Second Sunday after Epiphany

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.”

 I am sure that by now I am beginning to sound like a stuck record and when I start to say certain things in my sermons on Sunday your internal eyes roll and you think, ‘here we go again,’ and you start running through the grocery list or your afternoon plans.

But the things I tell you, the things I bang on about from up here, I tell you because they have impacted me and my relationship with God and I want them to transform you, too. And today I start by saying, as I often do, that the scriptures being read each Sunday here in church in this ordered and pre-determined way, a system call the lectionary, is meant to be instructive.

We don’t hear it just to hear it, we hear it to learn something, we read these small selections of the scriptures together, chosen with prayer and carefulness by our spiritual forebears, so that our minds and our hearts may be open to what God is doing in salvation and in our lives now. And then we sit and hear the beautifully written, erudite, engaging and heart-stirring sermons you have become used to during my time as Rector (ha ha)…but in truth, God willing, the preacher opens the scriptures for us and aids in our understanding.

This is all to say that each week our readings are meant to teach us something, they work together – Epistle, Psalm, Gospel, Old Testament reading – to draw us into contemplation on the life and the work of God in history and in the present, always offering us a view to the deep past, a piece of Jesus’ life and ministry, and a lesson or, more often, a letter from someone like Paul, a person who had a completely transformative encounter with Christ.

These readings aren’t all the scriptures, but what we hear is instructive of the faith that we hold – what it means to believe and what it means to follow and serve Christ in soul and in body.

And they work seasonally too, in our way of marking the year. As I’ve been saying, we’re now in the midst of the Epiphany season, a time of the church year that is all about revelation, unveiling, about learning the identity of that child born in Bethlehem and through him, our own identity.

Today we hear in the Gospel of John about the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, which started at a wedding in Cana of Galilee where, as often happens at really fun parties, they run out of wine. Jesus’ response, as we heard, was to turn water into wine so that the party could keep going, but not just any wine, not plastic-bag-in-cardboard-box wine, but really, really good wine, like the stuff in the aisle of liquor store where I can’t afford to walk.

And taken at face value this is a strange passage and an even stranger miracle. Of all the miraculous things that Jesus does during his life, of all the ways that the son of God could have begun his earthly ministry, this seems like it might be the least impressive. Why not begin with a bang – raise someone from the dead, restore a limb, cast out a demon or two, restore sight to the blind?

Well, we must remember that miracles are miracles, but they’re also signs that point to something else. Miracles are always pointing us beyond the miracle itself - the thing we see outwardly - and to the deeper spiritual reality that is at work, the hidden things that God is up to behind the act – inwardly - and what they mean for us. For one, we should note that Jesus begins his ministry amongst us at a wedding – a joyous event in which two become one flesh, when two souls are joined together through a great and spiritual mystery. Yes, this is a wedding, but it’s also a sign of the mystical union between our souls and God, made possible through Jesus. This union is his ministry to us, it is through this union that he works in our lives.

And that work in our lives, and our work in his life is meant to be – as a wedding is – a joy and a delight. When they tasted that water-turned-wine they were delighted, the image and dignity of the host was restored and even improved because he appeared to be serving the best wine at the end (which we all know you don’t do); Jesus does not begin with rebuke or chastisement but his miracle is done simply to increase joy and delight, because that is what all of our life in and service of God ought to be – a joy and a delight.

This is why our Epistle for today, from Paul’s letter to the Romans, begins with and is all about gifts – our gifts, our God-given gifts. God has chosen each of us to possess a particular gift, a particular and special way of serving God and the church. Your gift may not be my gift nor mine yours, but we each have one and they often go sorely underutilized. Paul lists the traditional seven spiritual gifts under which we can categorize all kinds of giftings, and even in the hearing of the reading we might hear ourselves.

Some of us might have a gift of teaching, but we may not have a gift of leading; of compassion but not giving. But this is the wonderful thing about the Christian communities into which we are called and which we are a part of here in this parish – that God has given your neighbour that gift which you don’t have, and so you may benefit from and rely on them, so that they can find joy in sharing their gift with you, as they can benefit from your gift and rely on you, increasing your joy and your delight in sharing yours with them.

We hear this reading in concert with our Gospel reading to learn that if we want joy and delight in God, if we want a life rich in blessing, a life transformed by the presence of Christ in us and us in Christ – we can find all this through self-sacrificial serving of God and neighbour with our gifts.

You probably are sitting there thinking to yourself that you’re one of the only people without a gift, that the people who read, or pray out loud or pray with another person, or sit on council, or sing in the choir, or serve at a community breakfast are gifted…but not you. But today tells us– this whole epiphany season, a time of understanding our identity in Christ tells us – that this simply is not true. Perhaps you just haven’t discovered it yet.

And no – it’s not coincidental that I am preaching about this as we near our annual meetings, this is something I’ll talk of more and more this year as we seek new ways to grow and to deepen our understanding of our own gifts and vocations and how they can be used here. Imagine what things may look like if each of us was granted the knowledge, or the courage, or the humility to begin to serve God in this parish with our gifts, imagine what would be possible if we all put ourselves out on such a limb in trust…if God can make wine from water, imagine what can be done with you and me?

We come here to this place week after week as if we’re going to a well that keeps us watered and fed and able to continue exercising those gifts or to bring us deeper into the relationship that will help us to know our blessedness and our giftedness, and the ways that God wants to use you, in particular, for His church and for His beloved ones.

We come here, week after week, to the banquet table (like the wedding) to feast on heavenly food, to receive Him who is the deepest well of happiness, love, and joy – to receive him in the hearing of the Word, to receive Him in prayer, to receive him in forgiveness, and to receive him in the bread and the wine, his body and his blood.

“Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory.”