When the Wine Gives Out

DATE: January 20, 2013
SCRIPTURE: Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-12
©Rev. Alison J. Buttrick Patton

We stood in the parking lot in front of our denominational headquarters in Hartford – the CT Conference office of our United Church of Christ: me and Craig and the Rev. Day McCallister. She was smiling but shaking her head a bit ruefully. Day was preparing to meet with the CT Conference board of directors, to share a proposal for an expansive new phase of what our denomination has called our Sacred Conversations on Race. Now, it’s not the first time we’ve had conversations about race in our CT Conference, or in our local churches, but this proposal was designed to dramatically expand our intentional efforts, to help us address race in personal, interpersonal and institutional contexts, fulfilling a mission to eradicate racism.

Those of you who know the Rev. McCallister (she gave the charge at my installation in November — when she told us to love each other) … If you know Day, you know that she is a bold and passionate minister of our United Church of Christ. So you’d expect a mission like that – not just to talk, or to make inroads, but to eradicate racism.

So I was surprised, as we stood there in the parking lot, to see her shake her head and hear her confess that the first draft of that proposal had not been nearly so audacious; it talked about “incremental steps” and “modest goals.” She showed that first version of her plan to a group of CT clergy and lay members, and they called her out, asked her why she was holding back. “Who are you, and what have you done with our Rev. McCallister?” They asked. She says she was convicted. “There I was: being told by folks I trust that I wasn’t going far enough, that I was being timid.”

It happens to the best of us. Even Jesus had moments when he held back. “My time has not yet come,” he told his mother, on that third day of the wedding at Cana. She had just observed that the wine had run out. Now, that may not sound like much of a crisis, but weddings of the time were week-long affairs, when the families of bride and groom extended extravagant hospitality to the community by throwing a multi-day party. So, to run out of wine on day three would have been exceedingly embarrassing for the hosts.

Whether Jesus’ mother wanted to salvage an awkward social situation, or whether she perceived in that moment an opportunity to launch her son’s public ministry, we don’t know for sure. This much is clear: That the mother of Jesus believed he could and should do something. So she gave him a nudge. And when he resisted, (“What has that to do with you and with me?”), she took matters into her own hands and spoke directly to the servants. “Do whatever he tells you,” she said.

Jesus told them to fill six stone jars with water. Six 30-gallon jars. Imagine a single one-gallon milk jug. Now picture a jar large enough to contain 30 of those gallons. Now, imagine six 30-gallon jars – 180 gallons: gallon after gallon after gallon poured into those massive stone containers… That’s a lot of trips to the well!

When those servants were done, their arm muscles aching and brows sweaty… Jesus instructed them to draw out a goblet of water and take it to the chief steward who made that astonishing pronouncement (astonishing to the servants, that is) that the goblet contained wine – and not just any wine, but fine wine, the kind you normally wouldn’t waste on the guests on the third day of the party, once their pallets had been dulled by days of feasting and drinking…

Who would have guessed? Who could have imagined so much goodness where there had been only empty jars a short while before? Surely not the servants, who’d seen that water up close, who’d had to carry and pour out every gallon. Not the disciples, who had met up with Jesus just a few days ago and barely knew him. And Jesus’ mother? She, at least, seemed to recognize what the others did not. That running out of wine does not mean the end of the party, when Jesus is in the house.

According to the Gospel of John, turning water into wine was a sign, his first sign, meant to tell us something about Jesus and the Good News he had come to proclaim. So what did it tell us? Here’s what I hear: That when the wine gives out… God shows up. When the wine gives out: when we don’t know if we have what it takes, when the larder is bare or we’ve run out of ideas or the mountain seems way too high to climb. When we’re discouraged or frightened or skeptical or cautious or just plain wrung out, God shows up to change the story in unexpected ways, pouring out grace on our parched, empty places and filling us up with the vision or courage or the strength that we need. That’s the promise of water turned to wine.

Trusting that promise can be hard, some days. When we feel like we are surrounded by empty containers, or jars that are only half full despite all our best efforts… it can be hard to see past that emptiness, to believe in the possibility of God’s abundant grace. …Which is why we need witnesses like the mother of Jesus, to give us a nudge, to provoke us to look at those jars, and then look again.

When Day first drafted the plan to promote our Sacred Conversations on Race, she played it small. Until a group of colleagues gave her a nudge. “Then,” (she said),

“I thought about our ancestors. Ancestors: who challenged a billion dollar cotton industry built on chattel slavery; our ancestor churches, here in CT, who opened up the cellars under our meeting houses as stations on the Underground Railroad, invested personal and political capital to defend and eventually to free the Mendi people who came to our shores on the Amistad slave ship; and defied laws that prohibited educating Persons of Color – forming schools and traveling beyond our American boarders to teach. Our New England Congregational ancestors did all that. At great risk, with little evidence that they would succeed, they dared to exercise their faith and to believe in the unseen. They dared to keep going, even when it seemed as though the wine had given out. Their belief and their actions, changed the course of this nation.”¹

“Once I remembered that,” said Rev. McCallister, “I thought: ‘They didn’t dismantle slavery by thinking small. After all they’ve done, how can we hold back? Aren’t we called to be just as bold, just as brave? Just as faithful?”

She tossed her first draft in the shredder and started over. A new proposal, the one with the mission of eradicating racism… went to the Board of Directors, who, I’m glad to report, approved it last November. We’ll be hearing more about Sacred Conversations on Race in the coming months.

Here’s what I learned from the Rev. Day McCallister that day: We all get cautious, sometimes, tempted to hold back. But we can’t let that stop us, not for long. Because God’s got work for us to do, powerful, prophetic, life-transforming work. Did you notice? It wasn’t just the disciples who witnessed the miracle at Cana. It was also the servants, the ones who filled up those jars in the first place: The servants with their aching arms and sweaty brows. It was they – not the bride and groom; not the honored guests, not even the chief steward – but the water-carriers who got to see just what Jesus could do; they who were given an astonishing, up-close and personal sign of hope, abundant blessing and overflowing grace.

Which reminds me that faith is not a spectator sport. Want a sign? First, we’ve got to roll up our sleeves, take up a jug, go to the well and draw the water – again and again and again. We’ve got to do some heavy lifting – like our ancestors, like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., like Rev. Day McCallister. They all went to work without knowing what would come next, or IF their actions would make a difference. But they forged ahead just the same, and when the wine gave out, God showed up:

• Among the brave women and men in the cotton fields
• And all along the Underground Railroad;
• On the buses and in the streets of Montgomery
• And on the mall in Washington D.C.;
• In the vision and determination of ordinary-extraordinary people like Rev. McCallister and in the courageous counsel of that small group of her colleaguest…

…God showed up, when they needed it most, the work continued, and lives – and whole systems – were changed.

Sisters and brothers in Christ: We’ve been talking a great deal about honoring the historic character of our meeting house, as we make plans to build our future church. Today, it is my prayer that we will work equally hard to honor the historic legacy of our ancestors in faith, that we will remain a church that takes on the most pernicious, life-depleting, community-eroding issues of our day. In the words of our own United Church of Christ: that we will continue to be “early arrivers,” the first and most persistent voices to speak out and speak up wherever we encounter the empty jars of injustice. That we will be known, not just for our steeple or our great lawn, but for filling those empty jars with buckets of courage and candor and righteous rage. That we will be known as the church that doesn’t hold back.

Trust this: we will have our days, our highs and lows, but when the wine gives out, when our resources give out, when our courage gives out, when our conviction gives out… God will show up, will meet us where we are, take all our best efforts and transform them into something more, something beyond our imagining, wine of gladness, gallons and gallons of liquid grace overflowing: more than enough to go around.

Thanks be to God! Amen.

Scripture Texts

Isaiah 62:1-57

For Zion’s sake I will not keep silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I will not rest, until her vindication shines out like the dawn, and her salvation like a burning torch. The nations shall see your vindication, and all the kings your glory; and you shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the Lord will give. You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. You shall no more be termed Forsaken, and your land shall no more be termed Desolate; but you shall be called My Delight Is in Her, and your land Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. For as a young man marries a young woman, so shall your builder marry you, and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.