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The Second Sunday after Epiphany On Friday I spent the day taking down my Christmas tree. I have lots of ornaments—one for each child for each Christmas of his or her life, plus family ornaments—so taking them all down and repacking them is always a daylong job, and one that I put off as long as I can. I put it off because it’s a messy and time-consuming job, but also because I’m not in such a hurry to get rid of the physical evidence of Christmas and all its attendant meaning. So I intentionally put it off until at least the feast of the Epiphany, and sometimes, as I did this year, even longer. Our culture is big on front-loading: we begin preparations for the next holiday before the present one has had time to settle in. Halloween costumes fill the shelves on Labor Day, Christmas decorations begin to appear before the pumpkins are gone, and Valentine’s Day chocolates come before the New Year is ushered in. Those of you who recall my pre-Christmas grumpiness will realize that this is a piece of popular culture that I don’t particularly like. Where is the time to savor the holiday when it arrives? Where is the time to take a breath and relax before the next holiday is upon us? That is one of the benefits of moving in the rhythm of the church year. Our liturgical calendar gives us time to prepare for what is coming, to celebrate it fully when it arrives, and then to take time to reflect on what it means for us. So it is that we have just moved through the season of Advent, a time of preparation for the coming of the Christ child, and Christmas, a celebration of the birth of that child that lasts a full twelve days. And so it is that we now find ourselves in the season of Epiphany. The Feast of the Epiphany marks the coming of the magoi, the kings who have come from afar to see this new being whose birth was foretold by the star. The season of Epiphany, however, goes on to encompass the weeks between the ending of Christmas and the beginning of Lent. In a sense, the season of Epiphany offers us a bit of respite. During Epiphany we’re not getting ready for anything. Rather we have some space to reflect on what the coming of the Christ child and the ministry of the man Jesus who that child became means—what it meant in the biblical world in which Jesus lived and what it means for us in our postmodern, post Christian 21st century context. The word “epiphany” comes from a Greek word, epiphanein, which connotes “to reveal.” The magoi, the kings, sought out the baby Jesus because his coming had been revealed to them by the star, and their coming perhaps revealed to others something about the import of this birth. And during the season of Epiphany we focus on how the meaning of Jesus is revealed to the world as his ministry unfolds. In today’s gospel we encounter Jesus early in his ministry. Following his baptism Jesus has chosen his first disciples and we find them along with Jesus’ mother at a wedding in Cana. In a story that we all know well, the wine runs low and Jesus’ mother exhorts him to do something about it. It was the responsibility of the guests to send wine ahead of time as a gift and Jesus’ mother may have been checking to see whether Jesus had filled that obligation as much as she was expecting a miracle. At any rate, Jesus is at first reluctant to respond; he gives a somewhat brusque reply to his mother, but then tells the servant to fill six large stone jars—jars that normally would be used to hold water for purification rites—with water which is turned into wine—and not just any wine, but very fine wine. With this sign Jesus begins to demonstrate his power and authority. In the grand scheme of things, turning water into wine may not seem like the most important thing Jesus did—does it really compare to healing the sick, curing the blind, raising the dead? What then does this story told by John at the outset of Jesus’ ministry reveal to us? Jesus acted to meet the needs of those at the wedding: the needs of the hosts whose honor would’ve suffered if the wine had run out too soon, the needs of the guests for libation for the duration of a celebration lasting several days. In meeting these needs, as simple and possibly inconsequential as they might seem, Jesus foreshadows the coming of his kingdom, a kingdom in which the needs of all are met, not just physical needs but also spiritual needs; Jesus foreshadows a kingdom in which there is abundance for all, an abundance of those things which sustain physical life to be sure, but more importantly an abundance of the grace and love of God that sustain us spiritually. Jesus turned the water into wine, not just a little bit of water, but six large stone jars, probably 90-150 gallons. That is a lot of wine. And it was very fine wine at that. Recall that the steward remarked to the bridegroom on how most served the fine wine first but this new wine was the best of all. This is of course good news for the wedding guests, but more importantly, the early readers of John’s gospel would have recognized the larger significance of this imagery. In Hebrew scripture abundant wine is used as a sign of God’s goodness and grace, and the prophets speak of the time when “the mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it” (Amos 9:13). This wine created in holy jars, created in abundance and goodness, thus serves as a powerful sign of the work God was—and is—doing in the person of Jesus. Jesus came to proclaim a kingdom in which the needs of all would be met, a kingdom of abundance rather than of want. It is this kingdom of abundance that is already but not yet realized, that we strive to live into in the here and now even as we prepare for the kingdom yet to come. But in our 21st century world, and particularly in our western culture, the promise of a kingdom of abundance holds a trap for us even as it holds the promise of God’s goodness and love. It is far too easy for us to equate the abundance God promises us with an abundance of material goods. Indeed, the “prosperity gospel” preached in some American churches promises such an abundance of “stuff”, but this is a false promise. God is of course concerned that our physical needs be met, and Jesus repeatedly instructed us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked—to care for those whose needs were not met. But the abundant life that is promised to us is not one of an abundance of possessions, and we deceive ourselves when we focus on the accumulation of material things. Rather the life of abundance we are promised is one in which we experience the abundance of God’s goodness and grace. And in doing so we are called not to accumulate but to empty ourselves so that we may be not only receptacles of that goodness and grace, but also vehicles through which it is spread. This is the kingdom of abundance that Jesus gave his life for and this is the kingdom Jesus promises us and calls us to live into. As we move through this season of Epiphany, may we individually and collectively look for ways in which this kingdom is revealed to us and ways by which we can reveal it to others. AMEN
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