Sermon for Sunday, January 19th 2025

Second Sunday after the Epiphany [Proper 2] rcl yr c, 2025
ISAIAH 62:1-5; PSALM 36:5-10; 1 CORINTHIANS 12:1-11; JOHN 2:1-11

though the servants who had drawn the water knew

When Karen and I were married we had a very special cake made for us. We were both avid canoeists and canoe trippers at the time, and the bakers had taken a little wooden canoe and put it on the top of the cake in a pool of bright blue icing with a bright blue icing waterfall coming down the side of the cake. It was beautiful!

Come the day of the wedding, my soon to be father- and brother-in-law were tasked with getting the cake from the bakery to the reception venue. Now in my in-law’s household at the time, anytime there was a new driver practicing for their road test, that new driver did all the driving if they were in the car. Even if there was a very special wedding cake in the car.

Now I wasn’t in the car when this happened, but you can sure bet that the story of what happened in the car that day has been told a good number of times. Apparently, with my then fifteen-and-a-half-year-old  soon to be brother-in-law having come to a stop at a stop sign, but with traffic approaching from the left, my soon-to-be father-in-law  chose to encourage my soon-to-be brother-in-law to go through the intersection.

Apparently, the precise words that were used in suggesting to the novice driver to proceed through the intersection were “gun it!” A proposal that my soon-to-be brother-in-law took to heart. Having applied his foot to the gas with verve and gusto, and having not entirely considered Newton’s First Law of Motion—that objects at rest will stay that way—the car moved, the cake slid, and hit the side of the box with a moist “thud.”

And there was much weeping and gnashing of teeth.

The story does have a good ending. Not only can we laugh about this story now (although come to think of it this may be the first time I’ve used this story in a sermon illustration after nearly 30 years of marriage) but even on the day things turned out ok. Karen’s aunt was a hero, and showed up in the hotel kitchen, and between her and the kitchen staff the cake was repaired. The lake was a little less blue, but the layers were stacked up properly again, and the canoe was perched back upon its caketop lake, and the waterfall was a waterfall again.

And unless someone told you—you’d never have known. All the people in the back of the kitchen knew. But unless you were told about the heroics of Aunt Lisa and the kitchen staff, you simply enjoyed a beautiful cake. The work was hidden, but the fruits of that work were equally enjoyed by all.

And according to our Gospel from today—the wedding at Cana—this is how the glory of the Lord works too. The works of glory are hidden; only some know of this work of glory; but everyone at the feast gets to enjoy that glory, even when you are entirely unaware of the origin and operation of that glory. They all drank from those 600 or so bottles of good wine, and few were wise to that fact that it took a miracle to get that wine to the table.

This seems an apt story to tell, as a sort of Johannine parable. John’s Gospel doesn’t have any parables, though it does have some wise sayings and stories; but events like this—the Wedding at Cana—shares some of the qualities of a parable. The meaning of the story is a bit mysterious, and open to different sorts of interpretation; they are generative, as David Ford might say. and to reflect on them is to reflect on God’s often mysterious, and counter-intuitive ways in the world.

Why wouldn’t Jesus take the credit? Why was the miracle of the water transformed in to wine hidden from just about everyone—including the most important people at the wedding!—and only revealed to the disciples, and to the kitchen hands in the back?

We will get to that. But for now, it seems an apt story for the church to tell about itself in a time when the heart of our proclamation, and what we may know about the glory of God, is increasingly hidden from the world.

And hidden in a number of ways. The cultural memory and knowledge of Christianity’s practice and our proclamation is receding further and further back in the cultural mind, in great part because exposure to Christ, and the glory of the Lord, is becoming less and less common. Combine that with the sorts of Christianity that does get broad exposure—the sort of Christianity that is so deeply twisted into the sorts of things Christianity is not, including racist and colonial nationalisms, and all sorts of run-of-the-mill hatefulness—means that the glory of the Lord, and the goodness we know he has accomplished and will continue to accomplish, is even more deeply hidden from others.

If we were to take this a little bit further, though, we would come to realize in greater depth the extraordinary generosity of God here. Because, just like those guests at our wedding who knew nothing of the drama of the attempted vehicular cake slaughter earlier in the day, or the lengths that aunts and kitchen-workers went to to save the day and rehabilitate a wedding cake, all the guests at our wedding got to enjoy cake anyway.

Like all the guests at the wedding at Cana who had no idea that the disaster of a wineless wedding was being averted by Jesus and his demanding mother, and that the miracle of wine into water was known only by the disciples and the kitchen staff, all those guests at the wedding at Cana—no matter their ignorance of the glory of God—still got to enjoy the good wine.

And this is true too of much of the world we live in. We may be growing in our knowledge of the glory of the Lord and God’s extraordinary generosity, and even as we share the benefits given to us through giving from what we have, through sharing our space, sharing our time and our musical talents, offering opportunities to worship the living God, even as we give all this away: the glory of the Lord remains a great mystery to many.

Yes we proclaim, yes we invite, and yes we await and even anticipate revival and growth. And we do this because we have seen the glory of the Lord, and we are drawn into his generosity, his obedience, and his good-heartedness. But even as we do so, the glory of the Lord remains something of a mystery to others.

There is more to this, though; it’s more than a helpful story for the sake of a church when the cultural memory of Christianity is fading. And the more of this story, is the most important part of this story. Jesus tells Mary that he is not concerned about the lack of wine, because, as he puts it, “My hour has not yet come.” That is, there is a greater glory yet to be seen and known.

Thankfully this greater glory that is yet to come doesn’t, in the end, keep Jesus from sharing the smaller glories—wine into water in John’s Gospel, and things like the benefit of community life (in all its challenges), the chance  to receive kindness from others, and the opportunity  to worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness, the chance to welcome children into our life and for communion. The greater glory Jesus speaks of, thankfully, does not exclude these smaller wonders.

In John’s Gospel, though, the greater glory that is to come is the cross. And the cross is public, it is not hidden. Wine may have been made from water in the back kitchen of the wedding and far from the eyes of most, but the cross is not something that happens in a corner.

Luther is very good on this point. While the cross is the great glory of the Lord, and even though the cross is public, that glory of God is hidden on the cross: hidden in plain sight. And we can understand why Luther might say this: how exactly is a public execution something glorious? And yet it is, because the cross  is where our salvation is made sure, where God accomplishes in Christ something that we cannot accomplish on our own. On the cross we die with Christ; and if we die with Christ on the cross, then we live with Christ in his resurrection.

But this glory of the cross is not reserved simply for those who know and have seen this glory; it too, is a glory for the sake of all: because the glory of the cross is that on that cross Jesus is gathering all people, all things, to himself; a death, and a life, for the sake of you, me, but also for the sake of all, and even for the sake of the life of the cosmos itself. “When his is lifted up,” according to John’s Gospel, “he draws all people, all things, to himself.”

This glory of the cross  is that in this death he is gathering us all into his arms: for cake, for wine, and for the sake of the life of the world; we may resist, (we do resist,) but we are transformed in our resistance; and we are slowly, but surely, being gathered into the life of God, and deeper into the life of glory: the glory of the cross that gives life.

The Revd Canon Preston DS Parsons, PhD