John 2:1-11
When I was a child, my elementary school held a pumpkin decorating competition every Halloween, and I wanted to win so much. Competition was stiff, though. Every year you would see parents carrying in elaborate creations that took your breath away – and you knew who made that creation. It wasn’t the kid. Still, I kept trying.
One year I decided I would decorate my pumpkin like a spider. So I began working on it, black spray paint, wire hangers for legs. My mother watched and offered some suggestions, but I did all the hands-on work. And I won.
Well, I was elated. I could not stop talking about it for the rest of the day, about how I did this, all by myself, and I won. It was all “I, I, I.” And then my father took me aside. He reminded me that my mother had been a part of it too. She had offered me suggestions that led to the best features of my spider pumpkin. Without those ideas, I would not have won. And I knew this was true.
When I look back on this I realize my mother gave me a particular gift. She helped me do it better, but she let me do it myself. And she never asked for credit, she only celebrated my triumph. And the gift my father gave me was to open my eyes and see this.
I am thinking about the ways we give and receive things. And even whether we are aware of what we have given or received.
When we give something to someone, we have a choice as to how we look at it. We can view it as a transaction – an exchange of some kind. When I come to your birthday party, I bring a gift as the price of admission. It pays for the cake I eat and the decorations I enjoy. So I will make sure I eat my fair share of cake.
But another way to see such an action is as a gift, plain and simple. A gift asks for nothing in exchange; it is given freely. I assume that most of you, when you go to a birthday party, or a wedding reception, do not view it as a transactional event. It’s about gift. The host provides the celebration – food, drink, music – and the guests come bearing gifts. It may or may not equal out in the end. It doesn’t matter.
When Jesus attended the wedding in Cana with his disciples and his mother, I have no idea if he brought a gift with him. But as it happened, he gave the bride and groom a gift worth much more than everything they spent on the entire wedding celebration.
Weddings in Galilee were different in many ways from the weddings we might attend. We often say that American weddings are quite extravagant, but they’ve got nothing on the weddings of ancient Israel.
Back then, it would begin with a betrothal which lasted at least a year. Then the wedding would begin. The groom, wearing dazzling clothes, perhaps with a crown on his head, would set out with his friends in a procession to fetch his bride from her father’s house. She, also, would be fabulously dressed, and lifted up into a sedan chair to be carried back to the groom’s house. The procession of bridesmaids and groomsmen would sing songs all along the way. They would be met by the groom’s parents, who would say a blessing for the couple, and then the festivities would begin – party all night long. That’s day one.
The next day would be the wedding feast. A day of more celebrations – singing, dancing, gift giving for the bride. Then in the evening, the bride and groom would come together. Traditional words would be exchanged, followed by more blessings, more rituals, more celebrations. That’s day two.
The celebrations would continue for several more days. Eating, drinking, dancing, blessing.
Wine was, of course, a very important part of it. Wine was essential to the ritual of blessing. To the feasting, to the general celebration. So, imagine how much wine you could go through in a week of celebration.
I have no idea how many days they were into it when the wine ran out, but it seems apparent that the celebration expected to go on for some time still. And so they would need more wine – wine for celebrating, wine for feasting, wine for blessing.
Mary, the mother of Jesus, was the kind of person who could look at a problem and see a solution. She didn’t fret, she didn’t wring her hands, she didn’t panic. She turned to her son, Jesus, and simply said, “They have no wine.” That’s all she needed to say. He understood what she was asking, just as she understood what he could give.
He responded to her, “My hour has not yet come,” the meaning of which is a little confusing. But most likely he meant the hour of his death. And therefore, it is celebration time. And so he provided the wine. Something like 900 bottles of wine. Only here is an interesting thing: No one, except the servants, knew that the wine was from Jesus.
He made the host look really good, as everyone exclaimed over the high quality of this wine. He made the celebration go on and on for a good while longer, offering opportunities for many more blessings, much more thanksgiving. But he was not given, nor did he ask for, credit. It was a gift.
There is something called a gift economy, which is simply a system where gifts are given with no expectation of receiving payment or any kind of reciprocity. The gift is given for the sake of giving. We see it most often among family members, because – of course you do. I saw a movie trailer recently where a father confronts his adult daughter with an itemized list of everything she has cost him from infancy on, including diapers and baby bottles. Most people understand this is not done.
We see the gift economy among friends sometimes, too. When you buy your friend a latte or pay for a golf round, just because you want to. Maybe you like it if the friend reciprocates. But that’s not the reason you did it.
Giving to charity is almost always an example of the gift economy. You will get from it a feeling of having contributed to the welfare of the community or the world. But that’s all.
And participating in the gift economy is what we are doing when we give to the church. It is something we want to do. It is something important to us. It is something that makes us feel more complete, for I know I would not be fully who I am if I did not give to the church.
When Jesus sent his disciples out into the world he told them, “freely you have received, now freely give.” He invited them to participate in the economy of gifting, as he invites us to do as well. Just as he lived his life, giving freely as needed, so he asks us to do.
But as simple as that sounds, we find it to be difficult. Giving freely can be frightening.
We are afraid that our gift will be misused or abused. We are afraid that we will be taken advantage of. Mostly, I think, we are afraid that we will run out – that we will not have enough for ourselves.
In the story of the wedding at Cana, we usually focus on the miracle, or sign as John calls it. We rarely wonder why the wedding hosts ran out of wine. Did they plan poorly, or were they stingy? Were they poor of resources and unable to buy as much wine as they would need? Whatever the cause was, it did not stop them from a joyous and abundant celebration. They feasted freely, they blessed freely, they celebrated freely, they did not hold back.
And when the wine ran out, Jesus was there with his gift. Perhaps they trusted just as freely as they did everything else.
Trusting in God’s provision is not a very easy thing for humans to do, yet it is what our faith asks of us. Because we cannot live as authentic loving community without such trust.
Authentic community is something that seems harder and harder to find in our times. We draw in on ourselves, spending more time alone, pulling back from commitments, trusting one another less. For most of us, it is a loss that we truly grieve. A community where we know others deeply, belong completely, give and receive freely – this is something we treasure in our hearts, even if we don’t believe we can ever really have it.
The good news is this: this kind of community is available. This is what Jesus offers. This is what he asks us to come together and make – for ourselves and for others.
This is what we hope for. And this is what we may have together, in Jesus.
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