Day 61 - A Job and A Calling

A sermon delivered Feb. 3, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN based on Jeremiah 1:4-9 and  1 Corinthians 12:12-25, 27.

        I find it ironic that shop and auto mechanics classes in high school were (and still are) called vocational training and that they still call schools dedicated to vocational training, “technical schools.”
         I used to drive by one in Richmond near the seminary where they teach “vocational training.” The lot is full of old automobiles the kids repair to learn automobile mechanics.  We also used to call two-year colleges like Chattanooga State, “vocational schools.” 

Vocation comes from the Latin word for calling. I always wondered what we ought to call the 4 year colleges and universities, I guess they did not think they were training us for a vocation.  (Of course, at one time Georgia Tech was called a "technical school.")
For some reason educators must think being a good auto mechanic, carpenter, or radiology technician is a “vocation” and by implication not as sophisticated and the jobs for people trained in 4-year colleges.

I’m entirely not sure how that kind of thinking came about, but I have my suspicions it came about in the early part of the twentieth century when science and technology began to have such an impact on our world and th demand for people who understood it grew. It takes a particular type of mind to be a good scientist or engineer. You need to have an ability to understand and use mathematics; you have to like and learn chemistry and physics; and you have to have a gift for a particular kind of problem solving. Those are special abilities not everyone possesses. 
         But those abilities are not in any way intrinsically "better" than another person's skill at creating an artistic painting, for example. Some who do find their way to other avenues to use their capability. I know a highly regarded author of a scientific textbook who worked at MIT but quit and spent the rest of his life making violins.

What about the liberal arts? Science and technology created telephone, radio, television and radio-communication and figuratively made the world seem a little smaller. The demand for people who could learn and understand new languages became greater, not just for translating foreign journals but for communicating with people in and from other countries. It became important for proclaiming the Good News of Christianity. Sociology helps us understand other cultures so we can make informed decisions. Like science and technology, it takes a particular type of mind to easily learn new languages and to teach them, especially if you are an adult and to learn sociology.  Some of us just can’t do it very well.

When I was in college I worked at Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a co-operative work-study student to pay for college. I was fortunate in two regards. I worked for a brilliant guy who grew up in California in the 1950’s with all the cultural baggage that implies. He graduated from the University of California at Berkeley with a Ph.D. in metallurgy. He shaped my ideas about science and engineering and pointed me towards people who helped me learn enough to have a successful 30 year career in engineering.

While I worked at Oak Ridge there was a senior scientist who managed the lab next door. He too was really smart and at the same time very down to earth. He grew up in Appalachia near Oliver Springs, TN. He managed to graduate from high school but never went to college. After a few years working as a technician at Oak Ridge the management realized was a very good scientist and soon he had his own research group. So you don’t necessarily have to have a B.S. or Ph.D. to prove you are smart. I could give you a very good example of a brilliant person right here in Chattanooga who worked as an engineer without that college degree 

As a final example, I used to own a Swedish car called a Saab. It was a racy little car and I really liked it but it had some quirky engineering with a lot of unusual features concocted by some smart mechanical engineer at Saab that made it aa nice car but complicated to repair. 
You may know sometimes it is hard to find a good, trustworthy auto mechanic. From my college days I could hardly afford a car, so I ended up with a good set of tools and every time I got a car I bought the repair manual for it and got pretty good at diagnosing problems but never much better than average at repairing them. I could do good enough to keep the car running but often made mistakes along the way, stripped bolt, take twice as long, etc. 

So, I came to really value a good, trustworthy automobile mechanic. I found one after I bought my Saab but I lived in a small town in Pennsylvania where most folks drove American cars. The mechanic did not know much about my Saab but if he knew what was wrong, he could fix it quite proficiently. He and I made a good team, I’d figure out what was wrong with my car and tell him, then he would order the parts and fix it.

I was glad to pay him for a good job, and he enjoyed working on my car because he was learning something about “curious” cars.

I think our educational system is not justified or proper in labeling any education as only vocational. We have confused what a person does in a job and what one does as a vocation. The humor in this to me, is that vocation comes from the Latin word to call. So, in a school for vocational training who is doing the calling? Can you only be called to be an auto mechanic but not a scientist??

What does this have to do with Jeremiah?  Let’s look at Jeremiah. In our reading he professes to God only to be just a boy:

v6: Then I said, “Ah, Lord God! Truly I do not know how to speak, for I am only a boy.” But the very first verse of Jeremiah tells us he is an adult priest.

The statement, “but I am just a boy” was a common way to show humility, or even to dodge a duty. We know from the first verse of Jeremiah he was already a priest.  King Solomon had just married the daughter of the Pharaoh to seal an alliance with Egypt, and when he went to sleep, he had a dream in which God visited him. God told Solomon that because he loved the Lord he deserved a blessing and invited Solomon to voice it. Solomon replied with the same words, “I’m just a boy” before he asked for “wisdom.” (1 Kings 3:5-15).

Jeremiah ‘s faint-hearted argument shows he was not too excited about God’s call to the dangerous task of bring unpleasant news to the Jewish king. To tell the king that God intended to pluck up and break down, to destroy and overthrow his kingdom, and to build and to plant was serious business. You usually didn’t live too long in those days when you talked to the king that way. This passage gives us a poignant view of the universal Jewish view of humanity that we are all stubborn individuals who encounter God and may well refuse or resist his call as well as follow it.

In this case God did not give Jeremiah much room to argue. This passage also shows the clear difference between his job as a priest and a calling as a prophet. Paul makes this point in 1 Corinthians and goes beyond it and to spell our our call.

Paul uses the analogy of the parts of the body. That is why I used my mechanic friend and my Saab as my example. If there is a good example of working together for a common end, he and I did it with that car.

Paul says ALL Christians are called to be the body of Christ in the world; to live in mutual support using our special gifts to carry the Good news to the world, listen again:

“(12) For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. (13)For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit. (14) Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many… (15) On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, (23) and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; (24) whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, (25) that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. (27) Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it.

We ought to recall the humble response of Solomon and Jeremiah, regardless of our age or education.  We ought to be prepared to say, “I’m just a child,” and listen for the Holy Spirit’s guidance and follow it.

This is why I think my work with the homeless is so important. Some of them are tired of arguing with God, in fact, some of them are so much imprisoned by their mindset of homelessness they do not even realize they can argue with God about a vocation.

We find many of the people without a home are so preoccupied with finding a place to sleep, finding the $200 for the next week’s rent at the rent-by-the-week hotel they live in, they have never thought about what their strengths and skills are, much less tried to listen for God’s words, for the holy spirit calling them to use their strengths as Paul describes.  When we talk to them about gainful employment we spend most of our time talking about how to identify and achieve their vocation.

I ask our participants who come for a meal (with no strings attached) if they will fill out a short questionnaire. It has these questions:

1.      What do your friends and family say is your best character strength and skill?

2.      What do you think is your best character strength and skill?

3.      Given your answers to the first two questions, if the sky is the limit what do you want to do with your life, what is your dream?

4.      How can your dream help other people’s lives?

5.      Do you want to get there?

6.      What is the major barrier stopping you and can we help you remove it?

For many, to ask them to voice their dream of vocation only draws a blank look. They cannot put their dream into words, much less say how it might help others. To me, this is the worst crisis of faith that can befall a person, to never have or take the time to dream and listen for God’s call. 

In this work with impoverished folks, getting to the answer to these six questions and helping them find ways to make that dream a reality is our vocation.

As Christians, our vocation is clearly evident; to walk in the World as Christ’s representative until he comes again. It is invite the world to live as we do. To do that we have to be able to answer those 6 questions ourselves:  What do your friends and family say is your best character strength and skill?  What do you think is your best character strength and skill?   Given your answers to the first two questions, if the sky is the limit what do you want to do with your life, what is your dream? How can your dream help other people’s lives?   Do you want to get there? What is the major barrier stopping you and can we help you remove it?
 How we use our particular blessings, our skills and knowledge in concert with our fellow believers to do that is between Christ and each of us.

I hope you have had a dream about your vocation as one of Christ’s children, or will have one. When you do, I hope you will say to the Lord in total humility, “I’m just a child of God,” and then in the stillness of prayer listen to what the Holy Spirit asks you to do. If we resist, we are misleading the world and putting a millstone around our neck. When we get to that understanding and act, God will smiles upon us and give us peace in every way. The choice to respond to the calling is ours to make.  AMEN

Day 57 - The Scroll of Isaiah

A sermon delivered Jan. 23, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy, TN using Nehemiah 8:1-10, and Luke 4: 14-21.


The last three Sundays we have been on a search for answers to the question, “Why did Jesus come to earth?” I’m sure I’ll hear a sigh of relief that today finally we look at Jesus’ answer.

We have read that Jesus came to bring light into the whole world so that they might be a light themselves. We learned through his baptism that he came to cloth us in new clothes and to call us to grow by living spiritually according to his word and rub the chaff of sin away. We heard last week that a wedding in Cana was his first sign that he was coming to a great wedding with humanity where the groom showers his bride with superabundant blessings in spite of the fact that the spiritual poverty of the bride has made the Lord an unrequited lover.

Today we hear the first public announcement by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke that his is coming to bring Good News to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and free the oppressed. These are powerful words from the history of dreams to a Jewish audience captive to Imperial Rome.

What does good news to the poor, releasing the captives, giving sight to the blind and freeing the oppressed have to do light and sin an weddings? I remarked in my first sermon that all of us ought to reacquire or polish the habit of reading the Bible regularly and widely because it is the story of our relationship with God. As we gain familiarity we gain greater appreciation of how these stories connect to our modern hearts and minds and the power of Jesus coming to earth.

I was going to do a little biblical history lesson about the most grievous sins. I read Isaiah 62 in my sermon of last week. In beautiful language the Lord said he loves humanity with the passion a groom has for his bride. (Please accept the culturally specific gender usage that pales in comparison to the point.) That love is so immense that he has showered us with a superabundant blessing of priceless grace. In other words, God loves us over everything and we ought to love God and everything God created in the same way he does.

Jesus said the greatest commandment is to love the Lord with all your heart and mind and the second is like it, love your neighbor as you would love your self. (Mark 12:28-34) In other words the most grievous sins are (1) to deny God and his superabundant love; and (2) to abuse his precious creation, humankind that he loves as a groom does his bride.

I was going to talk about stories of how we abuse God’s creation that are as old as dirt. I was going to talk about Cain, the first human born in God’s creation who soaked the earth with the blood of his brother Abel, the second human born in God’s creation and when God confronted Cain, Cain replied, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:1-12) I was going to talk about Noah when God saw that society was filled with people directing violence against others and God blotted out almost all living things (Gen 6,7).


I was going to talk about the time God destroyed Sodom.  We have this idea that God destroyed Sodom because of the sexual perversion of its inhabitants but if you read the rest of the story in Ezekiel 16:48-51 you hear the Lord tell the people of Jerusalem  “ ⁴⁸ Your sister Sodom has not done as you and your daughters have done.  ⁴The guilt of Sodom is that it had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.  They were haughty, and did abominable things therefore I removed them when I saw it.


I was going to talk about the Hebrews in the desert of Sinai before they entered the promised land when the Lord commanded them, “Remember you were slaves in Egypt and I brought you out. Do not harvest your fields to the edge but leave a border of grain for the poor, needy and alien among you. Do not glean your fields but leave the remainder for those who have little.”
I was going to read this quote from Deuteronomy 6:10-15, “¹⁰the LORD your God has brought you into the land that he swore to your ancestors, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob to give you - a land with fine, large cities that you did not build, ¹¹ - houses filled with all sorts of goods that you did not fill, - hewn cisterns that you did not hew, - vineyards and olive groves that you did not plant—and when you have eaten your fill,  ¹² take care that you do not forget the LORD, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. “ to make the point that the sin of Israel was spiritual poverty and blindness, who used God’s blessing to convince themselves they were a nation of self-made people not as a chosen, privileged people indebted to God


Jesus reads this an ancient prophesy from the scroll of Isaiah in that Nazarene synagogue to proclaim he has come to remove the blot of the greatest sins against God, (1) refusing to love God over everything else like a bride of her groom, and (2) not treating everyone, the person living in the gutter, you and me – all his beloved humanity with the same compassion and love God has for us. I hope you would agree that Jesus still expects his Church to live that proclamation as the charter in Luke as it walks in the world.

I was going to fast forward 2,000 years to 2013 and talk about the hole in our Gospel. Today we find 75% of the PC(USA) and its predecessor churches that were present in Chattanooga in 1980 are gone. I was going to talk about how.the majority of us citizens of the church are crowned by material status and economic success compared to the world, yet we are impoverished spiritually by the absence among us of the economically and socially distressed people in our communities, the very people Jesus said he came to free.


I was going to point out not much has changed today from the Sinai desert. We have a wealthy church, our PC(USA) statistics show that our membership compared to the general population has 50% more people earning over $60,000/yr and 50% less people earning below $30,000/yr.  This is the hole in our Gospel and conscience.

As far back as 1935 we heard a preacher called Richard Niebuhr tell the story. He looked over Western culture and saw the wreckage of a first World War, the looming clouds of war in Germany and disintegration of the German Church and the failure of the Social Gospel to solve any social problems. He saw the marriage of the Church to the expansive growth of materialism encouraged by industrial capitalism, not to God.  He saw people out of work living in hobo camps, bankers jumping out of windows because they lost their fortune, newspapers full of stories about how far the state of the church and society had sunk.

He concluded that the poverty, oppression and spiritual blindness is a universal sickness. We are all impoverished spiritually by our wealth or our lack of it. He actually said the church faces a single question, “What must it do to be saved?”

We have to understand how much poverty we share with the family living in the homeless camp under the bridge.  I am constantly reminded of it every week as I work with the homeless shelter in downtown Chattanooga. The first mistake is we can solve our guilt by giving the poor money.

One man in our group thanked us at thanksgiving all he wanted was to see his kids. and bottom fell out. He worked hard and at Thanksgiving his wife relented and invited him home.  We got him a van to get to work. Unbeknownst to us or our man, his wife didn't want him to get custody or visitation right to see the children, so when he got there at thanksgiving it all fell apart. His wife greeted him with meth and after a night of partying, called his sponsor saying she suspected he was high on drugs. He failed the drug test and was kicked out of the program by the management. Our gift of money the van helped destroy him because we didn’t take the time to help his healing by counseling that to fully recover it is necessary to permanently or at least temporarily give up a relationship that is dragging him down. In this case, his wife. His old relationships sunk him back into the mire of despair.

Leroy, another of our group had a dream. He wants his kids to know he hung the moon, but does not know how to get there over his bad past there except he said, please help me. Who is going to help him as a friend to get there?

It is so much easier to be like the priest and pharisee and cross over to the other side of the road to avoid the problem. I had an eye-opening experience in Atlanta. I played a prominent role in Godspell. We cast the play in the context of the homeless population of downtown Atlanta. I became a non-person quite literally. 

My job was to sit out on the steps of the church made up as a beaten man, panhandling folks for spare change for a meal. The first night it was a novel experience playing with people who refused to even look directly at you. By the second night my role took on a more urgent perspective. I tried to get any ting, eye contact, a glance, even a nickel. I became a great observer of shoes, nice loafers, fancy high heels. By the third night, I was desperate. It took all my effort to even solicit a glance. The realization struck me with the force of a blow, I no longer existed, I was invisible to the patrons of the show. You have to walk with someone to understand their poverty and your own.

We all have to get to a turning point where we realize “there but for the grace of God go I.”  A simple turn of events could easily put me in Will or Leroy’s shoes. The loss of a child, loss of a job, an illness that hooks me on painkillers, alcohol that covers up my depression, greed or just simple blindness. 
We do not have to read the newspapers, watch TV, go to the movies or cruise the internet to know we have a hole in our gospel. To know how far we have fallen from the grace of God as a church and society, we only have to look around at the people crying for help and be the good Samaritan I told your children about, not the scribe or Pharisee who crossed to the other side of the road.

It is a reality that we are children of our culture, everything we learned that is important we learned before we were 5.  

This is probably the best way to think about sin, we are born into it. We all have a lot of unlearning to do.

Bringing Good News to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind and free the oppressed is quite the challenge to our daily living.


This reason that Jesus came to earth told In Luke is what I call a hard teaching that calls us to a committed spirituality and worship, something that makes us very uncomfortable because over the generations the values of our culture are steeped in our veins. As hard as that teaching is, all it takes to learn it is to walk with those who are heavy laden with fear and despair.

If Jesus said this is the reason he came to earth is to heal our fear and despair, and we realize as Christians we are his people and his church who is supposed to continue his work begun in Nazareth in that synagogue, them we have some work to do. There but for the grace of God I could be Leroy or Will.

My answer to why Jesus came to earth and to Richard Niebuhr’s question of  the salvation of  the Church is that the only way to save the Church is for us to act according to the words Jesus read from the scroll of Isaiah and feed his sheep.    Amen

Day 47 - The Sexual Nature of the Church

This is actually yesterday's  (Thursday) post.

In day 36, "Val" posted a comment quoting various parts of the Revelation according to John that claims that the church is a woman (see Revelation 12 ) although Val may object to my reading since this is the NRSV translation not the KJV translation.

I will ignore the fact that the KJV is an English translation of original and secondary language sources and the translation reflects in many places a poorly rendered translation of Greek and Hebrew.  What I mean to say is the KJV is a novel and useful translation that reveals quite erroneous rendition of certain Greek descriptions of the Biblical circumstances when good Greek and Hebrew scholarship is applied.

Val also seems not to appreciate how the symbolic and metaphoric language interplays with the literal.

This passage (Rev 12)  describes a woman giving birth to a son who was snatched away and taken to God. While Val suggests this passage indicates the "church" gave birth (a symbolic interpretation); it is a more reasonable reading to conclude the woman is a personification of Israel, especially if we read Isaiah 62 where Israel is personified as a woman taken as God's bride.

Thus it is more reasonable to conclude that the passage in question refers to Israel from whom Christ is born (literally, he was a Jew). Of course this does require a figurative reading of both citations, something our more conservative friends might be loathe to do. Nevertheless, Val seems to be making a point about the prominence of women in our religious history and future. I would whole-heartedly agree that  women are an essential focus or part of the Church in both ministry, teaching and pastoral care, but Val seems to be confusing a symbolic analogy of the relationship of the Church to God as a man to a woman, with a literal one.

I would think that any of us who experience  a deep, loving relationship with a spouse would  appreciate this powerfully exquisite metaphor of the relationship of God to humanity.

Day 43 - Unrequited Love and Superabundant Blessings

Sermon of January 20, 2013 at First Presbyterian Church, Soddy-Daisy Tennessee, based on  John 2:1-11 and Hebrew scriptures of the Revised Common Lectionary published at textweek.

The hour is here for Jesus to come to earth. For the last two Sundays, I have asked, "Why did Jesus come to earth?" The fact that I’ve talked about it, now for three Sundays and will finish next week to make four means the answer has many forms. What we are searching for is the answer that best captures the magnitude and force of his coming. 

Today, we heard Isaiah's prophecy that the Messiah will come to earth as an overabundant blessing of excess grace because the Lord delights in humanity, his creation

Even though our spiritual poverty has made him an unrequited lover, God rejoices with steadfast love of us as a groom over his bride. His walk to the cross is an act of requited love.  It is the only thing that can heal our spiritual poverty.

Today, we heard Isaiah’ prophecy that the Messiah will come to earth as an overabundant blessing of excess grace because the Lord delights in humanity, his creation.  Even though our spiritual poverty has made him an unrequited lover, God rejoices with steadfast love of us as a groom over his bride. His walk to the cross is an act of requited love. It is the only thing that can heal our spiritual poverty.

In the Gospel of John we hear of the adult Jesus who stands at the hour that his journey to the cross begins in earnest.  

As we talk about John’s words, I want to ask you to participate with me and play with your imagination. Imagine that you are in Jesus’ human mind; and if you can, look at the world the way he may have. It seems to me we cannot fully understand the magnitude of Jesus coming to earth unless we also understand his human nature.

We can’t do this with great fidelity because at the same time he is living in the world as a fellow human, Jesus knows he is not just a man but also the Son of God.  He knows his future; he sees that cross standing out there...waiting. 

What was he thinking at this wedding? Are you ready to acknowledge that his time had come to start your journey? He must have perceived and feared all the day-to-day threats and events as we would. Being human in your early thirties, you know it is time to get on with your life. You feel the necessity to embark on your vocation but you have this extra bit of divine knowledge that to do so requires you to embrace an impeding death that will cut your days short. He must have struggled in emotional turmoil knowing this misery of his upcoming human sacrifice is necessary for his life with us to make any sense at all.

He must have dreaded it, he told his mother his time had not come. Maybe your hands are sweaty, maybe you are racked with great anguish over that cross standing in your future. You know you are at the threshold of your ministry and you know that first step is going to be like one of those Indian fish traps, your time has come and once you are there, there is no turning back.

Your mother is standing there beside you here at this wedding celebration, just as you know she shall stand on a hill alone with the other women while the men have already run for cover or denied you on that day when your time arrives.  You know even now before you begin your first step that you will fully and painfully understand the nature of unrequited love as you hang there abandoned on the cross at that hour.

I have imagined a story about unrequited love of a father to a son. Here it is. This fellow borrowed his Dad’s pickup truck, went to the quarry and loaded up the truck with so much crushed rock that he broke a spring. He drove the gravel home and backing in to his driveway where he wanted to dump it, he scraped the passenger side of the door on the chain link fence post at the driveway leaving a bad gouge in the door and a broken off side mirror.

He went ahead and shoveled out the gravel from the truck and then asked then his wife to follow him over to his Dad’s to drop off the truck because he was in a hurry to get back home and spread the gravel before it rained.

On the way over, he drove through the Krystal for a cup of coke and put it in the beverage holder on the dash out of the way in order to pull out into traffic. Unfortunately, he pulled out in front of someone and had to step on the gas to avoid an accident. The coke overturned leaving a wet sticky mess on the carpet and seat. Since he was in a hurry to get back home he didn’t stop and clean it up, he just zipped over to Dad’s and backed the truck onto the driveway but when he backed in he couldn’t see the side of the driveway because of the broken mirror and crushed a hundred year old, heirloom camellia his Dad had moved from his mother’s house about forty years ago right after she died. and got in the wife’s car and headed for home. He was in a hurry so he just got in his wife’s care and headed home to finish that driveway of his own.

About a month later he realized he needed more gravel and called his Dad to see if he could borrow the truck again.  The son did not think to apologize for the spring, the door, mirror and the camellia, maybe because he was in a hurry or took his Dad for granted, or just didn’t care, I don’t know.

This time he explained to his Dad his need to borrow the truck to get some more gravel. Dad said he needed to go to the store first but on the way back would stop by the house and drop the truck off for him and would walk the rest of the way home.  He never said a word about the damage to the truck.

This is the unrequited love of a father for a son.

With this idea in mind, let’s get back in the mind of human Jesus and imagine the wedding at Cana in a little more detail.

You have showed up at this wedding with no customary gifts or food because you are poor. Like the rest of your people, you live a forsaken life, suffering under the yoke of oppression and despair. Why?

Because) Your people have ignored you; those who have plenty ignore those of your creation who have with less. Even the poor among you abuse your love and forget your commandments. So you in your divine nature you imagine them wicked people and in your divine anger and impatience send alien nations to capture and enslave them. But you still love them. You recall Psalm 36:

¹Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in their hearts; there is no fear of God before their eyes.

²For they flatter themselves in their own eyes that their iniquity cannot be found out and hated.

³The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit; they have ceased to act wisely and (to) do good.

⁴They plot mischief while on their beds; they are set on a way that is not good; they do not reject evil.

⁵Your steadfast love, O Lord, extends to the heavens, your faithfulness to the clouds.

⁶Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains, your judgments are like the great deep; you save humans and animals alike, O Lord.

⁷How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.

⁸They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.

⁹For with you is the fountain of life; in your light we see light.

¹⁰O continue your steadfast love to those who know you, and your salvation to the upright of heart!

¹¹Do not let the foot of the arrogant tread on me, or the hand of the wicked drive me away.

¹²There the evildoers lie prostrate; they are thrust down, unable to rise.

[The words “steadfast love” come as close as it can to “unrequited love”]

Here you are at a celebration of a wedding party.  (Now as a grown man) You have called your faithful disciples to you, you know your time is near and maybe a human fear nags you, “Are you really ready for this?”  Maybe you need that glass of wine to calm your nerves, you are human you know.

You have brought at least 13 people and yourself to this wedding celebration but nothing else. Wedding celebrations can continue for a week. Friends and relatives come from everywhere and expect to rejoice and entertain and be fed. It takes a lot of food and beverages.

You think, boy weddings are special! They recall your promise in Isaiah 62 to Zion – Zion is the Hebrew word for a woman who laments her plight, now that woman has come to be Israel in her captivity.

Listen again to the powerful words of God from Isaiah:

"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. ²The 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. ³You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand of your God. ⁴You shall no more be named Forsaken, and your land shall no more be named Desolate; but you shall be called Hephzibah (My Delight Is in Her), and your land (shall be called) Married; for the Lord delights in you, and your land shall be married. ⁵As 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."

You remember these magnificent and powerful words, you called your land “married” because you as Lord delight in them as a groom with his bride. And so with your mother’s prod to “do something,” she unwittingly and ironically begins your trek to the cross where a sword will pierce her heart as she watches her son die.

And so, you make wine out of 6-30 gallon jars of water. Not just any wine, but the best wine. Not just a little wine but about 600 bottles of the best wine. It is a superabundant wedding gift, and it is not a miracle. It is the first true sign of the superabundant blessing you are bringing to your wedding with humanity. With this creation you signal the beginning of the journey to the greatest human and divine celebration of marriage ever. The best wine shall be served last.

And perhaps being human you remind yourself and take solace in the fact that this is why you came to earth, this is the hour to begin the walk to the cross that shall set us free.  Amen.