sermons

John 2:1-11 “What’s with Wine?” [read only]

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:04:29 -0500

By: Kara Root
Preached the Sunday following the devastating earthquake in Haiti

When I was 16 years old, I went to a wedding, in Haiti. The bride and groom from the tiny village couldn’t stop smiling. The small cinderblock church building was hung with flowers and greenery and packed to overflowing with people. The bridesmaids wore flowers in their hair and had found somewhere buried in the collection of donated T-shirts we’d brought along, the ones the church ladies had hidden in horror after we arrived – six matching pink shirts with an image of a guy in a boat and expletives across the bottom about rather being fishing. They had dug them out and, not knowing the English translation of the symbols and words they were wearing, proudly came down the aisle in matching pink.
Everyone waved palm branches like it was Palm Sunday, as the wedding party danced in. There was singing, so much singing, and laughter, and joy. And after the ceremony, we turned the pews towards tables and we feasted, a goat they had killed for that night, and the specialty that the Americans brought along that was served alongside it- popcorn.
If Jesus had been at that wedding, there would have been wine. But there didn’t need to be. Jesus was there, we had our wine. In the midst of that celebration we lacked for nothing, poverty was not a concern; it was a taste of rich and abundant joy.

In John’s gospel we have a story of a wedding, and this story is a sign - it is about a wedding, but it’s not about a wedding. Jesus came and did something entirely unexpected; the jars of water for cleansing are turned to wine. Good wine, the best wine, and more of it than they could drink, abundance and vitality where there was lack and no expectation for anything different. It points to joy, fulfillment, the promise of the arrival of God’s new age anticipated in the Old Testament, it has come in Jesus Christ. It is symbolic of God’s eternal purpose and overflowing grace.
It calls us to trust, it beckons us to faith – that God can do more than we could ever ask or hope.

But it’s not a wedding right now in Haiti. It’s not a celebration. It is nothing short of hellish suffering and horror. And it seems ridiculous, inhumane even, to talk about God giving wine when there is not even any water.

I had the urge to yell back at this text all week long, what is this wine? We need water, plain water, nothing fancy, no abundance, no over the top moves, here, we’re not asking for parking spots and special perks, we are asking for life and death help, and water. Just plain old water will do.
What place is there for wine when there is no water?
How do we talk about God bringing things like abundance, joy, happiness in the face of such devastation?

There were reports, the first couple of nights, that all over the city of Port-au-Prince, when the sun went down and there was no electricity to aid the searching, and people tried to find somewhere to sleep on the streets, and those crying out from under the wreckage eventually went silent, a sound could be heard, rising above the rest, the sound of singing – all over the city, church groups singing. In the darkness, in the fear, in the unknown, music of hope, rising above the rubble.
A song does not belong here. It belongs with weddings and joy, with feasts and fun, happiness, hope. It has no place in terror. It can’t dig people out of collapsed buildings or bandage open wounds; and it seems counter to what anybody needs or feels to sing.
But in that moment, the song becomes what sustains them; a promise, heard in the dark, a benediction shared, hope coming from outside of what they are experiencing in the moment. It points to a reality beyond what they can see and know; it proclaims a truth that exists in a completely different context than where they find themselves at the moment.
The song is the wine.

They need water in Haiti. Yes.
But they need more than water. They need the wine.
They need the jars that hold the foot water to be filled not once again with foot water, the status quo, the ordinary maintenance of an impoverished and unjust existence. In a city that had no clean water before any of this even happened, they don’t need things to go back to the way they were.

They need wine, they need the eschaton, the great wedding feast, where all will be fed and made whole, and filled with joy, and there will be no more pain and suffering.
Ultimately we need beyond what is ours to provide, more than what we’re capable of seeing as possible.

And even when it presents such a stark contrast with what we see in front of us today, maybe especially now, this story of Jesus’ first miracle is a reminder of a promise – that the God of steadfast, abundant, overwhelming love can act.

So, then why doesn’t God? Where is God in this?

“They have no wine!” Mary says to Jesus,
“What concern is that to you and me?” He answers.
“Whether it is of concern to you or not, I can’t say,” Mary, the one with faith says to God incarnate, “I am telling you, they have run out of wine and you can do something about it."

I don’t know what it means, Jesus, your time has not yet come…
Why not? I want to answer, this seems like a pretty good time to me.
I don’t understand.
So I will keep on asking.
Like Mary, I will keep on speaking to God about these things – the wine has run out, there is no water, things are really really bad. God, do something. Do something.

There is another story of wine, that I think of today. It is when Jesus stands before his disciples and lifts the cup and says, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, poured out for you for the forgiveness of sins.” And he tells them to drink it, to share in his broken body and spilled blood as he shares in ours.
“This is my body, broken for you. This is my blood, shed for you.
Drink this wine and remember."

And then he dies, the God of our humanity takes on himself our suffering and death and fear and aloneness so fully that it extinguishes his life.
And on the 3rd day, when the dead are really dead and not coming back, he rises, and breaks the power of death to separate us from God. He is the life of the world. He is the hope of the world.
On the 3rd day, there was a wedding.

Jesus is NOT at a wedding instead of in Haiti.
He is not only in abundance and joy, and ignoring the cries for help.
The God of the cross is there right now, he is under the buildings with those who are afraid and alone, and clawing at the cement with his bare hands to free them, and weeping with the orphans and widowers, and standing with every single person there or anywhere who suffers in any way.

I don’t know why God doesn’t keep horrific things from happening. But if God is found anywhere, it is with those who suffer.
And also, we do believe God is abundant in love and faithful, and generous. You and I have seen this in our lives, and like the disciples, we believe.
So like Mary, we will not let up - because we do trust God, even when we don’t understand.

And that is our calling, actually. We will be the ones who ask, the ones who expect that God can do something different than anyone can imagine, that God can intervene to change the course of things and so we will keep on asking, and keep on asking, and maybe even wont take no for an answer.

We will speak out the need, and we will live from the future reality – that poverty and injustice have no place, and we will not accept them.
We will sing in the darkness,
We will embody the hope: that the world our God intends and promises is one where nobody is thirsty, or alone, or afraid,
and so we will stand with those who are,
and we will give generously,
and love profusely,
and trust in the unexpected end,
and raise our glasses in anticipation,
and with every breath say, “Come Lord Jesus.”

Come Lord Jesus.
Amen.

Luke 13: 1-9 “A Matter of Life and Death” [read only] Isaiah 55:1-9

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 12:59:34 -0500

By: Kara Root

I had a close friend in 6th grade named Meenal. She was Indian, and Hindu, and she had been born with two chambers in her heart instead of four, and had surgeries as a baby that divided it into three, but as a result she was much smaller than your average sixth grader. But other than her size, which she dismissed with a flick of her hand and a sentence about her heart, there was nothing to reveal that anything was wrong with her. Meenal was funny, and killer smart. She lived a few blocks from me and I can remember lip syncing to cassette tapes we’d recorded off the radio in her bedroom while her little brother peeked in the crack of the door in disgust, trying on her sticky dots on my forehead in her bathroom mirror, and eating meals at her family table across from the painting of the god Vishnu on her living room wall.

Meenal had a mini Kit Kat in her lunch box every single day, and she would save it for the bus ride home. After we’d leave the school parking lot, Meenal would carefully unwrap the candy bar, break it and give me one stick. Then she would eat the other by nibbling the chocolate off the sides and then biting it apart layer by layer.

Meenal and I went to junior high together and our friendship continued. We were always partners for projects and I can still see her pushing her glasses up her nose, flipping her braid over her shoulder and collapsing in hysterical laughter over something. Towards the end of 7th grade, Meenal got sick. She had to go in to the hospital, and I didn’t know much about what was going on. I got the flu for a few days, and wasn’t able to visit her there. Then I got better, and she was, for some reason, still in the hospital, and I still didn’t go see her for a while.
The day I finally was to visit Meenal, my mom picked me up early at school so that we could go to the hospital from there. I had notes from friends to Meenal to bring with me. The school nurse offered to call ahead and make sure it was a good time to see her, and I pulled on my coat and zipped my backpack shut and plopped down on a chair in the office while my mom signed me out at the front desk. Afer a minute, the nurse came out of her office and came over to me with a strange expression on her face. She looked at my mom and me and said, “I am so sorry. Meenal died this morning.”

The biggest emotion I had for the next several weeks, besides just disbelief and deep sadness, was guilt. Guilt that I didn’t go see her, what kind of a friend was I? Regret at having missed the chance to say goodbye. But the more insidious and heavier guilt that kept my crying at night was the thought that Meenal had died before I told her about Jesus. That was my responsibility – I had been her friend for two years, and had never told her about Jesus. She knew I was a Christian and had been at our dinner table when we prayed, just as I knew she was Hindu and had shared her table. We had talked a little about our religions, but I had never helped her to know Jesus, and she had died before I had “the talk” with her. Which meant, to my 13 year old broken heart, that Meenal had gone to hell and it was my fault.

Grief and regret tortured me mercilessly day after day. One night lying in bed I cried until I was utterly exhausted, apologizing over and over to God, begging God to hear me, to see her, not to blame her for my downfall, appealing to God’s love to do something to make the situation right. “She’s just a kid!” I pleaded. “I’m so sorry!”

And then, in the darkness I heard, almost audibly, a clear voice completely separate from my desperate pleadings, words that broke through mine, interrupting them and seeming in my minds eye to wrap around Meenal’s tiny body in warmth, the voice said, “I’ve got her. She’s ok. She is mine.”
And I sobbed with relief. I didn’t understand it – it didn’t make sense at all to what I believed – and in fact I could not explain it for years afterward - but it was so utterly real that immediately I was flooded with peace – like water washing through me. “She is mine.”

God doesn’t play by our rules and religion. God doesn’t step in and save those we think should be saved, punish those we know deserve punishment, or honor our clear cut system of choices and consequences, penalties and rewards, earning and losing. God doesn’t keep little girls with half a heart from dying, or send them to hell for what they do or don’t believe.

When the people ask Jesus about those that had died in a tragedy, Jesus tells them as much. It’s not because of anything they did, Bad things happen, death is real, and capricious and merciless, and disasters strike, sickness comes, terrible things happen and they are not fair, not earned, not brought on by people’s thoughts or choices. Sometimes they just happen and that’s the way it is.
And it would be nice if he’d have stopped there. But he goes on to say, but unless you repent you’ll die like they did. Thanks, Jesus, you’ve really cleared this up for us.

Then he tells this story of the fig tree. It isn’t producing any fruit. It isn’t showing any signs of life. Maybe it should just be cut down. “Give it another year,” the gardener says. Let me put manure around it. The Greek word Jesus puts in the mouth of the gardener, which is so politely translated as “manure” here is actually the vulgar word for excrement, in other words he says, “let it sit in shit for another year and see if it doesn’t start living.”

We don’t get to have an easy system, simple answers, a cause and effect type of arrangement with God, or with death. And there is nothing we can do to guarantee long life, or salvation, or freedom from suffering. And we cannot find easy blame for the tragedies that happen in life, no formula for avoiding them or preventing them from happening to us.
Death is always near and it cannot be controlled or explained. But it can happen any moment, Jesus says to his questioners, and unless you repent, you will die like they did. One moment here, the next, gone. So how will you live your life? Will you live for death or life?

Repent. he says. Repent is not a moral word, like we like to make it. It isn’t about what we do, or being good or bad. Repentance is turning from death to life – a complete reorientation. Sometimes it is used as something that happens to you, rather than something you do. One biblical scholar says, “It can be more about being found than about finding oneself.”[1]

I repented that night about Meenal. I was found by God. I was reoriented from death to life. I was deeply conscious of my shame, my weakness and precariousness, I felt the fragility of life and the nearness of death, and above and around these things, I was caught in the overwhelming and astonishing awareness of God’s mercy and love that holds us all. I could now see the whole of our friendship as a gift, and not as a failure, and I saw Meenal now laughing and talking a blue streak at God’s own table.
And my own life was redeemed and given back to me, no longer captive to guilt but a gift, every day one more day than she had. “What about my friend?” I had asked. “She’s gone and it’s not her fault, and it’s not your’s either, he had answered. “But what about you?” How will you live? Repent. Turn to me and live.”

This business of life and living is not about what you earn or squander, being deserving or unworthy. It is not about right and wrong, or good and bad. It’s more urgent and elemental than that – it’s about life and death. This is the paradigm shift Jesus is trying to impart to his listeners.

Death comes, and tragedy and suffering strike often without warning. But how will you LIVE? Will you live toward life or toward death? What will define you? Will you participate in death? Will you let your life be run by fear – seeking to preserve yourself at all cost, even over against others? Even at the expense of your own well-being and wholeness? Will you let the same force that takes lives in senseless violence or horrible disasters be what you live for, whether you serve it or avoid it, always keeping your eyes on it and letting it dictate your actions? Will you live toward death?

Or will you repent and live toward life? Will you turn away from death to God – whatever suffering and tragedy may befall you, and participate in the life that comes from death, defies death and our structures that serve it? The abundance that invites all to come to the table and eat – money or not, the life that doesn’t pay you back by what you earn or deserve, or by what circumstances you’ve landed in, but by the grace and love of God alone, the life that seeks wholeness and connection, fullness and love? Will you live toward the life you were created for?

And if you need help getting there, Jesus adds, why not sit in the shit for a while?
Because if you do, you may find that it produces repentance, that it nurtures awareness of fragility and reality, initiates a shift within you from death toward life. In fact, letting yourself sit there a while you may begin to see brand new life coming from death itself; from decay and stench is born beauty, strength and fruit.

Life is fragile, and it is short. And there is a lot about it we can’t control. But life is such a gift. And within what one writer calls, “the awful precariousness and strange beauty of our fleeting existence,”[2] God’s grace invites us all to the banquet table of the life that is greater than death, saying, “Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labor for that which does not satisfy?  Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food.  Incline your ear, and come to me; listen, so that you may live.”

Luke “The Lost Son” (podcast only)

Sun, 14 Mar 2010 17:32:18 -0500

This sermon explores the reality that being human means losing our stuff--often our most essential stuff (love, meaning, identity, hope). Through this text we see how God seeks for what is lost and through admitting our lost-ness we are found.

Mark 9 "How Long" (podcast only)

Sat, 27 Feb 2010 13:04:47 -0600

This sermon explores feeling alone and up against impossible struggle and feeling like Jesus is on vacation. But, as we see in the text when Jesus encounters such despair he asks “how long,” inviting those catching the impossible to tell their story of despair. It then in is wrestling with our stories of despair, wrestling with our doubt, that we encounter God.