UCC Church of Charlotte

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Sermon for January 17, 2009
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From:
Phil Hobson 
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To:
Phil Hobson 


Drawing Out the Water
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Grace and Peace to you this morning.  Grace and Peace.
    
Last week we used part of the reading from Paul’s letter in the
commissioning of our mission team going to New Orleans.  Many gifts,
but one giver.  Many ways of service, but one Lord.  Many activities,
but the same God activates them.  To each is given manifestation of
the Spirit, for the common good.
We can approach this from either side.

What are your gifts?  What are your ways of serving God by serving
your neighbor?  What are your activities on behalf of the kingdom?
What is your manifestation of the Spirit, and how are you using it for
the common good?
    
From the other side, the focus is not on us, but on the giver.  From
this angle, the focus is not the variety of gifts or their various
uses, but whence they come: God gives them.  And God gives the gifts
God sees us needing, which may or may not match with our own ideas on
the matter.  To each is allotted a gift of the Spirit, not as we sign
up for or ask for, but as the Spirit chooses.
    
In college, I had aspirations of being an ambassador to Japan.  I
studied to understand the language, the history, the culture, the
religion, the people of Japan.  I do not have the gift of
understanding foreign languages.  It does not come easily to me.  I
love foreign languages.  I admire those who can rattle off sentences
in various tongues.  My love of stories, my ability to remember
strange and goofy details of things, my enjoyment of language helped
with my studies of Japanese.

I did get glimpses into what gifts I have by trying to use them in a
field to which I was not really called.
    
Trying to learn a different culture, a different language, a different
way of seeing the world has helped me greatly in reading the Bible.
Needing to listen more carefully than those for whom languages come
easily has probably helped me to listen in English as well.
    
There is something both comforting and infuriating in God being
sovereign, free to do as God will, rather than doing whatever we want
God to do.  God gives as God sees fit, not as we would necessarily
prefer.
    
Water turning to wine at the wedding reception in Cana can be seen
both ways as well.  Often called the first of Jesus’ miracles, here we
have a party that has run out of “the good stuff.”  And so Jesus tells
them to fill the jars with water, jars used for rites of purification
(there are hints of baptism here), and when they draw out the water,
it is wine.  Here we see the abundance of God, the miracle of food and
drink (emphasis on drink in this story), the sweetness and potency
that faith can give life.  We get it.
    
But from the other side, there is this very familiar family moment.

    “Son, they are out of wine.  Could you fix it?”
    “Mo-om!  It isn’t my time yet.”
    “You guys just do whatever he tells you to do.”
    
Like many families, Mary has figured out which buttons to push to get
Jesus to do a little wine-making.
    
But aside from the family moment here, Jesus’ complaint should give us
pause.  It isn’t time.
    
Recently, Mary and I went to see a comedian perform.  When he came out
for his encore at the end of the show, somebody started yelling out a
famous bit that he has done before.  And the person yelling for their
favorite bit of comedy from this guy wouldn’t stop.  Like the woman
who petitions the judge in Jesus’ parable, the man wouldn’t stop.  The
comedian thanked the yeller, and tried to move on to his next bit.
Then he thanked him again, and tried to move on.  Finally he said,
“Shut up!  I am not a jukebox!”
    
You don’t put your money in, press a button and get to hear your selection.
    
So too with the power of God.  God is sovereign.  God is not confined
to dance when we call the tune, nor is God going to sing the song we
choose by putting in our money and pressing our selection.
    
On the other hand, we too are free to choose, for our good or our ill.
    
And when we live up to the covenant, God calls us into praise and
thanksgiving, festival and celebration.  And when we do not live up to
the covenant, God sends prophets to remind us what is first and
primary and most important.  Prophets like Isaiah, like Jeremiah, like
Martin Luther King, Jr.  And we are free to listen and hear, or to
stay busy with the world on the world’s terms.  And our choices have
consequences.  Or as one colleague puts it, believing in God is one
thing.  Believing God is another, and so much tougher.  Will we live
in covenant with one another and our world of neighbors, or are we
headed back into Pharaoh’s brickyard?
    
The wedding at Cana shows us both sides of the power of God.
    
God’s abundance, the sweetness and potency that faith can give life,
the power of the unexpected fullness of life lived in covenant on the
one hand.
    
On the other, God’s power is not something we are given the use of
like a cell phone, a car, or a jukebox.  God is not a pet who comes
when we call, or a spiritual ATM from which we can withdraw providing
we have the right PIN number.  To treat God so is to take God’s name
in vain, and substitute our will for God’s.  Neither one has proved to
be a good idea.
    
The miracle of life, the sweetness of faith, is that the One who
created the universe, who called the worlds into being, who comes at
last to judge the quick and the dead, who can set the hook and pull
Leviathan from the water, who set the moon and stars in their courses,
knows us each by name, and invites us to not be jukeboxes either, that
One calls us into fullness of relationship with God and with one
another.
    
We are invited into relationship with the author of all relationships,
into creative partnering with the Creator, into service with the one
who served all of humanity, into community by the one who gives the
covenant of right community, and into the freedom of new life by the
One who brings resurrection.
    
There is no sweeter wine than this, no better life than this.
    
Thanks be to God.
Amen.