My wife’s sister teaches Sunday School at a UCC church in Naperville.  Like most Sunday School teachers she takes the responsibility fairly seriously, and tries to get her Biblical interpretation right.  Once in a while she asks me about the lectionary passages coming up for the following Sunday.  Now this sister-in-law has great theological and Biblical instincts, and I think usually she already has a good idea of what the passages are talking about, and she is just hoping I’ll say something that supports her.  And my responses need to be brief.  No big sermon.  No big lecture.  Just one or two lines giving the core meaning of the passage.  It’s a good exercise, of course.  Having to summarize things in one or two lines – keeping it simple.

              Yesterday she asked me about this John passage, in which Jesus goes to a wedding with his mother, and turns water into wine.  “What’s that all about,” she asked.

              “Well,” I said, “this is John’s way of showing that in Jesus; the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world.  The other gospels say it more directly: ‘The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of God is come near.  Repent and believe in the good news.’  Instead of saying it, John shows it.”

And, although it destroys most of the suspense that I could build up in a sermon on this passage, that is pretty much what is going on here.    In Jesus, the Kingdom of God is breaking into this world.

It has very little to do with the idea that Jesus can turn common water into fine wine.  It has to do rather with the idea that when Jesus is around, the Kingdom of God is around, and when the Kingdom of God is around, things get thrown out of whack.  Water turns to wine.  Embarrassment turns to pride.  Doubt turns to belief.  And emptiness turns to abundance.  That’s just the way the Jesus is.

I remember in seminary studying an ancient painting of Jesus.  It portrayed Jesus stepping out of the tomb after the resurrection.  Picture this: the opening of the tomb was facing to the right.  So as Jesus steps out of the tomb he is walking from the left to the right of the painting.  But it is the not figure of Jesus that is key to the painting, but the landscape quietly sitting in the background.  To the left, behind Jesus and around the tomb the colors are dark, the sky is cloudy, the trees are leafless, and the flowers brown and wilted.  But subtly, as you move from the left to the right of the painting, as Jesus moves out of the tomb, from death to life, the background is transformed: the trees become green and in full foliage, the sky becomes clear and bright, the flowers alive and vibrant, and the sun shines in the distance.  To the left, death.  To the right, life.

That transformation is what the Gospel of John is all about, without Jesus, the world is controlled by scarcity and failure, hunger and thirst, death rules the day.  But where Jesus is, there is abundance and joy, satisfaction and pleasure, life rules the new day.  Where Jesus is, there is more.

Now some days, in some sermons, I probably would have tried to find a way to make that message carry the whole sermon.  It’s a great message.  A comforting message.  A good news message.

But as I was working with this text this week, my heart was aching for the people of Haiti – at first especially for all the kids and staff I met at the Louverture Cleary School.  But, of course, for the whole nation as well.  What an utter tragedy.  A rudimentary infrastructure destroyed.  And given the condition of Haiti just before the disaster, one is tempted to say the earthquake didn’t so much destroy things as rearrange the rubble.  Tens of thousands of people killed.  Bodies lying in the street.  Mass graves.  Millions of people now facing injury, illness, grief, homelessness, hopelessness.  Millions of people now hungering and thirsting, quite literally, for more.

This terrible juxtaposition has been bothering me all week.  Here we have an ancient story that is all about the Kingdom of God breaking into this world through Jesus, about transformation from scarcity to abundance, from failure to joy, ultimately from death to life.  And then we have a contemporary story that is pretty much the opposite.  From relative abundance to scarcity, from everyday joys to crushing despair, from life to death.  This is not an easy week to preach the gospel.

How does the message hold true in such a situation as this?

I think we would be wise to put ourselves in the midst of that wedding celebration in Cana of Galilee – to just sit there as Jesus’ disciples and watch what happens.  When the Kingdom of God is around things get thrown out of whack.  And one of the things that needs to get thrown out of whack is the way we normally think about how God works in the world – about the nature of God’s love and God’s power.  One of the big words thrown around when we start talking about God is “omnipotent.”  God is omnipotent, all powerful, God can do anything.  This is the idea of God as sort of the ultimate Superman.  God as better, faster, stronger, smarter, throw in any superlative you want, God is more of that than anything else we know.  Of course this is encouraged even in the language we use in worship – I think of the hymn we sing sometimes of “God who spins the whirling planets,” and of the classic, “How Great Thou Art.”  We (rightly by the way) pray for God to help, and heal, and protect.  And this is also encouraged by the way we read passages like ours today, as Jesus shows his power, by turning water into wine, and of course goes on to do even more dramatic deeds of power.

But in face of what has happened in Haiti, and indeed in the face of what happens less dramatically, but just as tragically, every day in this world, it just may be time for that way of thinking about God’s power to get thrown out of whack.  There is this little line in the passage today, almost a throwaway line, but one that proves to give us an important signal, an important warning.  Jesus’ mother comes to him and tells him that “They have no wine.”  Jesus responds with that enigmatic line, “What concern is that to you and me.  My hour has not yet come.”  With those words, “my hour has not yet come,” I believe Jesus warns us not to be too quick to interpret what he is about to do.  He is willing to help in this time of embarrassment and need, this time scarcity, but it is not yet time for him to be fully revealed, for the real nature of his life and mission to be clarified.  He warns us, in effect, that until we see the end of the story, until we see him on the cross, we won’t really understand.  God’s power, we are to see, isn’t ultimately revealed in miracles, in being better, faster, stronger, smarter.  God’s power is nothing but the cross and the empty tomb.  God’s power is nothing but love.

John Thomas, who recently finished up his service as the main leader of our United Church of Christ, wrote about the Haiti earthquake this week.  It’s worth quoting at length:

This Sunday pastors will be lifting up the people of Haiti in pastoral prayers.  Some will name persons who have become colleagues and friends, not knowing whether they are injured or dead.  Many will reflect on the especially devastating loss of leaders experienced by the Roman Catholic Church  Congregations will be receiving special offerings to assist in the short and long-term relief efforts.  But what of the theological task?  How do we help the person in the pew sort through the questions posed by the premise of [a god who seems to be hiding]?...

Dietrich Bonhoeffer reminds us that “Christ helps us not by virtue of his omnipotence, but by virtue of his weakness and suffering. . . .   Only the suffering God can help,” (Letters and Papers from Prison, p. 360).  To those who yearn for a powerful God who might coerce nature and history to serve our proximate ends, theologian William Placher responds with a portrait of the “vulnerable God.”  “God can help because God acts out of love and love risks suffering.  A God defined in terms of power is precisely not a reliable rescuer, because power provides no guarantee of concern, and power, in the way most cultures have most often used the word, too often grows out of a fear of vulnerability that makes really reaching out in love, with all the risks entailed, impossible, (Narratives of a Vulnerable God, p. 18.”

Perhaps drawing on the insights of those who have thought deeply about [God], [we] might point to someone like C. S. Lewis who once wrote that “to love at all is to be vulnerable.  Love anything, and your heart will certainly be rung and possibly be broken.  If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one. . . .  It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable,” (The Four Loves, p. 169).

God is all powerful.  But God’s power is not revealed most fully in the turning of water into wine, not revealed in being better, stronger, faster, smarter, not revealed in spinning the whirling planets, or in protection from earthquakes.  Rather God’s power is revealed finally, ultimately, in the cross and the empty tomb.  God’s power is revealed finally, ultimately, in love.