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welcome to the commons cast we're glad to have you here we hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week head to commons dot church for more information we have just started this long journey to easter and last week we gathered on ash wednesday to remind ourselves of or mortality to remember that resurrection begins with a journey through death and that's sort of a sober way to begin the movement towards celebration but it's also really important isn't it to recognize
that the story of god encompasses all of our experiences as human beings all of our hurts but also our deepest joys and so that's the journey that's ahead of us that's why i'm wearing purple today that's where we are headed and that's why we're starting a new series so what's our path forward well every year as we lay out the journal we look at a number of different priorities for the year but during lent each year we often try to find a way to put our focus and our attention
directly onto the story of jesus last year for example we followed the travel narratives in luke as he charts jesus physical journey as he walks toward jerusalem this year we've done something similar again but we're going to trace a particular motif that runs through the gospel of john john is an interesting gospel among the four that we have in our bible we have matthew and mark and luke and we often call these the synoptics that's a greek compound word and it just means that they see together
and we use that because these writers often rely on each other for their stories matthew and mark or matthew and luke clearly are borrowing stories from mark which is probably the earliest gospel john is just different though we've talked about this before but it's important john is written much later than the other gospels probably near the end of the first century what means is that the fourth gospel is not so much recounting the story of jesus the way that mark does for example
but this gospel is reflecting back on the story of jesus i like to think of john as sort of a second generation text someone who has grown up in the community that's been shaped by jesus now looking back on what it all means not as concerned with what happened as much as what it all meant and one of the really unique ways that the author of john does this is through a motif that we want to look at on our way toward easter a series of stories that he identifies as signs of things to come
see throughout the gospel of john there are these seven miracles that point toward resurrection hints of what the author imagines jesus kingdom to be about and markers of what the world could be like transformed into this new imagination of god and so over the five sundays of lent through palm sunday and good friday we are going to look at those seven signs in john and then on easter of course we will celebrate the new creation of resurrection today however we have the first sign one
of my favorites jesus turning water into wine before that let's pray god who is always ahead of us both in our pain and in our celebration inviting us forward with courage and with hope we ask that you would be near to us today in whatever fragile state we have entered this room we ask that your spirit of comfort be gentle and close reminding us of your presence with us in all of the moments of our lives might we remember today both our constant need of you but also the
implication that that brings our dependence on each other as well where we can might we become a source of encouragement and strength for each other might we help each other to carry the burden of this season together and in that might even our lives become a sign of things to come a world infused with peace that encompasses more than just the laying down of weapons but also the healing of our wounds the space to be honest and the freedom to smile without expectation but only with deep joy
may your peace that passes understanding takes shape not just as extraordinary calm today but also as justice for all may our lives be signs of this peace to come in the strong name of the risen christ we pray amen okay signs of things to come today we're going to celebrate that first sign water into wine but on the agenda today is apothec red familial tale stone jars and sacred celebrations but let's start by diving straight in and we're going to read this story from john 2 and i'm
going to start at verse 1 i'm going to read all the way through to verse 11 where it says this on the third day a wedding took place at cana in galilee jesus mother was there and jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding when the wine was gone jesus mother said to him they have no more wine woman why do you involve me jesus replied my hour has not yet come but his mother said to the servants do whatever he tells you nearby stood six stone water jars the
kind used by the jews for ceremonial washing each holding from 20 to 30 gallons jesus said to the servants fill the jars with water so they filled them to the brim and then he told them now draw out some water and take it to the master of the banquet they did so and the master tasted the water that had been turned into wine and he did not realize where it had come from though the servants who had drawn the water knew so he called to the bridegroom and asked everyone brings out the choice wine
first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink but you you have saved the best until now what jesus did here in cana of galilee was the first sign through which he revealed his glory and the disciples believed in him all right great story right i mean who doesn't love a jesus that one keeps the party going and two does that using the good stuff i mean no apothic red nonsense here going on and by the way if you really like apothec red that's fine
i am just snooty so that's on me although i bet that jesus agrees with me and i can proof text that here in john 2 i bet he likes exactly the same wine that i do however this is still a pretty interesting story particularly when john tells us that he thinks this right here all of this wine is the first sign of what is to come so let's dig into this a bit and see what we can find today now intriguingly our story starts almost like it's in the middle of a thought doesn't it
on the third day a wedding took place at cana in galilee we have no context for this on the third day of what we have no idea if you go back to john 1 we get a story about john the baptist and then it says in verse 29 that the next day john saw jesus coming toward him then in verse 35 it says the next day john was there again with two of his disciples and then in verse 43 it says on the next day jesus decided to leave for galilee and then in the start of chapter two it says on the third day
there was a wedding so it's possible we're just missing a few days here in the narrative because these days just don't really add up i don't know what day we're on now six or seven who knows some scholars think that the three days are symbolic that because this is the first sign that points to resurrection the three days well maybe they point us to the three days in the tomb maybe that seems a bit of a stretch and it's certainly pretty speculative though there is however an interaction at the
end of john 1 that might shed some light on this a man named nathaniel comes to jesus and declares his trust in jesus and jesus says that's great but hold on to your hat for you will see even greater things than this now we know from john 21 at the end of the gospel that nathaniel was indeed from cana in galilee and so maybe he was at this wedding and maybe that's where the reference comes from the wedding took place three days after jesus promised to nathanael
of course we don't know for sure that's both the beauty and sometimes the frustration of biblical interpretation sometimes there is just so much room for speculation when we read but i do like this as a possibility because what it says to me is that even something as important as a sign of the resurrection started as a personal encounter it came about in response to a conversation it was the result of an expression of trust in jesus in fact maybe the only reason we have this story
maybe the only reason we know it is because nathan recognized this for what it was a sign that his faith was not misplaced and maybe he told this story far and wide and maybe that story made its way all the way to john and over time that story as it was passed and it was shared among the community it became a sign for all of us but first it was a sign for one person nathaniel and i think this kind of thing happens a lot more than we realize like i know there are moments in my life
when small things remind me of why i choose to trust in god there are days when the truth is i don't believe it's lent it's okay to say that even if you're a pastor but it's those days when i don't believe that i choose instead to trust and those small moments those signs that remind me that my trust is not misplaced it's when i share those moments with others delicately and appropriately but it's when i invite you into my story that my signs become your signs and vice
versa and maybe that's a bit of what's happening here which i just really love the nathaniel story became john's story becomes our story because that's how faith and community work even still though we don't have much context here we don't know who the lucky couple are we don't know why jesus and his mom and his disciples were invited to the party but we do know however that the party runs out of wine and maybe this was just bad planning maybe more guests showed up than
expected maybe jesus had more disciples than they thought maybe the crowd was just more ready to celebrate than anyone had anticipated either way the wine runs out and mary finds out and so she asks jesus to intervene and he gives this sort of curt reply woman why do you involve me and that might sound harsh to our ears if i was referred to my mom or my partner as woman that would not go over well i can tell you that this is not however how this term gunai implies tone here in greek now this was
a common term of endearment or actually respect in greek and actually i like the way that the first nations version has translated this section it says so the mother of creator sets free that's the name for jesus that this translation uses the mother of creator sets free said to him son they have no more wine honored woman he said to her why are you telling me this is this our concern it is not yet my time to show who i am but his mother turned to the helpers and said do whatever he needs
and i really like that first because it actually does a better job of interpreting the scene honored woman is not as technically correct but it is closer to the spirit of what's actually happening here in the greek how the term gunai would have been used second though i love the way that this captures the mother-son dynamic in the scene that jesus asks mary to intervene he says mom don't get me involved in this this isn't our issue but mary turns to the helpers instead and says let's get
this done i kind of picture mary here keeping eye contact with jesus the whole time as she beckons to the helpers and says help him out either way this sign reads kind of stiff to me in english but in greek it just feels a lot more playful than that maybe more familial if that makes sense and i think that might actually be important there are times when it's really easy to start thinking of jesus as a genie we ask for things he grants them and there are ways of praying that
presume upon jesus in a very transactional unrelational kind of way at this moment feels perhaps like a bit of a counterpoint to all of that sometimes we ask and sometimes jesus says no and sometimes we ask again and sometimes jesus relents and i know that is not a very satisfying theology of prayer but maybe that's the the point is less a transaction where we say the right words and we get the right outcomes and more like a family encounter with sideways glances and inside jokes
and i think what i take from this is a reminder to treat my prayer more like a conversation with my mom and less like a contract to employ regardless now we get to the heart of this scene nearby stood six stone water jars the kind used for ceremonial washing each holding 20 to 30 gallons so jesus said to the servants fill the jars with water and they filled them to the brim now 20 to 30 gallons times six stone jars means we are talking about up to about 180 gallons or for us canadians 680
liters or perhaps a more useful comparative here that's about 900 bottles of wine and i have no idea how many guests were at this party but this is shall we say a lot to drink especially considering that this was already round two that the guests had already finished off everything the host had expected them to drink and in fact john goes out of his way to mention that the helpers were asked to fill the jars to their brims or literally as far as their upward edge so this is wine
overflowing it probably sloshed about and splashed on the ground even as they tried to draw a sip for the hose to taste but not only that it was good wine the best wine to boot and john says this this massive overflowing quantity of really good wine meant to keep a party going long into the night that this was the first sign of things to come except i'm not actually sure the wine is the point now before the sommeliers storm the stage let me explain there's this really interesting motif in john
water where it comes from is a really big deal in the next chapter jesus will talk about needing to be baptized in both water and spirit to enter the kingdom in chapter four jesus will meet a samaritan woman at a well and talk to her about the gift of living water in chapter 5 jesus will heal a man at the pool of bethesda a man who hopes that the waters can heal him and in chapter 6 jesus will walk on water you get the idea you would expect that in a story about this much water
and this much wine that the source of that water would have some kind of attention but instead it's actually the vessels these six stone jars that seem to really capture john's focus so what's going on there jars used for ceremonial washing is this for doing the dishes well actually sort of but also not really these were used for cleansing dishes but they were largely used for cleansing your hands and maybe even sometimes for cleansing your feet and this idea of cleansing this is a
category that can be tough for us to get our heads around sometimes we've probably all heard about the idea of something being clean and unclean in judaism or perhaps in islam this does not necessarily mean dirty or bad in english we often associate a value judgment with language like clean and unclean that's not necessarily what's going on in judaism my son has a really good friend who is muslim and they were comparing diets one day at school my son is a vegetarian and he found out
that his friend also does not eat pig and he was very excited about this but he came home one day and he said to me dad you know we're vegetarian well it's a good thing we don't eat pigs because my friend told me that they are dirty now i knew who he was talking about so i clarified exactly what did your friend say here and then we had a conversation about unclean in the religious sense and dirty in the hygienic sense and now pigs are actually quite clean animals we just
don't eat them in our house the same way his friend doesn't for religious reasons and by the way enjoy your bacon just keep your memes to yourself i've already seen them all i know what i'm missing it's fine i'm kidding just send me whatever you want in judaism though a lot of things could make you ritually or ceremonially unclean if you touch the grave for example or if you had touched blood if you were a woman who was menstruating if you had even walked across certain lands these
things could render you ceremonially unclean that did not mean dirty or bad though and there were rituals like a mikvah that would rectify that and cleanse you but unclean wasn't bad it wasn't like unclean separated you from god's love and cleansing brought you back into god's good graces in fact in judaism it was expected that you would become unclean regularly just by going about your daily business and that you would then cleanse yourself regularly to remind
yourself of your connection and your commitment to god that's what the rituals were meant for not good and bad but rhythms of commitment it's actually quite beautiful and misunderstandings of these practices have been caricatured in far too many christian sermons and that's to our shame because we haven't learned and listened to our jewish neighbors but along with more elaborate ceremonies like a mikvah or a baptism jewish people would also often ceremonially wash their hands after
something like coming home from the market or before enjoying a meal now that does seem to be a bit of practical hygiene and religious observation combined together but that's what these six stone jars would have been primarily used for at the entrance to a party a ceremonial religious ritual cleansing that also had a very practical hygiene element to it in fact john points out that they were made of stone precisely because stone as a non-porous material was protected from
becoming ceremonially unclean as part of the jewish teaching that's why you would use these types of jars specifically to wash your hands or to wash your dishes no as with any ritual it was always possible for the meaning to be swallowed up by the practice right that jesus is quite critical of his fellow pharisees that went through the motions and lost sight of the purpose in matthew 23 he says woe to you teachers of the law and pharisees you act like hypocrites
you clean the outside of the cup and dish but inside you are still full of greed and self-indulgence blind teacher first clean the inside then the outside will be clean as well basically he's saying the ritual is meant to help us remind us to keep our hearts pure but if we don't do that what's the point of the ritual this right here is just good old pharisaical teaching that any teacher of the law would have agreed with jesus is just calling out his contemporaries for not following through
on the intent of the law all this to say when jesus arrived at this party he would have in all likelihood drawn water from these same six stone jars washed his hands and then entered the celebration just like any other jewish guest except that when jesus is asked with some help with the wine he chooses these same six stone jars and that's not just a coincidence remember the whole reason that mary has approached jesus is because all the wine has run out in the first place that means there are
literally empty wineskins lying all over the place just waiting for their miracle if he had wanted to he could have kept the party going in a far less conspicuous manner instead he chooses intentionally these jars of this symbol as the sign through which he would make himself known and think about that jesus takes a symbol of our personal piety how those who knew god reminded themselves of god's quiet presence with them daily how they set themselves apart in
connection to the vine trusting that it would help them become better persons in their lives and jesus transforms that ritual into a ruckus party that shook the neighborhood late into the night and for john i think the symbolism of that moment the sign was quite stark no longer are we reminding ourselves of god's presence with us but now god is declaring divine goodness among us god is celebrating divine generosity around us god is taking it upon god's self to turn our piety into god's party
and at this moment this was no longer just the celebration of a random wedding in cana of galilee this was no longer just a promise to nathanael that he would see greater things this was now the reminder that every wedding and every party and every the top moment of unadulterated unconstrained joy all of these are now signs of everything that is to come because jesus is saying that family is united and neighbors invited outsiders welcome with more than enough to go around for
anyone who happens by that itself is the story of god and every time we enact that we point toward what is to come one of my favorite quotes from one of my favorite authors one that i have read here before it comes from robert ferrara capone who writes this what we are watching for is a party but that party is not just down the street making up its mind when it's going to come to us it is already hiding in our basement banging on the steam pipes and laughing its way up the cellar stairs
the unknown day and hour of its final bursting into the kitchen and roystering through the whole house is not dreadful it is all part of the divine lark of grace because god is not our stuffy relative come to see whether the wedding present china is chipped god is the funny old neighbor with a salami under one arm and a bottle of wine under the other and we do in need need to watch for god's arrival but only because it would be such a pity to miss out on this much fun
that's what the sign is about this is jesus reassuring all of us that our rituals are not a waste that our attempts to be kind are not overlooked that every time we commit ourselves to the good trusting that god will bring that story to completion that in itself is an image of the world made right in joyful celebration and perhaps right now at this moment in history just as it was in jesus day that hope feels very far off but the point of the sign especially as we begin our movement
toward the cross is not to deny all of that hurt or to ignore what is happening in the world or even in your life right now the point of a sign is to remind us to hold tight to the ritual of celebration and joy to trust that even in the moments where we struggle to believe celebration is blessed and gladness is holy and that when we make sacred our parties we can find the strength to return from them committed even more to the work of justice that the world so deeply needs and so as we begin
our movement together toward both the darkness of the cross and the light and joy of the resurrection might we all remember somehow that every moment of joy that breaks in anywhere in our life this is a sign of things to come and that when we learn how to dance and celebrate and drink late into the night we can be strengthened for the work of healing the world around us let's pray god for all the ways that you show up in all of our lives reminding us that you are present and
near comforting and guiding but also knitting back your world together we thank you for those signs but also we thank you for this sign the story that started at a party as a response to a conversation and became a story that was included in our gospels that has founded and grounded the church for two thousand years now to remind us that our movement towards your kingdom starts with joy that all of the work that we do in the world both internal work to become the people you imagine us to
be and the work we do for peace and justice around us in our relationships all of that work is grounded in celebration trusting that the world has a destination and that destination is your love and embrace your kingdom that transforms everything might we trust in the renewal of all things believing that you are already at work and we are part of that story as we begin this movement toward easter help us to prepare our hearts well for the depth of good friday and the celebration of resurrection
in the strong name of the risen christ we pray amen