Jeremy Duncan: What if we gathered up all those small moments, and we reminded ourselves that they were bigger than we realized? What if every time you remind yourself of divine presence? What if every time you take a moment out of your day to make sure you're heading in the right direction, what if all of that matters? What if all of it is leading you to celebration? We have been making our way toward Christmas through the lens of the Jesus we get glimpses of before the Jesus that we know and love.
And we started all the way back in the prophet Isaiah with this promise that God is with us, Emmanuel, embodied in the presence of a child, an infant, helpless, in need, and yet held safe within the arms of God. And we looked at that promise of peace made in the context of wars and rumors of wars. This promise that is picked up by the gospel writers and repurposed to tell an old story. Isaiah may not have had Jesus in view, but he certainly understood how God's promise, God's peace, God's presence could be seen in the children around us. And so when centuries later, Matthew encounters the Christ, and he begins to write that story, the tale of God incarnate in a child, what he realizes is that he's already heard this story.
This reminder that God has always been present in the helpless safety of the children that we care for. Now that story is true in a whole new way in Jesus. Next, we looked at Jesus in utero. And Jalaina walked us through the promises made to Mary and to her husband Joseph. The way the scope of those promises to save the world were then echoed and reinforced, and in some ways made even more real in the experience of pregnancy that Mary shared with her cousin Elizabeth.
And there's something really profound there for me that probably the biggest, most miraculous, most unbelievable offer God could have ever made to Mary is then almost immediately grounded in shared experience, and supportive family, and maternal community that surrounds her. It's almost as if the biggest dreams in our lives also need a village to support them as well. And then last week, Bobby offered us a glimpse into the growing developing adolescence of Jesus. This idea that even as we approach the manger, expectant with the idea that we might encounter the divine there, Jesus and his mother, his father, they were all approaching the same divinity together as he grew. This mystery of how God can be born, but perhaps even more mysterious how God can grow and learn and come into Himself as a man who will chart His course through the world.
Incarnation didn't stop when Jesus was laid in a bed of straw. It continued. It unfolded. And eventually, it led us to the Jesus who would then reveal God back to us. Today, we have one more stop on our Advent approach, and we will look at Jesus just before He wants to go public.
First, though, let's pray. God of Advent, who has come and who continues to arrive in our lives today, who is present in all of the movement that we make toward you, guiding and encouraging, lifting and walking beside us, might we recognize you with us today as we speak, and as we pray, as we shop, and as we give, as we prepare our hearts to receive you again this Christmas with your gentle arrival, meek and mild, vulnerable and in desperate need of care, teach us something about who you are and what you hold most dear about us, the power and strength you gladly set aside in favor of your desire to be near to us. Might that posture slowly become our posture as we turn our hearts toward each other and toward those that we can list up this Christmas. In the strong name of the one we await, we pray. Amen.
Today, we have one more step on our approach to Christmas, and we will talk about empty wine skins, the tree of life, the miracle, and the miraculous. But our house is at an interesting stage this year. My son is 11, so he is well aware of Christmas. All the pomp, and the circumstance, but of course, all the anticipation, and the gifts as well. My daughter, on the other hand, is only 4, almost 5, as she reminds me pretty much every day.
But what's fun is that this is probably the 1st year where she really remembers the previous Christmas. Like last year, she was 3. She was old enough to be excited. She could tell that everyone else was excited. She was very good at mirroring your energy back to you.
But this year, she actually carries the memory of Christmas with her. So every morning, she will crawl into bed with me, as she does every day, and say, daddy, Christmas is almost here. It's getting closer. I'm so excited. And then she'll go downstairs, and she'll check the tree, and she'll come back crawling to bed.
Daddy, no presents yet, but they're coming. Don't get me wrong, as a parent I'm very excited for Christmas morning as well. Right? My watching my kids open their gifts is a highlight, particularly at this age. But I'm also kind of strangely enamored watching my daughter discover anticipation.
This collective weight that we all experience for when things will finally arrive. And I recognize that this week's passage is not a classically Christmas text. Jesus is a grown man as we're about to encounter him today, but there is something about the waiting in this story. The anticipating here, the holding back until just the right moment, both for Jesus and for his mother, that I find really compelling at this time of year. It feels a little bit like Christmas morning, I suppose.
So let's begin by reading from John chapter 2. And this is starting in verse 1. On the 3rd 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. But Jesus replied, Woman, why do you involve me? My hour has not yet come. Still his mother said to the servants, do whatever he tells you. Well, nearby stood 6 stone water jars.
The kind used by the Jewish people for ceremonial washing, each holding from 20 to 30 gallons. So Jesus said to the servants, fill the jars with water. And they filled them right up to the brim. Then He told them, now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet. So they did.
But when the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine, he didn't realize where it had come from. Though the servants, they knew. So the master called the bridegroom aside saying, everyone brings out the choice wine first, and then the cheaper wine. After all, the guests have had too much to drink, but you, you have saved the best till now. John 2, verses 1 through 10, and first of all, who doesn't love this story?
Right? Jesus, who keeps the party going. Jesus, who keeps the party going using the good stuff. Jesus who keeps the party going using 180 gallons of the good stuff. I mean, this guy knows what's going on.
Am I right? And yet, even beyond all that, there's just so much that's left unsaid here. So much room to wonder about how all these interactions went down. We got Mary giving a knowing hint to Jesus. I mean, she doesn't actually ask him to do anything.
She just tells him they're out of wine. Maybe with a knowing nod to some empty wine skins lying about. I kind of imagine Mary saying something like this, Oh, no. They're out of wine. If only someone here had the power of space and time, the ability to reshape molecules to their will, wouldn't that be great?
Jesus. That'd be very on brand for mom. Right? And then there's Jesus no longer the boy that we met last week in Luke, and yet still maybe it mean just a little bit. I imagine him in his most exasperated voice replying, Mom, it's not my problem.
Gosh. At least that's how my son would have responded. I don't know. Even then, even if that's not enough, we still got Mary brushing Jesus off, turning your attention to the event staff, telling them to help her son fix the problem. Do what he tells you boys.
Like I wonder, does Jesus just hate this story? It's the one that Mary tells at every family reunion in heaven. Nice throne and all, but do you remember the time that you didn't want to make wine, and I pulled rank? I remember. I mean, I know it's not a Christmas story, but this all just feels a little bit too much like going home for your first Christmas as an adult.
Am I right? I love it. So while we wait, and we anticipate, and we try to keep ourselves patient as the final hour approaches. Let's dive into some of the details here, and see if we can't move ourselves just one step closer to Christmas. And first, maybe we should notice that this story seems to start in the middle of something.
Verse 1 starts, on the 3rd day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. We really don't have much context for that. On the 3rd day of what? We don't know. John doesn't specifically tell us.
It said, if you go back to the first chapter, we get a story about John the Baptist, And then in verse 29 it says that the next day John saw Jesus coming toward him. And then in verse 35 it says that the next day John was there again with 2 of his disciples, and then in verse 43 it says, the next day Jesus decided to leave for Galilee. And then the start of chapter 2 says, On the 3rd day there was a wedding. So look, maybe we're just supposed to add them all up. It's 7 days after Jesus was baptized.
That's possible. Another option is that some scholars think the 3 days here are symbolic. They point us toward Jesus' ultimate death and resurrection. That's tied in with the line that John adds immediately after this story. He tells us that this first miracle at Cana was the first sign that leads us to the ultimate sign.
Jesus' resurrection. So maybe it feels a little bit forced to me, but whatever. The option I actually like best is tied in with this guy, Nathaniel. See, after Jesus' interactions with John the Baptist, he calls a disciple named Nathaniel. And after a brief conversation, Nathaniel's convinced.
He signs on loudly declaring that Jesus is the Son of God and the King of Israel. And Jesus, perhaps thinking that confidence is a bit premature considering they just met, says to him, Well, hold on just a bit. Grab your hat, because this is just starting. You'll see things far more dramatic than this. And then the next verse says that, on the 3rd day there was a wedding at Cana in Galilee.
Now, we actually know from later in John that Nathaniel himself was very specifically from Cana in Galilee. So it's really interesting to me to wonder if perhaps Jesus' promise to Nathaniel wasn't just, look, man. You're going to see some cool things if you stick with me. But maybe it was actually more like, stick with me, and you'll see some pretty cool things tied to your life, and your story, your family in the town that you grew up in. Some things that are just for you.
You'll see the miraculous in ways that maybe others won't even notice because that's what it means to encounter the divine in your life. In other words, if it wasn't the shock value that mattered to Jesus, perhaps it was the personal. Remember in this story, the master of the banquet never even gets clued in on what's happened here. He still thinks the bridegroom actually saved the good wine for last. And maybe those are the kind of miracles Jesus is interested in most.
Those small moments where we notice the divine in spaces it might otherwise go unseen by others. Let me ask you this. Have you ever felt like you were invited into a moment with God? Something that was so truly, profoundly wonderful, And yet in looking back, you realize it seems so delicate and small you can scarcely remember why you even noticed it in the first place. I'm going to bet that 99% of the guests at this party never even knew what happened.
They were probably too inebriated to care. I guess the master of the banquet probably forgot about it the next day. But for Mary, for Nathaniel, for the servants who just happened to be hired to work that night at that party in that town, this moment was a sign of the presence of the divine. They never forgot. In fact, they remembered it so hard that it ended up being passed down for 2 millennia and counting now.
I think the best moments in life can be like that. There was a movie a few years ago. By that I mean more than a decade ago, but it was called The Tree of Life. Maybe you saw it. Probably didn't.
Starred Jessica Chastain, and Brad Pitt, and Sean Ben, so some pretty big names, but it was also very much a long, slow, Terence Malek, art house, honestly pretty pretentious movie. I loved it. But one of the most controversial slash confusing moments in the film is where a movie about a young boy's complicated relationship with his gentle caring mother and his hard, stern father who is unable to process his guilt and grief over the death of his second son, all of a sudden jumps to the formation of the universe. And we see stars forming, and galaxies taking shape, and time speeds forward, and the Earth begins to cool. Organisms crawl out of the primordial soup, and dinosaurs roam across the land to live and die in a brutal fight for survival.
And then all of a sudden, we're back in the boy's complicated relationship with his father, and the movie continues. Now, later he grows and goes to heaven, and reconciles with his past, and it's all wonderful, but I'll give you my take here. I think the cosmic interlude is trying to tell us that formative moments in our lives, like fights with our fathers or miracles that go unnoticed by everyone else can seem so small and insignificant in the light of everything that surrounds us that we sometimes forget the power they have to shape our universe. Sometimes a moment in your life can feel so completely immaterial when you look at it objectively and yet you know that it shaped you irrevocably. That's your cosmic interlude.
I think this wedding is like that. I think it's a moment that was designed to be overlooked by almost everyone, a moment that was missed by everyone except those who for the moment was for. And for those few, it was a sign of a new universe bursting forth with possibility right in front of them. Now, spoiler, I think that's what Christmas is about as well, but we'll find our way there in a moment. First, let's talk about what's happening here.
Because for all the complicated family dynamics, raised eyebrows and stern redirections, this is how the story unfolds. Mary notices that the wine has run out. She insinuates that Jesus should intervene. He balks, But then he complies. And I want to pause to address one thing here.
Jesus responds to his mother, woman, why do you involve me? Now, that is exactly what the Greek says. But this is also one of those moments where a literal translation is probably not helping any of us. I don't know about you, but if I was ever to address my mother as woman, that would not go well for me. Based on Mary's Magnificat, she does not seem like the kind of woman you want to mess with either.
So The thing is, the term that's used here is gunai. It does mean woman. It was also a perfectly acceptable greeting in ancient Greek. So Jesus is not being rude to his mom. He may not want to get involved, but this term should not be taken as a diminishment of Mary's status in the story.
In the First Nations version of the New Testament, they translate this passage this way, Honored woman, why are you telling me this? This is not our concern. It's not yet my time to show who I am. That's not a good literal translation of what we have in the Greek, but it is a better translation of the semantic intent of what's here in the Greek. It's just something to keep in mind generally, when you read your Bible.
Moving from one language to another is hard, and sometimes the most literal option is not the best representation of what's going on. Regardless, Jesus gets on side, he turns to the attendants, he asks for some water, and we've got to talk about this. Right? Six stone jars, each holding 20 to 30 gallons. Let's split the difference here.
We'll call it a 150 total. That's 567 liters. That's 756 bottles of wine for those of us in the civilized world that are using metric measurements. Now, I have no idea how many guests are at this party, but this is, shall we say, a lot of wine. Especially considering this is already round 2.
The guests had already finished off whatever the host had expected them to drink. In fact, John goes out of his way here to mention that the helpers were asked to fill the jars to their brims. Literally it says, as far as their upward edge. So this is kind of a conspicuous detail that Joan wants to add to say, look, the wine is overflowing. Probably sloshed about and splashed on the ground even as they tried to draw a bit for the host to taste.
Except it's not the end of the story because not only was there quantity, there was quality as well, the best to boot. So we have a massive overflowing quantity of really good wine meant to keep the party going late into the night, and yet that's not actually what grabs my attention here. Let me explain. Jesus never comments on the wine. Never tells anyone what he's going to do.
Never takes any credit for what the people drink. In fact, the most conspicuous part of the story seems to be these enormous stone jars. Stone jars that John feels necessary to point out were used by the Jewish people for ceremonial washing. What does that mean? Well, in its simplest terms it means these jars would have been there for guests to wash their hands and possibly their feet as they came into the party.
Probably had some hygienic value, but its main purpose, as John indicates, was ceremonial. This was a very common experience in the Jewish culture. The Jewish people had these categories of clean and unclean, and for Western readers like ourselves, we sometimes over inflate the moral value of those categories. For us today, cleanliness is obviously a value. It's next to godliness, in fact.
That's not in fact true, by the way. That comes from a 17th century sermon, not your Bible. But clean and unclean were not moral categories in Judaism. For example, all kinds of things that you would do normally in life would make you unclean in 2nd temple Judaism. If you touched a grave, if you touched blood, if you were a menstruating woman.
In fact, a woman was ritually unclean for a period after giving birth. Even walking across certain lands could render you ceremonially unclean in some teachings. But none of these came with a value judgment like immoral. For example, it was great celebration when a woman gave birth, not a time of lament. It's just that with these important daily actions, there came a need to prepare yourself, or reorient yourself for re encounter with God.
Bottom line was that becoming unclean, and then ceremonially cleansing yourself was just a natural normal part of life for Jewish people. And that cleansing ritual was there to remind you of God's presence in everything including the very normal life that you traversed each week. It's actually quite a beautiful practice, and far too many Christian sermons have sort of mischaracterized, even caricatured this clean, unclean economy in Judaism. However, one of the practices popularized by a group called the Pharisees was the ceremonial washing of your hands and dishes before a meal, And this was actually something commanded of the priests in the Hebrew scriptures, but the Pharisees were a populist movement, and they basically argued, look. If this practice brings the priests closer to God, then maybe we should all participate in it as well.
We should democratize the ritual as part of everyone's habit, because we are all children of the same God after all. And that's very likely what these stone jars would have been placed here for near the entrance of the party, to wash your hands when you came in, potentially to wash any dishes that needed it during the party, but to take a moment to remind yourself of God's nearness. In fact, stone jars were particularly important in this role, because they were considered non porous in rabbinic teaching. That meant they could not become unclean, should someone happen to accidentally touch them while they were cleansing themselves. All that to say, that when Jesus arrived at the party, He would have, in all likelihood, drawn water from these same stone jars, washed His hands as a reminder of God's presence, and then entered into the party just like everyone else.
Except that when Jesus is asked for some help with the wine, he chooses these same 6 stone jars as a starting point, and I don't think that's just a coincidence. Remember the whole reason that Mary has approached Jesus in the first place is that the wine has run out. That means there are very literally empty wine skins lying all over the place just waiting for a miracle fill. Like, I have no experience with this, but I don't imagine miraculously turning water into wine is really any easier than miraculously refilling empty bottles. I don't know.
I'll have to ask when I get there. But I think Jesus chooses these jars on purpose. I think He wants to make a point, and I think when He decides He's going to do this, He decides He's going to do it with style. So He chooses these 6 stone jars. He selects these symbols of personal piety, these places of all the small moments of commitment that His people make daily.
A source of countless innocuous instances where 100, maybe even thousands of people had reminded themselves of their essential commitment to God as they practiced something as simple as washing their hands and offering a prayer. And He says, what if we gathered up all those small moments, and we reminded ourselves that they were bigger than we realized? What if every time you remind yourself of Divine presence? What if every time you set your heart towards the person you want to become? What if every time you take a moment out of your day to make sure you're heading in the right direction, what if all of that matters?
What if all of it is leading you to celebration? CS Lewis once wrote, good and evil both increase at compound interest. It's why those little decisions that you and I make every day are of such infinite importance. The smallest good is the capture of a strategic point from which a few months later, you may be able to go on to victories you never dreamed about. Whereas an apparent trivial indulgence in anger or lust today is the loss of a ridge or a railway, a bridgehead from which evil can launch an attack otherwise impossible.
I think those small moments matter more than we think. And it's not that God is out to get you, trying to trip you up on some technicality. It's because over time enough small moments can create a universe for us. That image, that motif, small things that turn into something cosmic, it's embedded all the way through the gospels. Right?
In stone jars, in mustard seeds, in mangers. This divine conviction that universe shaping cosmic moments can begin in the smallest of things. And in that sense, maybe this is a Christmas story. A reminder that God is present in even the slightest expression of beauty that maybe only you notice. Today is December 22nd.
That means yesterday was the darkest night of the year. That means today, imperceptibly but inevitably, the world is getting brighter again. And it gets brighter in every gift that you give. It gets brighter in every meal that you offer. It gets brighter in every invitation you extend for someone to join your story.
Because that's the Christmas story, that every small sliver of light that we add when compounded together can create an entirely new universe. And it can begin in something that's overlooked by the majority. May the light of Christ slowly begin to grow in you as well this Christmas. May you eventually see how it enlightens and enlivens everything around you with the light of Christ. Let's pray.
God, as we make these final steps toward your arrival, as we gather up the courage to believe that the biggest things, the most beautiful things, the most cosmic shaping, universe altering things can begin in small moments that are easily overlooked. Might we see that truth in our lives? Might we see it in the gifts you extend to us, and might we see it most clearly in the manger that you were laid in? Helpless and vulnerable, and yet, the beginning of a new universe. That all things might be drawn back to you.
All things transformed through you. All things healed in your grace. And it all began there. May that story become our story. And might we begin to look with new eyes for all the moments where light is breaking in and beginning to change everything.
In the strong name of the one we await this Christmas, we pray. Amen. Hey. Jeremy here, and thanks for listening to our podcast. If you're intrigued by the work that we're doing here at commons, you can head to our website commons.church for more information.
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Anyway, thanks for tuning in. Have a great week. We'll talk to you soon.