Start Now

Preached January 17th 2010 at St. David of Wales

Epiphany 2 Year C

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11




Jesus, as you did in Cana of Galilee take the old water of our busy lives and turn it into gospel wine-
Amen

In the gospel of John, this miracle of water into wine is the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry. We open with John’s beautiful poem of incarnation: the litany of the Word, in which the Word is made flesh and dwells among us. Then we get to see what this incarnate Word does. He is baptized by John, and calls 3 disciples, all in the first chapter. But then the next thing that happens, and I here I do love John, is that Jesus after getting baptized and ready to start his public ministry doesn’t go into the desert to fast and wrestle with demons, he goes to a party.

This is a wedding feast, presumably family friends since his mama is there. We don’t know a whole lot about these people except that their hospitality and generosity outstrippes their means, which is a flaw I can respect. This is the opposite problem of the banquet giver who has the feast all prepared and has to go out in the streets to find people to celebrate with.
it seems that these are the two basic stories of the whole world, either not enough to go around or, an overabundance and no one to share it with. hunger and loneliness are each in their own way equally tragic. And the kingdom of course is where there is enough for everybody who shows up and a family to share it with.

So this is the starting point.
Maybe Jesus wasn’t ready yet. He was still in that tender place between call and action.
He might have known what he had to do he just wasn’t quite ready to get started. Or maybe he had no idea what this was going to look like, this new life of radical relationship with God. He was full of the Holy Spirit, had three guys already following him around. You can imagine the level of expectation from them at least. “all right, we found the Messiah!! can’t wait to see what he is going to do.”

This is the in breath before the song. Who knows what he was waiting for, maybe for the time to “feel” right. Or God to speak clearly again.
What do you do if you have heard the voice of God telling you to go.
go where? do what?
Like standing at the top of a diving board. with your toes hanging over the edge, the moment just before you stand up and speak, before you walk across the room, or pick up the phone. Once you have made the hard choice to do something to follow a call there is a certain peace and perfection of the imminent vision which is completely ruined by beginning.

Your imagined journey is never the same the real road beneath your dusty feet.
We all know that the only way to keep your plans intact is to never start.

And maybe Jesus isn’t quite ready to go there yet. Maybe he wants to savor his call a little more, ponder the route, talk it over with his new friends, maybe come up with a stratagem.

Maybe he wanted to start with something more impressive than helping out with refreshments the wedding reception of some poor friends of him mom?.

When Mary tells him that the wine has run out she doesn’t tell him how to fix it, she doesn’t even tell him to fix it, she just says “they have no wine.” [By the way, this is great parenting, - don’t nag or fuss or tell your kid what to do, simply state the situation and leave the rest up to them.] so that’s all she says
“ they have no wine.”
you can almost hear the exasperation in his voice. “Mom, this isn’t the time. This isn’t how it is supposed to begin. This is my thing, so don’t tell me when to start, ok?”
of course Mary hasn’t said anything but that they are out of wine.

See what Mary knows, as a mother, is that the time is never right, and if you wait for a perfect beginning nothing will ever get done. She knows that once you are on your way there is another kind of splendor in the real, in the doing. It is a rustier, more worn and tattered beauty, but it has been begun. In the company of people who will add their own imperfection, their own misunderstandings, and their own shabby glory. They will do it wrong, and they will save it, and they will screw it up, and they will be beautiful, and they will add things you never thought of. and that is the rub of incarnation. when you are a part of this world you have no choice but to do your work here in this world.
If you wait until your inner vision perfectly matches this messy world, you will miss it all, because it ain’t gonna happen.

Welcome Word to our untidy reality.

So you start when the need in front of you is in your power to fill, no matter how “important.” I wouldn’t be surprised if most of us would prefer the cool and dramatic calls. There is a church that I pass on my way to the library that has a sign that always provides challenging theological morsels for my walk. They had one over Christmas that said something like don’t get about tickle me Elmo, Get Jesus! I took turns reading it tickle me Jesus, or picturing the look on a small child face when they unwrapped a First century Palestinian Rabbi when they had asked for a red giggling toy.
this summer though they had up for a couple of weeks, Don’t impress people, impress God.
the big question that comes to my mind is, “what precisely do they think will impress the creator of the entire universe? The one who came up with the whole idea of space and time. I think wanting to impress God could lead to a lifelong standstill. While the neighbors might ooh and aah over your latest lawn ornament, God herself knit you together in your mother’s womb. oh yes, but almighty did you see how good I was today? If we are looking for things that will impress God, I am concerned that we will have to look a very long time for the right thing. The other really disturbing image is a God who has a list of impressive and not impressive people. The love of God is really really big. None of us are unimpressive enough to be outside of that kind of love, nor are we ever going to get that far above our brothers and sisters. Seems like a bad game. Just saying.

Jesus’ public ministry begins appropriately enough surrounded by people who don’t have enough, he starts with need and thirst and radical transformation.

So how do we want to be transformed? Who wouldn’t mind a miracle. Here I am lord, change me. Make me organized, out of debt, with a better job, less stress, and maybe 10 pounds thinner. These are the sorts of transformations we try to enact on ourselves, and already now by the 17th of January we have given up most of them. so come on Jesus, help a sister out, right?

If God needs us to liven up this party that we are living today, what changes will he need to make in us?
Chances are it will be more a need for us to be broken open; to weep with the world when we listen to news reports from Haiti; to hold every other wounded, messed up person you meet, in love and gentleness. To lose our ability to hold grudges and live in fear. to forget ourselves, to shake off our pride in what little we have done; to no longer try to fill ourselves to escape the pain of a hurting humanity; to no longer hoard the wealth we have been entrusted with; to say yes to the needs in front of us.

imagine it just for a second,
Like the water in the cool stone jugs of ritual and history, habit and place, when we are transformed, our best is still yet to come.
We are transformed so that we may begin our story of ministry.

The good wine for our celebrations is just now being drawn from the stony jars of our past. And some people may say to us what the steward says- why did you wait this long to be glorious?
There was perfectly good wine before. oh, but what can we become when let ourselves be transformed by the love of Christ-??
Now that wine, will change the world,
that wine will need new wineskins,
that wine will poured out, and shared among friends
that is the wine that is served when there is enough for everyone.
and that wine is the cup of salvation.

This whole amazing ministry of Jesus begins with him stepping into the immediate need before him. And even if this wasn’t the beginning he had hoped for, we all have to start somewhere.

So, What if years from now they tell the story of your work here on earth starting with tomorrow? Maybe you have heard the voice of God calling softly that you are beloved and now you are waiting for further instructions.
here they are: start here - start now.
Amen