“No Running Out”
John 2:1-11
“When the wine gave out,” the story says.
“When the wine gave out?” you might ask.
“The wine gave out?” Jesus scoffed at his mother, Mary, who was insisting that he do something about it.
Granted, it was not an emergency. No one needed to call 911. No one’s life was at stake. It wasn’t as if someone would starve or die or suffer horribly from a life-limiting condition if no solution were found. There was no fundamental issue of justice or injustice, no statement to be made about who’s in and who’s out, what it means to love our neighbor, and who is or is not our neighbor.
It was just a wedding reception!
Except, of course, that there is no such thing as just a wedding reception, any more than there is such a thing as just a wedding or just an anniversary celebration or a big birthday or retirement celebration, or Thanksgiving dinner.
All these events and more carry all the potential and pressure of being distillations of what is best about life: love, family, friends, community, joy.
So we can probably understand the embarrassment and shame that running out of wine at a wedding reception could bring—especially in the culture of Israel and Palestine, where in Jesus’ time and still today, hospitality and honor were everything. But we may have a harder time understanding how anyone could have let such a humiliating thing happen. Surely the wedding planner knew that the celebration would last for seven days; surely the groom’s father placed his order in time. And yet someone seemed to have made a horrible mistake.
Or not.
There are oversights, and then there are circumstances. There is such a thing as temporarily running out of something, and then there is never having enough. There is poor planning and then there is being poor.
And so it was that the wine—a symbol of the joy of joining two precious lives, a concrete representation of the miracle of merging two different families and genealogies, a substance for toasting the creation of something new and beautiful, a way to prolong the celebration of love and hope and possibility—had run out.
These were, after all, Jews living in the backwoods of first-century Palestine. They were poor people made poorer by the taxes their Roman occupiers forced them to pay to Caesar.
And the running out of the wine would have brought not only shame upon the groom’s family, it would have also reinforced for everyone at the wedding—people desperate for something to celebrate—their less-than status, their struggle to maintain some sense of identity and dignity in a repressive system. What more clear and dramatic (if unintentional) way to reinforce the sense that they were people going hungry in a land of plenty than to be guests at a wedding where there was no more wine.
Maybe it was this sense of shame and defeat that Mary wanted Jesus to prevent. Or maybe she simply wanted people who must have been close friends or extended family to have a good time.
More than that, Mary seemed to understand—perhaps even better than Jesus, at that moment—that God provides joy in abundance. Mary also seemed to understand—perhaps better than Jesus—that his ministry would be all about revealing God’s love: God’s Love Made Flesh, God’s love made manifest in healing and empowerment, inclusion and compassion, justice and peace, and, yes, such basic and necessary things as security, well-being, and joy, which were and are so often expressed in rich food and an endless supply of wine or the special non-alcoholic beverage of choice.
While Jesus, still a little wet behind the ears, may have thought that the wedding party’s running out of wine was of no concern to him, his mother knew better. She understood that any and all sense of scarcity and not enough, especially when it led to shame and discouragement, was of great concern to God.
While Jesus, who had just recruited his disciples and was still trying to wrap his head around what it meant to God’s beloved, may have thought that his hour had not yet come, his mother knew better. She saw a need, and knowing God’s heart and her son’s power, called on Jesus to take action.
More than that, Mary didn’t take Jesus’ “no” for an answer.
Now, you or I might have given up, much as we’re tempted to do when things don’t go our way, much as we do when we decide to interpret our struggles and hard times as some kind of divine door being slammed in our faces.
You or I might have said, “You know, Jesus: You’re right. It’s not really important. I’m not really important. With everything that’s going on in the world, and the rough times other people are going through, my situation really doesn’t matter. And besides, I’m not sure I even deserve God’s blessings. It feels like the blessings have run out for me but, that’s okay, I can live with the empty. Don’t mind me, Jesus; your love is meant for bigger things.”
But not Mary.
Because she knew who Jesus was and what God’s love could do, Mary proceeded as if what she had asked for would come to pass. She ignored Jesus’ response and said boldly to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Mary did more than simply ask Jesus to act; she did more than merely invite him into the situation. She was living by faith, opening the door for him to make a way out of no way. And Jesus did not disappoint.
At Jesus’ command, the water jars that had stood empty were filled to the very top. And then, in the presence of great love and joy and openness, what was ordinary and commonplace became the finest wine. What was customary had been turned on its head: The best had been saved for last, and there was more than enough for everyone.
This is not the last time that Jesus would transform a situation of scarcity into one of abundance. Later he would feed the five thousand and then four thousand more, each time with what appeared to be only a few loaves and fishes. Crowds would hear Jesus speak again and again of life abundant and God’s extravagance.
But isn’t it something that Jesus’ very first “sign”—according to the Gospel of John—is one of life-affirming extravagance? As if to say, this is what will happen when you invite Jesus into your emptiness; this is what will transpire when you usher God’s values into situations of injustice and need and just plain desire.
The story of the wedding at Cana encourages us to invite Jesus into all the hard and empty places of our lives and our world, and to live as if he is already there. The water-into-wine story reminds us that whenever scarcity is transformed into abundance, wherever someone speaks up for the impoverished and oppressed, God’s love is made manifest.
And yet there are many today who would have us believe that the wine—our hope for life and justice, our patience with our children, our vitality as a church, our opportunity to make a difference, our love for one another, the time left to limit the course of the climate crisis, our chance at a better life or even just “normal” life—has run out.
At the same time, there are some—and maybe some of us—who believe that our time has not yet come or has already passed. We think we’re too young, too inexperienced, too unsure, too scared, too old, or too tired to get involved in addressing the needs of our friends and family, our church, the wider community, and the world.
But what we know as the story of Jesus turning water into wine at the is also the story of Mary, his mother, summoning him to get involved in what seems like a minor matter when he doesn’t feel ready.
And as much as the we and our world need those called by God to step up and into the empty places, we also need the people who will call us and others to action, people who see our gifts in the context of the church’s and the world’s needs and will not take no for an answer.
This mother-and-son story tells us that when we let God’s concerns become our concerns, and when we call on others to join us in providing more of what has run out, we will discover that the best is yet to come.
May it be so.
