January 20, 2012 (Global Mission Sunday)
Second Sunday after the Epiphany
John 2:1-11
Two weeks ago today I worshiped at Iglesia Luterana
Santissima Trinidad (Lutheran Church of the Most Holy Trinity) on the island of
Puerto Rico. It was a big deal, because
it was a major holiday—Tres Reyes Day, “Three Kings Day.”
Our Spanish-speaking friends treat the coming of the
Magi on January 6th like a second Christmas—complete with
gift-giving, special sweets, and a fiesta where everybody gets just a little
carried away.
And during the worship services, three kings
actually show up, process down the center aisle, help lead the worship,
distribute the gifts of Christ’s Body and Blood….and then—like rock stars!—have
their pictures taken with any worshipers who want to pose with them.
That’s because on Puerto Rico and throughout Latin
America, these are not your ordinary Three Kings.
They look nothing like our pale imitation Wise Men
here in the Midwest—three young boys or three embarrassed men who got talked
into putting on their bathrobes and donning “crowns” that look suspiciously
like giveaways from Burger King.
No, but in Latin America the kings are decked out
like royalty in the flesh…with rich, flowing robes: deep purple, royal blue, scarlet red
robes….gaudy, jewel-bestudded crowns, and ZZ-Top-length beards that really make
the Tres Reyes look like potentates from half a world away!
Seeing them took my breath away and moved me to
tears as I beheld this part of the biblical story unfolding as I had never
experienced it before.
Because as I witnessed these exotic travelers in
worship on January 6th, it dawned on me how during the season of
Epiphany, God is forever agitating God’s
people, shaking us loose from all our assumptions about who’s in and who’s
out….and reminding us that God and God alone decides who “our kind of people”
will be.
Left to our own devices we will always circle the
wagons and draw the lines between “us” and “them” more sharply, more
defensively…..while God is forever flinging wide the doors to let in all the
wrong crowd.
God the Great Agitator is always mixing it up and
mixing us up, so that God can reveal once again how Jesus Christ, God’s beloved
Son, our Savior, is for everybody, that Christmas spells good news of great joy
to all people, and that God
consistently expands the circle wider and wider than we would normally allow it
to be.
The season of Epiphany used to seem like “filler
material” to me…..a way to survive the frigid wintry Sundays between Christmas
and Ash Wednesday.
But now, later in life Epiphany has become one of my
most treasured seasons in the church year, because during the Epiphany season
God just keeps sharpening the image of what happened when the Word became
flesh. God simply continues to surprise us, week by week, during
Epiphany…unfolding revelations that all seem to say: “You thought I was this way, but I’m not….I’m more, I’m up to more, and
I’m accomplishing more in your presence than you could ever imagine.”
THAT’s what’s going on in the Epiphany season.
First, on the Day of Epiphany, the magi barge into
the domestic tranquility of Mary, Joseph and little Jesus….bearing over-the-top
gifts of wealth (gold!) and wonder (frankincense!) and foreboding (myrrh, a
spice used in burials).
Then, we shift to the Jordan River (in last Sunday’s
gospel reading) where a fully-grown Jesus turns up in the last place anyone
might expect him….with sinners coming out in droves to be washed clean in the
water by John the Baptist….and Jesus joins them, hobnobs with the unworthy,
shows himself to be the sinners’ best friend.
And now today, in our gospel lesson from John 2,
Jesus and his disciples show up at a wedding of all things. In the ordinariness of a first-century Jewish
marriage feast….the unexpected plenitude of God’s lavish grace overflows—quite
literally!—in the form of an abundance of exquisite wine.
God the Great Agitator, Jesus the surprising
Disrupter of Business as Usual shines through, comes to the rescue, and reveals
that God is up to something huge.
That’s what Epiphany is all about….which is why
faithful churches like Trinity view the Epiphany season as “prime time” to step
back and look beyond the four walls of this magnificent edifice, in order to
behold the global reach of the Good News…..to celebrate all the ways that God
is forever redefining “our kind of people” through the life, death and
resurrection of God’s beloved Son, Jesus.
And as we do that, taking our cures this morning
from the Wedding at Cana story, we will notice at least three things:
First we will notice, and be overwhelmed by the sheer abundance of God’s lavish grace,
shed upon the whole world. Abundance
breaks out at Cana’s wedding feast when Jesus offers an over-the-top solution
to a simple problem. The wine has run
out early and the guests are about to turn surly, when all at once there’s
plenty of wine, too much wine really, perhaps 180 gallons of wine which may
have transformed a feast on the verge of petering out prematurely into a party
that just might never end.
The Good News of Jesus Christ, spread around the
globe over 20 centuries is like that.
God never gives us just enough for here and now. God always overdoes it, grace so overflowing
like the old Sherwin Williams paint logo—that it literally “covers the earth.”
This past November, traveling with a group of 19
from our synod in India, I heard again why the story of Jesus Christ is so captivating
to the Dalits, the untouchables in India who make up 95% of the Lutherans of
India. In the dominant faith story told
in India, you see, the Dalits don’t even register—they have no place in their
own national faith story. But the Good
News of Jesus has changed all that, washing over them abundantly with the
astonishing message that in Christ, you have a place in the story from the very
beginning and all the way through to the final ending.
Second, taking the Wedding at Cana story as our cue,
we will taste the richness of
this wine. John’s gospel reveals
the confusion of the wedding steward—you usually start the celebration with the
good wine (when everyone ‘s taste buds are wide awake) and then you taper off,
as the guests get a little sloshed, bringing out the rot-gut later when no one
will notice.
But not when Jesus is the wine steward! No:
“You have saved the good wine until now”—in this end of all ages, the
Good Stuff shows up, the Word made flesh for the life of the world.
Celebrating the global span of the Good News of
Jesus Christ we can’t help but taste the richness of the global church. I love our congregations here in Minnesota,
the land of God’s frozen chosen; this is and always will be my spiritual
home.
But I also love visiting our exotic, far-flung cousins
in the Body of Christ, as I’ve done over the past year...from the soaring
arches of Durham Cathedral with its magnificent organ and choirs….to the
toe-tapping Dixieland jazz of New Orleans….to the fireworks and flamenco dancers
of Nicaraguan rural churches….to the haunting, soulful Telegu chanting of the
psalms in our companion synod, the Andhra Evangelical Lutheran Church of
southern India. This is rich, rich wine!
Third, as we drink the abundant rich wine of the
gospel, we realize afresh how God is
making all things new, all across the globe.
Here in John 2 those six stone water jars each hold
20 to 30 gallons of water for the old purification rituals of traditional Judaism. But then Jesus comes along and retrofits
these huge water jars. Without even
asking permission Jesus fills these old jars with fresh, exhilarating wine—the
wine of God’s Kingdom.
So also, celebrating the global church, we behold the
every-day-newness of God’s grace. God
is still reclaiming tired old stone jars and retrofitting them for God’s new
creation in Jesus Christ. Jesus, and
the Jesus way of life, you see, is infinitely “translate-able” into every fresh
context, every dawning era.
So Indian Christianity looks both Christian and
Indian, and Latin American faith has a Gospel tune with a salsa beat, and
Tanzanian believers revere Jesus while depicting him as a very brown Tanzanian.
And rather than degrading the gospel,
such “translation” enhances, adds value to the Good News for us and for all
people.
Please join me in prayer: “Stir us up, O God. Agitate us with a fresh revelation of your
all-encompassing mercy in Jesus Christ.
Open our eyes to behold the abundance, the richness and the newness of
your divine life, poured out for the sake of the whole world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
