The Good Stuff (Epiphany 2C)

The Good Stuff
Homily delivered for the Second Sunday after Epiphany (Year C)
20 January 2019

8:00 a.m. Said and 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Trinity Episcopal Church

Ashland, Oregon

Isaiah 62:1-5 ; Psalm 36:5-10 ; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11 ; John 2:1-11

God, take away our hearts of stone and give us hearts of flesh. Amen.

When I was a boy, we would travel to my Grandparents’ house in Idaho about once every year. There, we would eat wonderful homemade meals that were not common in my mother’s home.  My mother worked outside the home, and had learned to simplify her cooking in the 1950s and early 60s by using processed foods like Bisquick, Campbell’s Condensed Soups, and even Cheez Whiz or Velveeta in her day-to-day cooking, often using recipes that included brand-name items.   Not so in my Grandmother’s House.  There, they raised most what they ate in their large garden, and “put up,” as they said, much of their garden produce for use in the winter.   I remember the first time I ever tasted real ketchup.  It came out of one of the white glass bottles that my Grandma used to preserve homemade ketchup, steak sauce, and chutney.  I was shocked.  It tasted nothing like the Heinz 57 Ketchup I was used to.  This was too tart and tomatoey, with a lot of fresh vegetable overtones.  I wondered to myself how my Grandparents could stand such stuff, a weak imitation of the real thing, all because they were too poor to buy real ketchup in a grocery store!  It was only years later that I realized that my Grandma’s ketchup was far better than any commercially produced stuff, and in fact, was the real thing.  Heinz and Del Monte were the cheap imitations.  

C.S. Lewis tells a story from his own youth about this kind of contrast:  stealing cigarettes from his father’s stash.  Occasionally when the cigarettes were so few that even one might be missed, he dipped into his father’s plentiful cigar stash, which he kept only for honored guests.  He says that when this occurred, he and a friend thought “poor us, today we’ll have to put up with cigars when we might have had cigarettes!”    Again, if the only thing we know is a weak imitation, or a distorted shadow, when we actually run into the real thing we may think it strange, and perhaps mark it as the poor substitute. 

Today’s Gospel reading from John tells the story of the first sign of Jesus’ glory:  at a wedding at Cana, Jesus simply says the word and turns water stored in jars for purification rites into wine.   I have visited the site of this miracle, in Cana.  There, in the basement of the church over the traditional site, is a museum display of first century stone jars for holding water for purification:  they are immense, each holding about 30 gallons!   There were six:  we are talking about 180 gallons of the finest vintage here: a scripture that definitely speaks to Ashland wine snobs!

At the end of the story, the steward tastes the wine, calls the bridegroom, and says, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the cheap stuff after everyone has become drunk and can no longer tell the difference.  But you kept the good stuff until now.”  The point is that the wine miraculously made by Jesus is better than any other wine, wine produced by the more pedestrian miracle of sunshine, water, grapevines, skill, and time.   The wine Jesus offers is “the good stuff;” all other wine, the cheap imitation.

John reveals Jesus to the reader through a series of marvelous acts: turning water to wine (2:1-12), healings (4:46-5:18), multiplying the loaves and fishes (6:1-16), walking on the sea (6:16-21), giving sight to a man born blind (9:1-40), and raising Lazarus from the dead (11:1-44).  John does not call these things miracles. He calls them signs, or pointers to the true meaning of Jesus.   He makes his meaning clear by interspersing between his stories of the signs speeches:  after multiplying loaves, Jesus says, “I am the bread that gives life.” Meeting the Samaritan woman at the well of Jacob Jesus says “whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst; the water I shall give will become in them a spring of water welling up.”   

In chapter 7, on the last day of the feast of Tabernacles, when priests and Levites formed a chain to bring up bucket after bucket of water from the Siloam pool up to the Temple to cleanse the altar, he says, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink.”

In chapter 8, at the Feast of Hannukah when the candles of the Feast of Lights are being lit (cf. 10:22), and again in chapter 9 just before he cures the man born blind, Jesus says, “I am the light of the world.”

In the final sign of Gospel before the passion, just before Jesus raises Lazarus from the dead, he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life.”

Here in chapter 2, Jesus as his first sign makes wine from water at a wedding. Later, in his last discourse before the passion, he says, “I am the true vine.”

The signs, symbols, and images are rich and varied, but all point to one reality, one truth: Jesus is God Incarnate, the ultimate measure by which all good things must be seen.   Bread, Wine, Vine, Water, Light, even Life—all these are good, very good indeed.  But they are mere hints of the real thing, the really good stuff. 

In this world, where we are so used to cheap imitations, we often think that we are trying to do the right thing when in fact, in our brokenness, we are doing its opposite.  And that applies whether you want “to make America great again,” or you want to build social justice in the land.  That is why we must look to Jesus and what he taught and modeled as our standard.  As Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says, “if it’s not about love, it’s not about God.” 

John, in all these stories of signs and discourses on Jesus being true light, wine, water, bread is saying:  as good as the good things in our mixed lives can be, Jesus is the truly “good stuff.”   No matter how sweet, beautiful, and wonderful something in our lives may be, it is a mere hint, a dim reflection of what God truly has in store for us, of who Jesus is.  And he is the corrective for our brokenness and our mistaking imitation for genuine. 

Think of the things in your life that truly make you happy.  Think of the things that give you joy, and that take your breath away or make you weep in awe. 

Today’s Gospel, through this sly remark “you left the good stuff till last,” is telling us that these good things, these points of joy like copious wine at a wedding, these, as wonderful as they are, are just shadows, cheap imitations to be followed by the really good stuff.

In Jesus, we find all that we need. Now that is not to belittle other real needs. To say Jesus is the bread of life is not to say that we have no need to work to earn our daily bread, or to help feed the hungry with real bread.   It is simply saying something like Jesus says in Matthew, quoting the Book of Deuteronomy, “A human being does not live by bread alone, but by the word of God.”   

This week, I want you to take some thought about the truly good and wonderful things you enjoy.  Make a gratitude list, if you need to.  And then reflect on what the real thing in which they participate is, what the good stuff for each might be.    Where in our life are we accepting cheap imitations or pale reflections of and rejecting the real thing?  Where in our lives can we be signs to God’s greater love and care? 

Jesus says, I am true wine, the bread of life the true light, the living water.  I am the vine that gives wine; you are the vine’s branches.  Trust me. Have faith in me. Be fruitful and make wine for others.

May we so live, and that each day.

In the Name of God, Amen.

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