"Why We Can't Wait," a sermon on Luke 13:10-17, preached at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Detroit

 

"Why We Can't Wait"

Luke 13:10-17

The story we just heard goes straight to the heart of Jesus’ mission as proclaimed in Luke’s gospel.  Earlier in the gospel, in chapter 4, Jesus was also in a synagogue on the Sabbath when he first announced his mission, describing it in terms of human liberation and justice and abundance: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” (Luke 4:18-19).

In today’s reading, the theme of liberation resonates strongly. When Jesus sees the woman, he calls to her and says, “Woman, you are set free from your ailment.” Later, when Jesus debates the leader of the synagogue and asks, “Should not this woman be set free from her bondage on the sabbath day?”  he is drawing directly from Deuteronomy 5, the version of the commandment that connects Sabbath rest to Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt.

The synagogue leader was indignant because Jesus had healed on the Sabbath, and said, “There are six days for work. So, come and be healed on those days—not on the Sabbath.”  But Jesus remembers that the Sabbath law commemorates Israel’s liberation, so he interprets it to be a day for enacting liberation in the present.  To those who want the woman to wait, he says, “You hypocrites! Doesn’t each of you on the Sabbath untie your ox or donkey from the stall and lead it out to give it water?  Should not this woman, a daughter of Abraham…be set free on the Sabbath day from what has bound her?”

            In his 1964 book, Why We Can’t Wait, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr writes about 1963 as a pivotal year in the American Civil Rights movement.  He includes his famous “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” which is a call for urgency. 

            Dr. King wrote the letter as a response to eight local white clergymen who had criticized his activities in Birmingham and appealed for a more patient and restrained approach to advocating for civil rights. The "Letter" expresses King's deep disappointment with "the white moderate," who "paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom."

The gospel story we heard today is not just a healing story. Luke doesn’t really include details about the healing itself. I agree with one of my colleagues that, at its core, it's a story about what God intends. It's about the urgency of seeing God's intentions brought to pass without delay.[1]

            The primary argument of Dr. King’s “Letter” still speaks to us today, which is why in 2018 the 223^rd General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (USA) began a process toward amending the Book of Confessions to potentially include the letter.

The synagogue leader in today’s gospel story objects to healing this woman on the Sabbath.  Her condition isn’t life-threatening. She’s learned to live with it over almost two decades. So he doesn’t see why she couldn’t just wait a little while longer.  The synagogue leader has misunderstood the basic intention of observing the Sabbath.

            But Jesus reveals a deep logic for why the woman should be restored now. According to Deuteronomy, the Sabbath offers a weekly reminder of how much God values freedom and detests injustice:

“Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy, as the Lord your God commanded you. Six days you shall labor and do all your work. But the seventh day is a sabbath to the Lord your God; you shall not do any work -- you, or your son or your daughter, or your male or female slave, or your ox or your donkey, or any of your livestock, or the resident alien in your towns, so that your male and female slave may rest as well as you.  Remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm; therefore, the Lord your God commanded you to keep the sabbath day.”[2]

The original intention of the Sabbath, according to Deuteronomy, is to provide relief, even if only temporary, from any system that would deny a person -- or any part of creation -- a share of rest, peace, wholeness, dignity, and justice.  So, when the synagogue official says, "Wait just one more day." Jesus answers, "No. The Sabbath is a good day for setting people free. In fact, the purpose behind the Sabbath -- the value God places on wholeness – makes it necessary that I do this now. We can't wait."

In Luke 13, Jesus reaffirms what his scriptures have taught him.  As Matt Skinner puts it, “to perpetuate injustice is to defile the holiness of the weekly Sabbath day that God ordained. To deny freedom is to offend the God of the Exodus. It's because of who God is that Jesus can't wait.”

            Now, the white religious leaders whom Dr. King addressed in his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” reflected the views of a majority of American society at the time. One survey from 1964 found that 63% of Americans agreed that “civil rights leaders are trying to push too fast” and 58% agreed that the actions of people of color have, “on the whole, hurt their cause.”[3]

            Dr. King criticized white faith leaders and churches that perpetuate injustice by hiding behind theologies that expect God’s blessings to come only in the future.  What’s the old saying, “There’ll be pie in the sky, in the sweet by and by, after you die:

            So, why do some people have a sense of urgency about working for justice, while others just don’t?   Why are some people ready to confess and repent of what the Rev. Jim Wallis calls “America’s original sin,”[4] while others refuse to acknowledge any ways they may benefit from privilege? Why do some react with defensiveness, silence, or argumentativeness when the conversation makes them feel uncomfortable?

            I think much of the resistance comes from fear.  In the church, whether it’s local congregations or presbyteries or denominations, some are afraid of causing conflict…or alienating people, who may leave the church or withhold financial support. Some are afraid of change and becoming a different kind of church that they can’t yet imagine.

            Twenty years ago, when I was fairly new to the presbytery, I was part of the Presbytery’s Anti-Racism Team, which was commissioned and went through a lot of intensive training, to try to deal with structural racism in the presbytery, in response to some events of the time. Over the years, there was pushback, and eventually we no longer had a Presbytery Anti-Racism Team.   Our Presbytery is struggling again…still with racism.  It’s time to do the work that leads to liberation and healing. We can’t wait.

           

            This past week, The New York Times published “The 1619 Project” to re-examine the legacy of slavery in the United States and timed for the 400^th anniversary of the arrival in America of the first enslaved people from West Africa.[5]  The project’s essays trace links from America’s slave-owning history through the Jim Crow era and into persistent racial inequalities today. The project is an attempt to correct America’s historical ignorance about the causes of contemporary injustice, to place “the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story Americans tell ourselves about who we are.”[6]

            Predictably, there has been a backlash from some people who hold onto a particular vision of patriotism that centers on the ideal of white innocence, who are angry and uncomfortable with the reporting and insist that structural racism is a myth.[7]

             

            Look around our region and our nation.  Just this week a candidate for City Council in Marysville, Michigan made national headlines with her statements about her conviction that their city needed to remain a mostly white city, and that interracial couples are breaking God’s law. Does she think she’s a racist?

            Our national government has policies and practices that dehumanize immigrants and those who seek asylum. We have elected officials who promote hatred and division for political gain. 

            Young people and others around our nation tell us they’re afraid because of gun violence…and they want to feel safe.  The list could go on and on…

Talking about injustice and racism are hard, but necessary.  We can’t wait.

We need to learn how to talk respectfully and constructively with one another.  We need to learn to listen to one another to build true understanding and empathy.

A lot of white people don’t like to think that we’ve benefitted from white privilege, or that we do or say racist things without even being conscious of it. And yet, some of us have committed ourselves to gather to discuss books like Waking Up White[8] or White Fragility[9] and have felt challenged and encouraged to continue to grow as anti-racists. We have a number of other excellent resources available that could be the basis of these conversations, like Ibram Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning and Ijeomo Oluo’s So You Want to Talk about Race.

We need to learn how to be together, to be honest and respectful and kind with one another, and find ways for the healing we need to begin, so we can all be set free from whatever has bound us.  We need to work together and live further into Beloved Community together.

We live in such a broken, hurting world. We look around our cities and the world, and it can feel overwhelming.  But we follow Jesus, in his Way of love and justice. We are called to carry out his mission of healing and liberation.

Part of the good news is that we are not alone.  We have been baptized into God’s family and are blessed to be part of congregations where we can be nurtured and encouraged and challenged to grow in love and faith. And we have resources in the presbytery. For those who are seeking learning opportunities, you might check out Table Setters groups in our presbytery or the group that’s forming under the Rev. Kevin Johnson’s leadership.

            As a diverse, multicultural congregation, Westminster Church has some unique opportunities to practice living into Beloved Community and to embody God’s love and justice in and for the world.  

            We can’t wait.  In the words of our Presbyterian “Brief Statement of Faith,” the good news is that, “in a broken and fearful world, the Spirit gives us courage to pray without ceasing, to witness among all peoples to Christ as Lord and Savior, to unmask idolatries in Church and culture, to hear the voices of peoples long silenced, and to work with others for justice, freedom, and peace.…

            “With believers in every time and place, we can rejoice that nothing in life or in death can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.”[10]

            Praise be to God!

            Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Guest Preacher

Westminster Presbyterian Church, Detroit

August 25, 2019

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[1] Matthew L. Skinner, “Why We Can’t Wait,” from ON Scripture. http://day1.org/7456-on_scripture_why_we_cant_wait_luke_131017_by_matthew_l_skinner

[2] Deuteronomy 5:12-15

[3] https://twitter.com/NathanKalmoe/status/753250522476392448

[4] Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin: Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America. Brazos Press, 2016.

[5] https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html

[6] https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/8/20/20813842/1619-project-new-york-times-conservatives-slavery

[7] https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/8/25/1879981/-The-1619-Project-The-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly-racist-responses

[8] Debby Irving, Waking Up White.  Elephant Room Press, 2014. This book was commended to the Presbyterian Church (USA) by our previous Co-Moderators of the General Assembly.

[9] Robin DiAngelo, White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism. Beacon Press, 2018.  For a 20-minute introduction to DiAngelo’s work, you can watch the video of her work with a Methodist Church group:  http://www.gcorr.org/video/vital-conversations-racism-dr-robin-diangelo/

[10] Presbyterian Church (USA), “Brief Statement of Faith” (1990), in Presbyterian Book of Confessions.

"To Love as God Loves"

Genesis 45:3-11; Luke 6:27-38

            Writing at the Presbyterian Mission blog, Rebecca Lister writes about how her son recently finished the requirements for the Boy Scout’s highest honor, Eagle Scout. As part of his final project, he designed and built a Little Free Pantry and a Little Free Library. He and several other Boy Scouts, family members and volunteers helped install them under some shade trees in front of the church.  The pantry has been very successful, as it is often empty. They were thrilled to see that the community was using it.

            Rebecca was surprised to discover that not everyone in their community was as pleased about the Little Free Pantry as they were. She said she talked with several people, both inside and outside of their church, who question the concept of “free.”  “Isn’t that teaching people to be dependent on others for food?” asked one person. “Why shouldn’t they have to work for their food like everybody else?”

            Another person said, “I know I’ve seen people go in and take out food who can afford it. I saw one woman talking on her cellphone as she did it. If she can afford a phone, she can afford food.”

            Rebecca says that she’s always taken aback in conversations like these. She can certainly see their arguments. But deciding who is poor enough to be really poor—really needy—is dangerous business. Someone who looks well-dressed and carrying a cellphone may have just experienced a recent job loss. Perhaps they were impacted by the recent government shut-down or some other emergency. They may have some money, but knowing they can get a few cans of soup to heat up for their family for dinner may be what their weary spirits might need. It isn’t a permanent solution, ideally. And who knows? Maybe that same person who took something out of the pantry when they needed it in rough times will put something back in the pantry in good times.[1]

            As someone said, there will always be needy people and greedy people.  It isn’t our job to decide which is which. That is up to God. It’s our job to do what God asks us to do—and leave the judging to God.

            Jesus doesn’t say, “give to everyone who begs from you—after you find out that they are really poor and deserve it.”  He doesn’t say, “give to everyone who begs from you—but only a little, because they might become dependent.”  He doesn’t say, “give to everyone who begs from you—but only if they say ‘please’ and ‘thank you.’”

            The way the lectionary works, we rarely get to the Seventh Sunday after Epiphany, so we don’t hear this passage from Luke very often.  In this part of Jesus’ Sermon on the Plain, Jesus admonishes his hearers to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Be merciful. Don’t judge. Do good to those who hate you.  Offer the other cheek to the person who strikes you in the face. If someone takes something from you, don’t ask for them to return it.

            This text is familiar—but hard!  Some people manage to embody these demanding, seemingly impossible instructions. In the Genesis text we heard Joseph extending grace and mercy and forgiveness to the brothers who betrayed him and sold him away into slavery.

            We all know the Golden Rule embedded in this passage, but how often do we truly live by it?  It can take a lot of effort to control your anger when someone cuts you off in traffic… or fails to act in the way we think they should…or wrongs us in some way.  

            We may long for the unqualified forgiveness, reconciliation, and unearned compassion Joseph shows his brothers. And yet, we struggle with Jesus’ teachings.

            These verses have been manipulated and have left those who are already vulnerable and victimized even further abused. Some preachers over the ages counseled people to stay with abusive spouses using these verses as proof of God’s will to do so. We need to be clear:  Jesus never condones abuse, and he condemns injustice. Jesus insists his followers live by his standard of love and justice, even when dealing with their enemies.

            A lot of people talk about the “Golden Rule,” as if it’s a simple, easy way to live.  But it’s hard to break the cycle of retribution and violence. It’s hard to break a habit of counting the ways someone has wronged us. It’s counter-cultural to practice mutual respect and treat each person with dignity—even those we don’t think deserve it… or those who are our enemies… or those who have wronged us.

           

            Keeping score of wrongs, getting even—that’s what enemies do. Some may secretly hope or plan for bad things to happen to their enemies. Maybe we just avoid and ignore them.  This is how much of the world behaves toward enemies. We go to war with them. We rejoice in their failures and mourn their successes. We try to get people to side with us against the person we believe has wronged us.

Time after time, the Tutsis and then the Hutus were caught in a cycle of retribution and violence in Rwanda. In the last terrible outbreak of violence, loyalty to tribe even outweighed allegiance to religious vows for some clergy.

            In Jerusalem, sacred sites can separate rather than unite. In the land we call “Holy,” the body count grows, and the promise of peace seems impossible.

            In such a world as this, what do we make of the ethics of God’s kingdom—or “kindom”?  We know the words: “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who abuse you. Forgive.”

            These teachings are so often ignored. But we do catch glimpses of how Jesus’ teachings could provide a new way for us to live together: in the United States’ Marshall Plan’s assistance to former enemies following World War II… in the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa after the end of Apartheid…in the World Bank’s partial forgiveness of the debts of poor nations at the urging of church coalitions supporting a time of Jubilee.[2]

            Jesus asks, “What credit is it to you if you love someone who loves you, if you do good to someone who does good to you, if you lend to someone who will later lend something to you?” Jesus calls his disciples to stop keeping score, and to trust in the God who changed everything by settling the whole world’s old scores.

            When we gather to worship together, we confess our sins and ask for forgiveness, so we can live into the new life God offers us. But in our individual lives, in our families and in our congregation, there are sometimes unresolved grievances and rifts of long duration. Siblings who haven’t spoken to one another in years. People who hold on to their grievances and can’t seem to get beyond them, even when they cause great pain.

            Reconciliation is always hard to come by, but nothing is impossible for God. In Genesis, we hear that Joseph “keeps score no more.” He breaks from the past and invites his brothers to put the past behind them as well.

            Jesus set the example of active non-violence when he was struck on the face and tormented during his trial. He sets the principle: “Treat others as you would like them to treat you.”

            As followers of Christ, we are called into a new life in which we see things in a completely different way, a life in which we want to behave differently. We are called to look at each person through the eyes of love.

Jesus calls us to love as God loves: “Be compassionate as your Father is compassionate.”

            The good news is that it is God’s very nature to be merciful and loving, even toward those who don’t deserve it. And that includes us.

            Jesus doesn’t tell people to remain victims—but to find new ways of resisting evil. “Love your enemies. Do good to those who hate you.” This is the ethic that moved Martin Luther King, Jr. to kneel down with many brothers and sisters before water hoses and snarling police dogs.

            Many people thought he was crazy. “Only violence can fight violence,” they said. But the authorities and oppressors didn’t know what to do with this kind of resistance.  When people around the nation turned on their televisions and saw these acts of non-violent resistance, hearts were changed.  Victims were refusing to be victims. Victims were refusing to fight back with violence. Victims were standing up for justice.  This love is not practical—but it can change the world.

             Thanks be to God!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

February 24, 2019

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[1] Rebecca Lister, “The Needy and the Greedy: What makes us afraid to give freely to the needy?” https://www.presbyterianmission.org/today/2019/02/22/the-b-flat-christian-4/?fbclid=IwAR3JZUZoEj5ve9intx6v2xzEmSgHu6ActyVg76ESEzflKlSwBEh6AH3wku0

[2] Phyllis Kersten, in “Living by the Word” in The Christian Century. https://www.christiancentury.org/article//no-keeping-score

"Disturbingly Good News." A Sermon on Luke 4:21-30 from Littlefield Presbyterian Church.

Mount Precipice in Nazareth

"Disturbingly Good News"

Luke 4:21-30

Today’s Gospel lesson picks up where we left off last week. Jesus has gone back to Nazareth, his hometown.  The hometown boy who’s done well has come home to preach, and the synagogue is probably packed. Luke says Jesus’ fame has spread throughout the countryside. People love a winner, and they love a spectacle. This crowd knows Jesus, and he knows them.

Jesus is asked to read the scripture at the Sabbath service at the synagogue.  He stands up to read and is handed the scroll containing the Book of Isaiah.  He reads,

            “The Spirit of the LORD is upon me, because the LORD has anointed me to preach good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor…”

            When Jesus is done reading, he rolls up the scroll and sits down to preach, as was the custom. With the eyes of the crowd fixed on him, he says, “Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

            Today, the hopes in this passage are being realized in your hearing. Today Jesus has come to release and restore, to reach and redeem. Jesus takes this promise from the prophet Isaiah and brings it into what Cleo LaRue calls now-ness.

            As Cleo points out, “Sometimes it is dangerous to do things now. If Jesus said someday, tomorrow, after a while, by and by, or in the not-too-distant future, he could have pacified the people in their disappointment about where and to whom he has been sent to minister. But when he says today—this is my mission and my ministry—he draws a line in the sand and provokes a response.”[1]

            Martin Luther King Jr. knew the dangers inherent in doing things today. Dr. King wrote his “Letter from Birmingham Jail” after southern white moderate clergy criticized his nonviolent protests as “unwise and untimely.”

            “Change,” they told Dr. King, “must come slowly.” They urged him to stop the sit-ins and marches for a while and give things time to settle down. They saw negotiation with the white power structure as the more reasonable path and advised King to be more patient in his pursuit of civil rights for all Americans.

            Dr. King explained to his critics that he had never engaged in a direct-action movement that was “well-timed.” He refused to abide by a more cautious approach, saying that waiting is too much of a burden for oppressed people to continue to bear. “Justice delayed is justice denied.”  But there has always been something unsettling about those who choose to act today.

           Everything had started out so well at the synagogue. The people had been amazed and impressed at the gracious, prophetic words that came from Jesus’ mouth and spoke well of him.  But then things had turned ugly and murderous. 

            The problem, David Jacobsen suggests, is when the prophetic grace, that divine favor Jesus preaches about, meets up with privilege.[2] Jesus sees into people’s hearts, and seems to recognize in his hometown hearers how they will react even before they realize. They go from amazement to consternation quickly. When Jesus uses a proverb from about physicians and pairs it with another about the fate of prophets in their own hometowns, he knows his words of prophetic grace will meet with rejection.  They want to throw Jesus off a cliff!

           I think another thing that was unsettling to the people in the synagogue was that when Jesus makes his declaration about the nature of the gospel, the good news doesn’t protect privilege and power for the hometown people, the people like “us.”  Jesus was proclaiming that “the Lord’s favor” was extended toward everyone.   

            For people who have a certain amount of power or privilege, for those who are afraid that if there won’t be enough for them if those other people get what they need— this is unsettling.   

            Luke begins telling about Jesus’ ministry with the story of the sermon in Nazareth because--if we are going to hear the good news Jesus brings-- the way we hear good news has to change.  We can’t hear what Jesus has to say with ears attuned to “us” and “them.”  Luke wants us to understand that the gospel is good news for anyone who will receive it as good news of God’s mercy. 

            The good news is for everybody, Luke insists.  Luke begins his gospel with this conflict about “us” and “them,” but before his story is over at the end of the Acts of the Apostles, every kind of person he can think of will be brought into the embrace of the good news:  rich and poor…women and men…aristocrats and beggars…Romans and Jews, and people of every nationality under heaven.  Ethiopian eunuchs, for heaven’s sake!! 

There is no “them” in the gospel of Luke, only “us”—the family of God in Christ.  Luke underlines the point by telling us how Jesus said the most scandalous things, like “God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”[3]  Even “those people.”   Those other people.

           I think it was Fred Craddock who said we have trouble reading the gospel of Luke because “We are ‘either/or’ people in the hands of a ‘both/and’ God.” That makes a lot of people uncomfortable.  The way Luke tells it, some people get mad enough to murder Jesus.

            The movie “Ruby Bridges” is based on the true story of what happened to a six-year-old African-American child when the federal government ordered the New Orleans public schools to integrate in the 1960’s.  Ruby Bridges was one of several little girls who were picked to be the first African-Americans to attend the all-white public schools. 

            The scenes in which we see Ruby enter the school, protected by federal marshals, surrounded by a screaming crowd of protesters, are a powerful reminder of how violent and ugly people can be when their idea of how things are supposed to be is threatened. 

            Probably most of the people in that crowd went to church on Sundays.  They were parents who loved their children and thought they were doing what was best for them when they told them they shouldn’t play with African-American children.

            In one scene, set in the teacher’s lounge, a teacher said a quick grace as she prepared to eat lunch, before spewing racist comments to justify her opinion that persons of color didn’t belong in their school.

            It’s hard to deal with a Christ who confronts our settled ideas about things.  Jesus the Christ is surely the one who comforts and helps us.  But the Christ is also the one who challenges and upsets us and breaks down our dividing walls.

            We live in a broken world where we lock our doors and set our security systems, in a time when some will exaggerate and exploit our fears to turn us against other children of God. And yet those of us who are gathered here know that this is not God’s hope for us. We are invited and challenged to consider a different way to think of ourselves and our neighbors.

            “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.” This “today” signals that the age of God’s reign is here…that the time of God’s redeeming purposes has arrived, the “today” that Tom Long describes as “God’s good future hurtling toward us, bringing the finished work of God to an unfinished world.”[4]

We are here because God has invited us here, out of God’s amazing, gracious love.  We are invited to live into God’s beloved community, in which we are loved and forgiven and healed and commissioned and sent out to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. Favor for all the broken-hearted: us and them and everyone, until all the dividing walls of us and them are broken down and we are all beloved children of God together.

Amen!

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

February 3, 2019

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[1] Cleophus J. LaRue, in “Living By the Word,” in The Christian Century.

https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/february-3-epiphany-4c-luke-421-30

[2] David Schnasa Jacobsen, Commentary on Luke 4 at Working Preacher.   https://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3955

[3] Luke 6:35

[4] Thomas Long, quoted by Cleophus J. LaRue, in “Living by the Word.” https://www.christiancentury.org/article/living-word/february-3-epiphany-4c-luke-421-30

"An Epiphany of Abundance." A Sermon from Littlefield Presbyterian Church on John 2:1-11.

"An Epiphany of Abundance"

John 2:1-11

Jesus and his mother and his disciples are attending a wedding.  Anyone who’s ever officiated or planned a wedding can tell you that things can go wrong. 

            In those days a wedding was a great occasion, and most everybody in the village, plus some people from neighboring villages, would have been invited.   Weddings were hosted by the groom’s family, and the celebrations lasted for up to a week. 

            This celebration is in trouble, because on the third day, they’re running out of wine.  This is a crisis for the family responsible for hospitality. 

            David Lose explains why this was such a disaster: “Wine isn’t merely a social lubricant…it’s a sign of the harvest, of God’s abundance, of joy and gladness and hospitality.  And so, when they run short on wine they run short on blessing.  And that’s a tragedy.”[1]

            Jesus’ mother goes to him and identifies the problem.  But Jesus says, “That’s really not our concern.  And my hour has not come.”  In the theology of John’s Gospel, “the hour” is the hour when Jesus goes to the cross. 

            His mother tells the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

            There were six stone water-jars there, ready to be used in the Jewish purification rituals.  Each held about twenty or thirty gallons.   “Fill the jars with water,” Jesus says to the servants, and they do.   “Now draw some out,” he says, “and take it to the chief steward.” 

            When the chief steward tasted the water that had turned into wine, he didn’t know where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew.   He called the bridegroom and said, “Normally people serve the good wine first, and then the cheap stuff when people have already had plenty to drink.  But you’ve kept the really good wine for now.”

            John tells us that Jesus did this as the first of his “signs” and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.  The miracles Jesus performs in the Fourth Gospel are never called miracles—but “signs.”  These “signs” are about revealing a deeper reality about Jesus.

In the first verses of his gospel—the prologue, which we heard on Christmas Eve--John identifies the major themes of his message.  We hear that the Word became flesh and lived among us, full of grace and truth…. From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. Turning water into wine is revealing abundant grace. And what does abundant grace taste like? Like the really good wine, when you were expecting the cheap stuff.            

            No matter how hard we may try to “spiritualize” today’s gospel lesson, we have 150 gallons of really good wine at a wedding party that had been experiencing scarcity. 

            Today’s gospel text is about the very nature of God… and about the very purpose of being human.  The nature of God is pure grace-- abundant… surprising grace.  Grace overflowing to the brim, in times and places we least expect it.

            Karoline Lewis has suggested that we have so modified and codified abundance that it’s hard to recognize it anymore.  Some have monopolized abundance…hoarded it…thinking that it is theirs to control, theirs to possess, and theirs to take away. “Theirs to keep for themselves, because those without it? Well, clearly they have not merited God’s attention, earned God’s graces.”[1]

            The gospels teach us that abundance is never about you or me and Jesus alone, as much as we might want it to be—but about bringing us into life—true life, abundant life, for all. In God’s life of abundance, abundance is not ours to grasp individually, but in beloved community, in the world God so loves.

            We need to pay attention to the details in this story.  The water-jars were there to be used for Jewish purification rituals--   When Jesus turned the water into wine, it was a sign that God was doing a new thing.

            And I wonder:  What if Jesus had stuck with his original feeling?  It is not my problem, it is not my time.  What if all of his life Jesus had said, "That’s not my problem and it is not my time"?

            That’s unimaginable, isn’t it?

            Closer to our own time, in the mid 1950s, Martin Luther King wrapped up his course work for his Ph.D. and took his first call to a church.  His dissertation wasn’t done yet when Martin Luther King left graduate school and took a job as a pastor of a church in Montgomery, Alabama. 

            Not long after he went to Montgomery, Rosa Parks refused to go to the back of the bus.  A meeting was held in the African-American community in Montgomery, and they asked who was going to lead the boycott.  

            All the other pastors and all the other influential leaders of the African-American community were smart enough to know that this looked like a risky business.  They decided to get the new pastor in town to lead the boycott.  

            Rev. Martin Luther King had every reason in the world to say, "It is not the right time for me. I have a young family.  I have a dissertation to finish writing.  I have a congregation that doesn’t know me or trust me yet.   If I start out at the head of this enterprise, what will that do to my relationship to my congregation?  It just isn’t a good time.   I have all these reasons why.  This isn’t the time for me to do something like this.” 

            But, as we all know, this very human being was moved from “not my time” -- to yes.

            More than 60 years have passed since the Montgomery bus boycott.   Fifty-six years have passed since the March on Washington when Dr. King gave his “I have a dream” speech. More than 50 years have passed since he wrote his last book before he was assassinated: “Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?”

            Have we made progress since that time?  Undoubtedly.  But we need to be honest with ourselves about where we the people of the United States are   and about our history.

            Later in the Gospel of John, we hear Jesus saying, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”[3]

            I believe the gospel has the power to set us free-- as individuals, as a community, as a society-- if we have ears to hear the good news… if we have faith to trust in God’s power to transform us and bind us together in Beloved Community… if we trust in the gospel’s truth to make us free.

            Some of the stories we heard during Advent remind us that sometimes people have a failure of imagination, like Zechariah, when the angel Gabriel told him Elizabeth was going to have a baby: “How can this be?”

            In our time and place, God calls us to be the people who come to know God, to experience the grace and abundance of Jesus Christ, to embody that love and live together in Beloved Community with all of God’s children.  

            Whenever we’re afraid we won’t have enough—enough money or power or privilege or security-- whenever we think the party’s over because things are changing, God will keep doing new things and surprising us with new wine that is sweeter and tastier than ever before… and give us dreams and visions to help us live more fully into the life of abundance and grace into which God calls us.  Can we imagine it?   Is anything impossible for God?      

            In a world threatened by ethnic, racial, and religious conflict, the consequences of trying to defend the status quo or to keep most of the money and resources and power in the hands of a a few…  or of wallowing in the valley of despair and fear and negativity are enormous. But the rewards of inclusive justice and healing are too important not to try.           

            The prophets and the gospel call us to dream, to imagine an alternative reality of Beloved Community for all God’s people.  They challenge us to embody it in our daily lives, trusting that God will provide abundant new wine and better things than we ever tasted or seen or imagined   and a life overflowing with joy and blessing in God’s presence.

            Thanks be to God! 

Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor

Littlefield Presbyterian Church

Dearborn, Michigan

January 20, 2019

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[1] David Lose, “Epiphany 2B: What Grace Looks Like!” http://www.davidlose.net/2016/01/epiphany-2-b-what-grace-looks-like/ 

[2] Wright, John for Everyone, Chapters 1-10 (Westminster John Knox Press, 2002), Kindle Edition, Loc 472.

[3] John 8:32

[4] Jim Wallis, America’s Original Sin:  Racism, White Privilege, and the Bridge to a New America.  (Brazos Press, 2016), Kindle Edition, Location 388.

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[1] Karoline Lewis, at Working Preacher. https://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?m=4377&post=5276