Genesis 1:1-5 ; 2:1-3; John 2:1-11
January 17, 2010
I’m the youngest of three children. And you can imagine that my parents were thrilled when my brother got old enough to baby sit me and my sister. It was easier, cheaper and they probably thought they were teaching my brother how to handle responsibility.
I’m sure you’ve heard the refrain yourself – when parents leave children with baby sitters. “Listen up girls: Jeff’s in charge. Do whatever he tells you.” Now, I’m sorry, but could they not foresee the problems this was going to cause me and my sister??? They may have been trying to teach my brother how to handle responsibility – but I’m here to tell you, he was not a quick study. “Do whatever he tells you.” These were not words I longed to hear as a child.
The truth is we adults don’t really like to be told to do whatever someone tells us to do either. Our instinct – our automatic response – is, “I’ll decide what I’ll do, thank you very much.” And I would be concerned if it were otherwise. Thinking for ourselves, saying “no” when asked to do something we shouldn’t, being responsible for our own lives – these are good things.
But, what do we do with Mary? She says “do whatever he tells you,” and she’s not talking about my brother. This is Jesus she was talking about. Our fist instinct might be “hey – don’t tell me what to do.” But we need to move beyond that instinct when we’re talking about Jesus. After all, he’s kind of the point, isn’t he? We come here to hear what God says to us – through the bible, through music and ritual, and of course, through the life, actions and words of Jesus. When Jesus tells us to do something, most of us think it’s a good idea to do it. But even if we can get past our instinctive response, even if we’re on board, signed up, ready to do whatever Jesus tells us, just what is he telling us to do? We may want to listen to Mary, to do whatever he tells us to, but most of us don’t have 6 stone jars, and we’re not at a wedding where people need wine.
It’s easy to get a little distracted when reading this passage from the gospel of John. I think that’s especially true right now – these days when you pick up the Des Moines Register and more often than not marriage is the subject of at least one article. It’s easy to hear this story of the wedding of Cana and to think it’s about what constitutes marriage. But it’s not. At least not in the man, woman, pastor and wedding party sense. To read it that way is to get distracted.
It’s also easy to get distracted by the miracle – changing water into wine. Some people get distracted because they believe the miracle actually happened and others get distracted because they can’t believe the miracle happened. For those who can’t believe it, it ruins the whole story for them and throws the credibility of the bible and the story of Jesus into question. For those who believe it and insist others do too, they tie belief in miracles to belief in Jesus, missing John’s point altogether.
John himself warns against making the miracle the point of the story. John writes at the end of the second chapter, “Many believed in Jesus’ name because they saw the miracles he was doing. But Jesus did not trust them, because he knew all people.” John knew that belief in Jesus because he performed miracles was thin belief at best. He didn’t trust this kind of conversion because he knew it was based on magic, not substance. So whether we believe in it or not, to focus on the miracle here is to allow ourselves to be distracted from the meat of the message.
We need to not get distracted – not by marriage, not by miracles, and certainly not by some debate over whether Jesus was a tee-totaler or divine bar tender. It’s not about these things. The meat of this passage is found in Mary’s words, “do whatever he tells you.” And the message is that if we do, life will pour forth. Wild, exuberant, joyous life. The kind of life that comes from being freed from oppression, scarcity, fear, loneliness, despair. This passage is not about a wedding – it’s about all of creation. The wedding, the joyous occasion, is the glimpse of what is possible for the world if we do what Jesus tells us to.
The wedding at Cana is the end of John’s creation story. Remember that John, from the start of his gospel, is retelling the creation story of Genesis. “In the beginning,” Genesis starts, “when God created the heavens and earth.” “In the beginning,” John writes, “was the Word and the Word was with God.” Jesus is the Word in this gospel. Instead of a birth story of the baby Jesus, for John the good news of Jesus prompts a retelling of the birth of the entire creation. “All things came into being through him,” he writes.
But in Genesis, there is one more step after all is created. Most of us are in the habit of saying, “God created the world in six days and on the seventh day, God rested.” I don’t think that’s how we should look at it though. That metaphorical, symbolic seventh day was a much a part of creation as the six that went before it. “And on the seventh day God finished the work that was done and rested. So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it.” God finished on the seventh, not the sixth day. The seventh day is when Sabbath was made an integral part of creation – built into the fabric of everything that is. Without the rest – without the Sabbath – creation doesn’t work…it’s not done…it’s doomed. God didn’t rest because God needed a nap – God created the Sabbath because the Sabbath is necessary for creation to remain good – blessed and hallowed.
The story of the wedding at Cana is the seventh day for John. This is Jesus’ first public appearance in this gospel, and the crowds are there. Things begin to run out; depletion and dryness begin to take hold and Mary realizes it’s time for a breath of fresh air – for newness and life. When the world takes a breath and fresh air is allowed in, those things that are stale and overworked, those people who are tired and joyless, get a new life.
Sabbath and rest and renewal are not just nice, spiritual, feel-good concepts. They are necessary for the very health of creation. They’re necessary for the fullness of human life. They are necessary for justice. Sabbath is always about justice in the bible. It is tied to the concept of Jubilee. The idea is that with habitual regularity, everything must stop so that those who are being forgotten can be seen. Those who are worked to the bone can come up for air, and those who have been crushed by the weight of the weary world can find relief. Work stopped not just so the wealthy land owners could take time to be with family, but also so those who slaved away on the land weren’t, for a while anyway, forced to work. In the jubilee, everything came to a halt – debts were forgiven, lands were redistributed, balance and equality that had been eroded over the years was restored.
God truly wants Sabbath – everyone needs to rest…but if we’re honest with ourselves, we know some people need it more than others. We know some people don’t have the luxury of choosing to rest – they have to be given rest. What Jesus tells the servants to do is to disrupt the old, weary, tired ways of the world and bring in new life to give rest to others.
This passage, the wedding at Cana, is far more applicable to Haiti today than to gay marriage or debates about science and miracles. Now, at first it might seem obscene to say that a passage that appears to be about a party might actually have something to say about Haiti in the wake of the earthquake. But as we know, our faith and our stories are never trivial. They are always about speaking hope and acting in love to those who need it most. What is obscene is to read this passage five days after the earthquake in Haiti and then say it is about a party that Jesus threw. It’s obscene in the face of the ongoing disaster that is Haiti to say that Sabbath is about taking a day off and resting in front of the TV. Our faith is not that trivial. And thank God. Because there is something to be said and done in the face of such horror and injustice.
Tracy Kidder is the author of a book called, “Mountains Beyond Mountains,” which is the story of Dr. Paul Farmer who founded the organization Partners In Health. Partners in Health works to bring modern medical care to poor communities in nine countries around the world, and it all started in Haiti. The day of the earthquake, Kidder wrote an op ed piece for the New York Times:
“while earthquakes are acts of nature, extreme vulnerability to earthquakes is manmade,” he writes. “And the history of Haiti’s vulnerability to natural disasters — to floods and famine and disease as well as to this terrible earthquake — is long and complex, but the essence of it seems clear enough.
Haiti is a country created by former slaves, kidnapped West Africans, who, in 1804, when slavery still flourished in the United States and the Caribbean, threw off their cruel French masters and created their own republic. Haitians have been punished ever since for claiming their freedom: by the French who, in the 1820s, demanded and received payment from the Haitians for the slave colony, impoverishing the country for years to come; by an often brutal American occupation from 1915 to 1934; by indigenous misrule that the American government aided and abetted. (In more recent years American administrations fell into a pattern of promoting and then undermining Haitian constitutional democracy.)”
Natural disasters happen – and they don’t discriminate between the good and the bad, the rich and the poor. Floods in New Orleans, Cedar Rapids. Earthquakes in San Francisco and Haiti. Tornados in Parkersburg, tsunamis in Indonesia.. But what we are painfully reminded of this week is that the vast majority of the people of Haiti don’t get Sabbath – ever. Not all people are affected by natural disasters the same because not all people come into them equally. As nature has betrayed that country this week, we are reminded that we have betrayed them over and over by violating the demand of creation for Sabbath. We have violated the command of Jesus to pour out the good stuff on countries like Haiti.
What does Jesus tell us to do? Lavish people with all that we have that they might have joy and peace.
But, not all aid organizations are equal either. We know there is a huge outpouring of generosity right now, but there is also a huge problem with aid getting where it needs to go. I’m sure like you, I have been trying to figure that out. Each of us needs to decide not only how much to give, but also where to give. For what it’s worth, here’s what I have decided, knowing the situation is pretty challenging right now.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is an incredibly solid, tried, true and reliable organization. They will be in Haiti for a long time to come, helping them not just in the immediate aftermath, but in the years it will take to recover from this disaster. But, they like so many international organizations right now are pretty stymied by the collapsed infrastructure and lack of people on the ground.
At the moment, the people that need resources – in the form of money – are the organizations that have been there already, working for the welfare of Haiti’s people for years. The organization I mentioned before, Partners in Health, is one such group, and right now they have the largest operating hospital in Haiti, untouched by the earthquake. And prior to the earthquake it was arguably the highest quality hospital in all of Haiti. This hospital is in Cange, which is outside Port Au Prince. Even though it’s a bit of a trek, they are already seeing a steady stream of patients coming from the disaster area, and every building on the campus has been converted into hospital rooms. Partners in Health employees are almost exclusively Haitian – 100 doctors and 600 nurses. They have deployed doctors and nurses to set up field hospitals in Port Au Prince. And many of these doctors and nurses have family in Port Au Prince, and are setting up hospital centers in family homes that were not damaged or destroyed by the quake.
All of that is to say that I am giving to both Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, and Partners in Health. I am giving what I can to Partners in Health in these very first days and weeks, and will be giving to PDA as the weeks go on for a longer term, sustained effort at disaster recovery. You can do the same or you may have a better idea of what makes the most sense. If you want to give to either of these organizations, just make out a check to First Pres and put the name of the organization in the memo line. We will get it where it needs to go. There is donation information for these two organizations on the bulletin board in fellowship hall, info on PDA in the bulletin insert and both can be accessed from our own church website’s home page.
There is no better time for a wedding party – a feast where those who are running out are given the good stuff. Let’s do what Jesus tells us – let’s take what we have – even if it seems ordinary and unimpressive, and give it to the people. When we do, we will see it changed into something that will bring life and hope to others. It’s a wonderful message for Haiti today. It’s a wonderful message for any time and place that there are people in desperate need of Sabbath. Amen.
