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Who Gets To See Restoration



A sermon on John 2:1-11


[for an audio recording of this sermon, click here. Photo by Tim Mossholder on Unsplash.]


This past Wednesday night we had a board game night here at the church as part of our January fellowship focus.

There was a little friendly competition and lots of laughing.

We got to learn that Demetria dislikes man buns, that Heather has been playing Dungeons & Dragons since she was 13 (ask her sometime about her D&D sibling story, it’s lovely), and we even learned through experience that tossing tiny plastic pigs like dice can be surprisingly entertaining.

But there was one game I had brought as an option that we didn’t get around to playing: It’s called That’s It.

The game involves one person drawing a card with a set of several categories on it, and for each category there is one particular associated word that the players have to guess.

Everyone shouts out any words they can think of until someone hits on the target word and gets the point… unless everyone gives up in which case the person with the card gets the point.

Since we didn’t get to play on game night, I thought maybe we could all play a quick round together. I’ll state a category, and you all just shout out any word you can think of associated with that category. OK?

First category: Season        (target answer: Epiphany)

Next: Gospel            (John)

OK, last one: Wedding        (servants)

I predicted that that last category might take a while.

Because… when we think of weddings, we are likely to think of the aspects of the day associated with the romance, and beauty, and pageantry of the event.

The vows, the bride’s gown, the flowers, the cake… all these things are designed to grab out attention.

But the waitstaff, the caterers in the back, the custodial staff at the venue… they are supposed to be invisible.

Which is why I find it so fascinating that in today’s gospel story, it is the servants, the menials, the people we are not supposed to see who themselves get to see, and even to be part of, Jesus’s first act of public ministry.

This week’s SALT commentary points out the unexpectedness of this focus, noting:

“As anyone who’s been to a wedding knows, such celebrations are often status-driven affairs. But Jesus’ astonishing work is revealed not to the groom or the bride or the host family, but rather to the servants, the “nobodies” working behind the scenes. Yes, Jesus “goes public” here — but only to the lowly servants at the party, working away in the kitchen!”[1]

Of course, this is in part due to the nature of the crisis that precipitates Jesus’ intervention.

The servants are the ones who first realize the problem… Because they are the ones responsible for making sure everyone else has a good time. They don’t get to enjoy the party, but they will hear it if the inadequate supply of wine embarrasses the host.

But, in a way, this circumstance underscores the counter-cultural significance of Jesus choosing this group of people to participate in his miraculous act… because the consistently excluded are the ones that he chooses to include by performing his sign in the background, where no one but the servants can see it.

By virtue of their marginal status, their defining role of functioning behind the scenes, the servants are the ones who get to see what happens behind the scenes… not just getting the result of Jesus’s act of power and being confused about where it came from (as with the steward),…or being completely ignorant of its occurrence (as with the inebriated guests, who simply drink the superior wine)… but getting to witness the transformation of lack into abundance, simple water into the best wine.

The low-status people are the ones who get to see this happen.

And this truth is all the more significant because “seeing” is a thematic through-line of John’s gospel:

At key points throughout the story, people are invited to “come and see” what Jesus is doing.

And the miracles around which John’s story-telling is organized (of which this is the first) are referred to as “signs.”

Because the importance of Jesus’s acts of power are less about the miracle-ness of it all and more about what they reveal, what the people who observe the signs can learn about Jesus.

Which should make us wonder what those servants learned…

They learned that Jesus had power, of course, that is the nature of miracles.

But I imagine they also learned what he used his power for:

He used it for bringing abundance out of apparent, anxious scarcity…

And he did it without any need for personal glory or public praise…

And he specifically chose to produce a ridiculously massive amount of wine (more than 100 gallons of it).

For us, this might just signify a party, a chance for joy and celebration as a community, but wine had a symbolic significance for the Hebrew prophets like Isaiah and Amos: it indicated restoration, the fulfillment of God’s promises to an exiled people to establish them again as a nation of blessing and abundance.[2]

In this context, wine is a powerful symbol to invoke as the first, revelatory sign of Jesus’s ministry.

It frames his mission as the work of bringing blessing out of hopelessness,

of causing overflowing joy when we have learned to expect fear,

of reminding us that God’s people have felt abandoned and invisible before, but that their time of exile came to an end, and God brought them back to the promised land.

That’s quite a sign. Especially for anyone for feels abandoned, or invisible, or uninvited to the party.

On this particular weekend, when we remember the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., I can’t help but think of his famous final sermon, preached on the eve of his assassination, when he talked about seeing the promised land…

of his affirmation that, whatever transpired with the known threats on his life, he was not worried, because, in his words, “mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.”[3]

These words were an affirmation of the hope that we can find in the understanding that the nature of Jesus’s mission is restoration that far exceeds anything we can imagine.

And it’s a reminder that this vision of restoration was revealed, first, to those who most needed to see it.

Again, the SALT commentary states it so clearly:

“this good news isn’t only or even primarily addressed to the rich and powerful, the well-to-do families with overflowing banquet tables. In fact, in the first place this news is for the vulnerable and the disinherited, the lowly servants at the modest weddings that run out of wine. Grace flows and fills not from the top down, but from the bottom up, grace upon grace upon grace.”[4]

So, if you are, perhaps, feeling discouraged this weekend.

If you feel invisible or powerless.

If you see scarcity, rather than abundance.

If your wine of celebration seems to have run out.

Consider that the sign of Jesus’s life-affirming, bottom-up, grace-upon-grace ministry of restoration might just be revealed first to you.

Thanks be to God.


[2] The Salt Commentary (see above) highlights the prophecies in Amos 9:11-14, and Isaiah 55:1-13.

[3] “I See the Promised Land”, sermon from April 3, 1968 delivered by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at Mason Temple in Memphis, Tennessee. Published in A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., Ed. James M. Washington. Harper San Francisco. © 1986, p. 286.

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To request permission to use site content, please contact Abiding Peace Lutheran Church in writing at 305 US Highway 46, Budd Lake, NJ 07828 or by e-mail: aplcbuddlake@gmail.com 

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