When Kim turned 50 years old, I threw him a surprise birthday party. I invited all our friends and family; it was a great celebration. And we ran out of beer.
I didn’t panic, though. Because in Pennsylvania you just call up your local beer distributor and they will deliver a case right to your door. So I did. And my brother-in-law happened to answer the door when it arrived, and he paid for it. Which was a nice bonus. So everything turned out well.
I know how important these things are. I learned at my mother’s side that the very worst thing that can happen to a host is to run out of something a guest might want. It is the stuff nightmares are made of.
Still, I know that there are plenty worse things that can happen in life. Running out of your beverage of choice? That is an inconvenience. An embarrassment. It might mean your guests leave early. But it’s not life or death, is it?
This is a funny little miracle story that John offers us – or, if we use John’s word, we would call this a sign rather than a miracle. John wants us to see these events as moments which point us toward Jesus’ identity; they are signs of who he is. But this is a funny one, and perhaps the other evangelists also thought so, because not Matthew, Mark, nor Luke makes any mention of it.
I say it is funny because it just doesn’t seem to fit in. It’s like that game on Sesame Street, “One of these things is not like the others.” Which one? It’s this one – the time Jesus turned water into wine.
Somehow, it just doesn’t feel necessary in the same way healing leprosy or casting out demons feels necessary.
This is a wedding. Jesus is here with his mother and his disciples. They were all there joining in the celebration with who knows how many other people, feasting and drinking and dancing – doing the things we do at weddings.
And Jesus was not expecting this to be a working day for him.
But Mary, who probably had plenty of experience hosting guests in her home, was quick to spy that the wine was running out. She didn’t make a big deal about it, but she didn’t ignore it either. She went straight to her son and said, “They have no wine.”
That is all she said. It makes me wonder what their relationship was like. Jesus was a grown man, but of course, no matter how old you get, your mother is still your mother, right? I don’t question her authority, but I just wonder what she thought he would do.
I don’t think she was expecting him to run out to the liquor store and get more wine. I imagine Mary was expecting Jesus to do something that no one else could do. Did Mary somehow know this would be his moment?
Perhaps she did know, but it doesn’t appear that Jesus did. His response to Mary was to say, “My hour has not yet come.” He did not think this was the time and place for his first sign. This was not the hour for him to come out as the Messiah. Yet Mary simply says to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” And, maybe, she gave Jesus a look. I don’t know; it’s not in the text. In any case, as far as she is concerned, it’s a done deal.
And apparently, as far as Jesus is concerned, that’s enough for him. So, he gets out there and he performs his very first sign, turning water into wine.
Maybe it felt a little funny to him, too, that his very first sign should be something like this. Maybe, as a young man dreaming about how he would make his debut to the world, he imagined something more dramatic than this. But here he was. At a small-town wedding. Replenishing the wine.
And nobody even knew it was him.
His hour had not yet come, he thought. But then, it turned out, his hour had come, and this was it.
It seems one of those moments when it’s worth remembering Jesus’ humanity. The fact that he had gauged this imperfectly. That he had to be corrected by his mother. Somehow, we are always surprised by the possibility that Jesus might have made a mistake, misjudged something. But we must remember that he was fully human, as we are.
None of us would say that we never make a mistake. We don’t get all the calls right. In fact, we know we miss a lot of them. It’s okay, we don’t expect perfection of ourselves.
And it turns out Jesus was susceptible to making errors too.
Yet there is a more important thing we might learn from this little story about Jesus: that is how he dealt with it. He adjusted his expectations. He changed his plans. This may not have been at all what Jesus was expecting his first sign to be, but he realized that this was, indeed, the time and the place.
And what’s more, I want to say that he might not have even understood it yet. He just knew that this is what he was being called to do. Maybe there is a lesson in this for all of us.
I once read a story about Martin Luther King, Jr. as a young man beginning his ministry. Fresh out of seminary, he was a candidate for a position at a very prestigious church. It was to be a fine feather in his newly ordained cap. But when the day arrived, the congregation voted no. They simply said this was not the pastor they wanted.
So he ended up accepting a call at the Dexter Avenue church in Montgomery, Alabama. The next year, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the Montgomery city bus and a whole movement was set in motion. King was right there.
If he had been offered that prestigious pulpit, he would have been somewhere else. Who knows what would have happened with the bus boycott or the whole Civil Rights Movement? But he was there, where he needed to be for the work God had prepared him to do.
It wasn’t just an accident. It wasn’t bad luck followed by good luck. It wasn’t a fantastic coincidence. It happened because he was willing and able to hear the call and respond.
King may have been disappointed about the rejection, but he moved forward in faith, trusting that God had something for him. He put down his roots in Montgomery, at the Dexter Avenue Church, and he began the work of day-to-day ministry. And when something happened on the bus, he was paying attention.
Sometimes things don’t turn out the way you expect them to. Sometimes the best plans fall apart and we have to adjust. The best we can do, when these things happen is to be listening, to be ready to change. Just like Reverend King did. Just like Jesus did.
And if we listen, we see that God will often work with something that seems insignificant and make it significant. God may take a little thing and use it for a lot of good.
May you always be looking for the moment of God’s call. May you be ready to adjust when that moment arrives. And may you step out in faith.
____________________________________________
Photo by Lana Foley Photography.com
