Readings (click here for full text of the readings):
   Isaiah 62:1-5 9; Psalm 96; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

He knew better than to do that.  You should have known better. I knew I shouldn’t do that, but I went ahead and did it anyway.

This is a common refrain – we say it all the time to our children, we probably think it often about our friends, and we judge ourselves with those very same words, when for some reason we act contrary to what we know we ought to do.

I go against my better judgment most often when I’m tired, which is not infrequently, given that my work as a pediatrician. Case in point – a while back, on a particularly busy night, I saw a nine-year-old girl in the hospital who’d been coughing for the past week.  I asked her mother the standard questions – any history of respiratory problems in the family, was she taking any medications, etc.  But when I asked her if anyone smoked in the house, she gave a very interesting response.  She said, “No, and we don’t drink alcohol either. We’re born again.”

As soon as she said that, I knew what I shouldn’t do.  I shouldn’t ask the question that instantly sprang to mind: “Why does being born again mean you can’t drink alcohol?”  Other patients were waiting, I was already behind schedule, and pursuing that line of questioning wouldn’t help the little girl with the cough.  As I wrote out her prescription, I thought to myself, “You know better than to go down that road.”

I did know better, but I went ahead anyway.  As I took a minute to complete the chart, I said to the girl’s mother, “I’ve always wondered – if Christians aren’t supposed to drink, how do you explain the story of the wedding at Cana?” From there she and I had a very polite to-and-fro discussion of Jesus’s first miracle.

• “Well, that miracle had nothing to do with wine. Jesus turned the water into grape juice,” she said.
• “But,” I replied, “the Bible says He turned it into wine.”
• She responded with:  “It was common for the Jews at that time to use the term ‘wine’ to refer to grape juice.”
• But I argued that the story doesn’t make any sense if it’s about grape juice. It refers very plainly to the guests becoming drunk.
• “You can become ‘drunk,’ so to speak, on just grape juice.”
• “How’s that? I tend to associate grape juice that makes you drunk with wine.”
• She responded, “There’s a certain grape that when it’s exposed to moonlight develops the ability to make a person feel drunk.  But they’re not really drunk. And it’s only grape juice.”
• “I’ve never heard of that,” I said.
• “Oh, yes.  It’s like champagne.  We often drink champagne, the type that doesn’t have alcohol.”
• “But, you see, in my experience people don’t call that champagne. People call that sparkling grape juice.”
• “Oh” was all she said as she and her daughter left the exam room.

I remembered that conversation this week because today’s gospel reading is a little bit about wine, but a lot about doing things we know better than to do.  The story is familiar – Jesus and His mother and His disciples attend a wedding in the town of Cana. It’s partway through the reception, when the cheaper wine is usually served, as the guests are fairly tipsy and probably won’t notice the difference. But all the wine is gone, and this is a major faux pas – a potential source of great embarrassment for the bride and groom. So Jesus, without even being asked, turns water into wine so that the party can continue.  And not just any water – but the water intended for ritual cleansing. And not just any wine – but the best wine of the evening.  And not just a little wine – over a hundred gallons of wine.

Our first response might be: He should know better than to do that. After all, the guests were pretty well drunk by that time – they probably needed black coffee more than they needed all that extra wine. And even if He was going to go ahead and do it, couldn’t he have just grabbed a jug of drinking water, rather than change all those vats of holy water into wine?  And weren’t there more important situations requiring a miracle, especially His very first miracle?  With all the dying children and blind men and starving people around, He chooses to turn water into wine at a wedding?

The simpler, and less contentious, way of explaining His action is to point out that Jesus wasn’t a utilitarian. His ministry wasn’t geared toward doing the most good for the greatest number of people.  Sure, over the course of His life He healed hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. But often He went out of His way to heal only a few, or even just one, especially if the person suffering was a friend of His, or someone beseeched Him passionately on their behalf.  And He didn’t heal or preach or cast out demons 24 hours a day – he ate meals with friends and enemies, he laughed and played with children, he lived life to the fullest.  With that in mind, the wedding at Cana seems a fitting setting for His first miracle, for it was all about life – friends and family gathered together, two people professing their love and commitment to one another.  That kind of celebration is why Jesus healed people in the first place; it’s why we all live, for the hope of such joyous days.

There is another, riskier way of explaining Jesus’s actions, and it has to do with the element of the miracle itself, namely, wine.  Now we all know wine is a central image in the Bible – Jesus told many parables about grapes on the vine, He offered the disciples the cup of wine at the Last Supper, just as we do at the communion rail each week, with the words, “The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” And we also know the negative side of any kind of alcohol – that it’s addictive, that it predisposes some to violence, that it’s ruined lives.  The bottom line is that wine is perilous, because it changes us, and leads us to risk, sometimes wisely, sometimes foolishly.

And that’s exactly why it’s such a great symbol for Christ’s blood, and for faith in general.  Frederick Buechner puts it this way:

Unfermented grape juice is a bland and pleasant drink, especially on a warm afternoon mixed half-and-half with ginger ale. It is a ghastly symbol of the life blood of Jesus Christ, especially when served in individual antiseptic, thimble-sized glasses.  Wine is booze, which means it is dangerous and drunkmaking. It makes the timid brave and the reserved amorous. It loosens the tongue and breaks the ice especially when served in a loving cup. It kills germs.  As symbols go, it is a rather splendid one.
 

Understood this way, wine diminishes our sense of self, at least in terms of self-doubt. We do things against our better judgment, sometimes which we up regretting, but sometimes wonderful things, too. We say what we really feel, with less filtering, with less second-guessing. We express affection without worrying about whether the other person feels the same way.  We get a glimpse of the fact that what we “know” to say or to do might well be simply what society finds acceptable, or what our Enlightenment rationality says is proper, or what requires us to risk the least. We finally are able to see that the action we know better than to take, the words we know better than to say, might be the most truthful thing we can do or say, and therein may lie salvation for us, and for the person next to us. And we’re finally able to relinquish control of our lives to God, which is usually about the time we’re able to see that we were never in control in the first place.

It’s interesting to see what reading is paired with the wedding at Cana in the lectionary. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul gives a long list of spiritual gifts: the utterance of wisdom, or knowledge; faith; healing; miracles; prophecy; discernment of spirits; speaking in and interpreting tongues. “All [of] these are activated by one and the same Spirit,” Paul says.  But he says more than that. He says that “to each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” In other words, everyone has some gift, whether it be one that Paul listed, or something else.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a Gospel reading all about risk and daring is paired with an epistle that talks about the gifts of the Spirit, because it can be scary to claim your gift.  It’s much easier to sit back and let other people – people who are smarter or more devout or better educated – take the lead.  But if you do that, you’re confusing humility with fear, because God gave each of us gifts for the common good.  And if we ignore our gift out of self-doubt or uncertainty, we not only betray God’s trust, we also let the family of God down.

It’s often said around here that at St. Paul’s, 10% of the people do 90% of the work.  That’s probably true for most parishes, and today’s readings hint at why that might be the case.  Sure, a lot of us are very busy, and we have many other responsibilities to attend to. But I think it also has to do with self-doubt, and our being unwilling to do things that we don’t think we have any right doing. The various ministries of St. Paul’s – like reading the lessons, or serving at the altar, or bringing communion to people as lay Eucharistic ministers – all those jobs are already getting done, we might think to ourselves. The people who are doing them are more experienced, or more qualified, or even more spiritual, we might go on thinking. What right do I have to stand up there?

It’s not just we humans who think like that. Our dog Jake goes along with that way of thinking, too. Because whenever I bring him into church with me, he steadfastly refuses to walk past the altar on his own.  I’ll call him, and tell him it’s OK, but he refuses to cross that altar line unless I’m leading him. Perhaps he senses something sacred there – which wouldn’t surprise me, because he’s an intuitive guy. Or maybe he just thinks he doesn’t have any right to be there, and so he needs a priest to lead him along, over that holy ground.

If that’s the case, then he’s taking his cues from people, and not from God. We’re the ones telling him, and each other, by our words and actions that there are some places that we’re not allowed to go. That we’re not worthy enough – or brave enough – to acknowledge and use the spiritual gifts that God has given each of us. That we’re not worthy to stand before God’s holy altar without someone in a collar there to intercede for us. And that the altar is more of a barricade than a portal; more of an obstacle than an invitation.

And let’s be clear: that’s not God talking.  God is telling us that wherever His children are gathered together in the spirit of love and community, that’s holy ground. Like the wedding that day in Cana. He’s asking us to question our assumptions about what we should and shouldn’t do, to make sure that we’re not mistaking fear for humility. And he’s inviting us to use the gifts that He’s given us for the common good, and take our fair share of risks along the way, for only then will we truly follow in the footsteps of Jesus Himself.

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