to who Jesus is as Son of God but to God’s ability to bring extraordinary grace into situations of seeming scarcity. Jesus’s sign does not point to him. It points to what is possible with God.
The servants, whom Jesus has conscripted into his work, know the full details. This small group of servants, who do what Jesus tells them to do, have eyes that are now opened by the miracle they have witnessed. They can see that even six empty stone jars can be filled not just with water, but with the very best wine. Something that seems unrelated to the crisis at hand now becomes the means of resolving it.
Because Mary trusts in Jesus’s power, and because of God’s boundless grace working through Jesus, the party continues. The feasting goes on. The music starts back up again. This quiet miracle has transpired, unbeknownst to many at the party. But the servants have been changed. They do what Jesus tells them to do. And their vision will never be the same again.
We in the Church are in a position not dissimilar from those guests at the wedding party in Cana. For centuries and centuries, the Church feasted and partied, riding high on privilege and general favor in society. The Church counted on the party lasting forever. The food would always be plentiful. The wine would never run out. People would flock to the church in good times and in bad. All the priest had to do was ring the Mass bell and the faithful would come.
But in more recent decades, things have changed. Rumors and whispers have grown into anxious cries. The wine is running out! The guests are leaving the party! The invited guests are staying away! And those who still come are complaining that the wine has disappeared. Where are the people? The Church has lost her moorings! Things look so different than they used to! There is a crisis!
And the Church has responded in various ways. There have been demands. Jesus, do something! Some have resorted to parlor tricks, putting all hope in the latest gimmicks, testing God to work some miracle that will solve all the problems.
We have forgotten Jesus’s very own words not to be anxious and have drunk anxiety like it was going out of style. We have become obsessed with everything that could go wrong and that seems to be going wrong. We have let worries over money impede the proclamation of the gospel, lacking any faith that God could do something surprising among us.
And at this moment in time, our anxiety has been ratcheted up even more as we lament our ecclesiastical crisis as well as a medical one. We have good reason to worry about the party stopping entirely, because for periods of time, it seems as if it has. Just when we thought the wine was about to run out, we found more of it, and the music started again, only to be shut down in the past two months. How can we feast if we can’t gather the way we expect? Who will solve this massive problem on our hands?
We are just like those wedding guests who saw only a problem when the wine began to run out. Except that, in the end, the faithful servants who did what Jesus told them to do learned something that might be helpful to us. I imagine those servants learned that the wrong way of thinking is to see a crisis as just a problem needing to be solved. The servants learned that if we simply shift our vision, we could re-envision our worst moments as laden with God’s potential to surprise us with his abundant grace.
It would be dishonest to conceive of our present situation as anything other than a crisis. But having settled that, we, as members of Christ’s living Body, have two options. We can respond anxiously to this crisis, or we can enter into a spirit of trust, like Mary, assuming that God will do something good and will surprise us.
Our assumption must be that the party will continue. The feasting here and now, even when it pauses for a time, will continue forever. Admittedly, this is difficult to see when people are dying and getting sick, when others are starving because the food has disappeared, and when the loneliness of this time threatens to overwhelm us.
But the Church, if she chooses, can embrace this moment to proclaim something that we have always known. It is our moment to teach the world. Even in the most incomprehensible crises, God is still working his purpose out, however mysterious it may be. Parlor tricks are not the answer to declining attendance in the Church. Praying to God is not the same as expecting miracles on demand. And when we seem to be looking at empty wine barrels and are staring at a host of empty water jugs, God can surprise us and give us wine. Really good wine.
Just as Mary knew that her son would do something, shouldn’t we expect that God will do something in the midst of our crises, even if we don’t know what it will look like? Now, is the time for the Church to pave the way for a new kind of thinking by learning from our own struggles. We can wring our hands and complain that there is no more wine while we gaze vacantly at empty water jugs. Or we can trust that the Holy Spirit, moving among us, will lead us into all truth and show us what to do when no one else has the answers. And it just might surprise us.
This is the moment for the Church. This is the moment for the gospel to break into a world that has no answers and is only trying to solve a problem. It is our task to tell the world that we can’t wait until the conditions are perfect to move on. We are to go forth boldly in trust, knowing that God will enable the party to continue. The empty water jugs will be surprisingly full by God’s grace. And the music will still play on.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Second Sunday after the Epiphany
January 16, 2022