Scripture: John 2:1-11; John 1:1-4; 2 Corinthians 1:4; 2 Corinthians 1:20; Ecclesiastes 3:4 Series: 2021
Part of the ‘Songs of the Bible’ series, this sermon on the wedding at Cana (John 2:1-11) argues that Jesus likes to party. Opening with the preacher’s sports fandom (Vince Young’s Rose Bowl win, Astros World Series games), it diagnoses how the Reformation and modern culture redefined celebration as losing one’s inhibitions, leaving Christians seen as joyless. Against this, Jesus turns six jars of water into abundant good wine, refusing to let the party die. The sermon’s central move is that worldly celebration is zero-sum (one team’s joy is another’s sorrow) and bounded by in-groups and out-groups, but Christ’s joy has no outgroup: all are invited to the Lord’s table. Joy is held alongside suffering (Ecclesiastes, 2 Corinthians 1) so the church can celebrate on behalf of those who cannot, while confession means letting go of guilt and accepting God’s yes. The closing note: God not only loves you, God likes you.
Illustrations: vince-young-rose-bowl, astros-world-series, reformation-feast-days, bacchanals-dionysius, high-school-parties, god-as-santa-claus, wedding-guest-list, wine-purified-water
July 25
Jesus Likes to Party
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples were also invited to the celebration. When the wine ran out, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They don’t have any wine.” Jesus replied, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My time hasn’t come yet.” His mother told the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Nearby were six stone water jars used for the Jewish cleansing ritual, each able to hold about twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they filled them to the brim. Then he told them, “Now draw some from them and take it to the headwaiter,” and they did. The headwaiter tasted the water that had become wine. He didn’t know where it came from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. The headwaiter called the groom and said, “Everyone serves the good wine first. They bring out the second-rate wine only when the guests are drinking freely. You kept the good wine until now.” This was the first miraculous sign that Jesus did in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him. John 2:1-11
I grew up going to football games at Kyle field in College station. My father and my grandfather had season tickets to the Aggies. And so I would go, usually not the UT game, but other games. I enjoyed the games. I enjoyed watching football. I enjoyed learning about the game and the strategy. I played all the sports growing up, but I was never super athletic. Like I was an offensive lineman in seventh grade. And then I realized that I was not really made for this. I have friends who continued on in football and God bless them. Some of them got scholarships to college and that’s really awesome. I have two cousins who were scholarship athletes and have made wonderful careers because of the opportunities that football provided them. That was not for me, but I enjoyed it. I got more interested in going to games when I was in college. My first year was the end of the Chris Simms era, and then Vince Young came to UT and he was really exciting. I learned to get really frustrated at the UT offensive coordinator who kept on making Vince young throw sideline screen passes and bubble screens. And it just was this absurd system, but he got better and the team got better. I was at the Red River Shootout when we lost to Oklahoma 65 to 13, but I didn’t leave. I was not going to be the one who leaves the stadium. The next year we only lost 12-0. It was a weird, weird game, but it was fun. The year after that, UT didn’t lose a game. And they got to the championship game at the rose bowl in California against the University of Southern California Trojans (a school founded by Methodists) who had the Heisman trophy winner and the past Heisman trophy winner with Snoop Dogg on the sidelines. UT had Vince young, a decent offensive line. It was a good team at decent defense, many future NFL players on both sides of the ball. It was a great game and went back and forth. I’m not a fan of great games. I like blow outs for my team. I don’t like the tension. And then at the very last second Vince Young scrambling around the corner into the end zone. I was watching it at a friend’s parents’ house outside of Houston. We were all so excited! We won. Well, we didn’t really win. I wasn’t playing the game, but it was a celebration. Does God ever want us to celebrate? Does God ever want us to party?
My brothers and sisters, we are continuing our series on songs of the Bible that looks through the scriptures in a way guided and retold in music. There are a lot of explicit songs in the Bible, but it all can be turned into song. For God’s love for us is so great that we cannot help but sing.
Today, Jesus likes to party.
We don’t often think of Jesus as a partier, as a party dude. That’s not the common portrayal. In some ways, I think that that has to do with a deficiency of our modern conception of partying. What does it mean to party? What is it to celebrate? There’s really only a few categories of celebration that we can think of. There’s a birthday party, there’s an anniversary, there’s a holiday party. There’s a championship party. There’s a wedding party. At my point in life, a lot of parties and celebrations seems like logistical nightmares. It’s just all the things you have to organize and plan and get ready and all the things that might happen or might not happen. Who’s going to show up? Who’s not going to show up? It’s a tricky thing, but we don’t often think of Jesus as a partier.
And we often don’t think about the Christian faith as filled with celebration. This is especially true for those outside of the church. Few would accuse Christians of being inveterate partiers. I mean, few of the common practices of the faith are filled with what many would understand as parties or celebrations today. We might have a brunch after church one day: potluck, dinners, weddings. Yes, but most often Christians are not seen in the celebratory fashion. Now there’s a history to this, especially in this country, due to the early Protestant influence of in the United States. Before the reformation, there were a lot of feast days on the calendar of the Western church; a lot of saints’ days. What this led to, from a business sense, was a very inefficient market and workforce, because there would be very few weeks when the workers would work five days a week. They’d have a holiday and they would celebrate. Life would be hard and challenging, but they would have many opportunities for cheer and celebration and parades. Different aspects of the Reformation cut out a lot of these feast days and these holidays and started associating celebrations with pagans, with what we called Bacanals, after the Greek, God of wine, Bacchus, or Dionysius. This is still carried over today. Partying became about the relinquishing of your inhibitions, not celebrating. What this leads to today with kids in high school and junior high is the expectation that parties aren’t places where reputable kids go. Christian kids are the ones who don’t go and party and don’t go and celebrate. And it’s those other kids who are always going to parties and keggers and beer pong and all of these kinds of things away from the gaze of parental eyes, because it’s hard to be yourself when you’re being chaperoned. Or Christian youth are hypocrites: saying one thing on Sunday morning and another on Friday Night. When we come back to the God revealed in the Bible, when we come back to Jesus again and again, there is a celebration. Jesus is confronted by Pharisees and asked, “why do your followers celebrate so much? Why aren’t they fasting like everybody else? Why are they so happy?” And what Jesus says is that while the bridegroom is with them, the people will celebrate. In the gospel of John, we have this wedding that is the first miracle. John’s gospel is different from the other three gospels in a number of ways. If you read it straight through, it’s pretty easy to pick these differences up. First of all, the Gospel of John begins with a poem. Matthew begins with a genealogy. Luke begins with the story of the nativity of Christmas. Mark begins with an announcement from John the Baptist of Jesus. John begins with a poem:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.
This beginning is the connection between the Jesus revealed 2000 years ago, revealed most fully on the cross, with the creation of all things, everything through the son of God. The word made flesh and dwelt amongst us. Literally, the Word tabernacled with us or tented with us. Not someone living in your house. It is someone setting up a large tent with you. When we go through the first chapter of John, Jesus sees a few people. He sees Nathaniel, who delivers one of my favorite lines in the bible: what good has ever come out of Nazareth? Then we have a wedding. Jesus is there as a guest. And they run out of wine. Jesus was not a teetotaler, it’s important to remember, so he partook of the wine. There was wine in Jesus’s day and wine had a number of different alcohol levels. The cup bearer or waiter was a really important position because he was the one who would decide which wine would come next. If the party was wild, he would bring the lower alcohol wine. And so on. Winemaking purified water, which was really important because, otherwise, water would be often very bad. That is, it would give you the runs. So a little bit of wine is helpful, but Jesus had come to this party with his mother. He came to celebrate, not minister. He didn’t think it was going to be about him yet. But then. they ran out of wine. The large clay jars were empty and his mom says, “Jesus, do something about this.” He says, “My time has not yet come.” She repeats herself. “Jesus do something about this.” So he does. He asks the workers to fill up the six large jars with water and take them to the chief waiter at the wedding. And the waiter says, where did you get this? “Everyone serves the good wine first. They bring out the second-rate wine only when the guests are drinking freely. You kept the good wine until now.” Jesus didn’t let the party end or die. Jesus wasn’t ready to go to the next thing. Jesus likes to party, to celebrate. Jesus offers us reasons to celebrate. There are a lot of hard things in this world. There are a lot of challenges. And one of the important things about faith is that it gives us the strength not to deflect our gaze from those challenges. We don’t need to pretend that they’re not there. We don’t need to pretend like death is not around the corner or sickness or trials or challenges. We don’t need to pretend that God is like Santa Claus, up there, giving us presents if we are nice and giving us sickness if we are naughty. That is not why Jesus came or was killed and rose again. Instead, when the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. When God came down to be with us, it was to make new all things, to redeem all things, to offer a reason, the best of reasons to celebrate now in this world. For most of us, and most of the time, life is pretty darn zero sum. If one of us is celebrating, that means one of us is not. If you get the job, someone else doesn’t. If you get a spot at college, someone else doesn’t. You know, when I celebrated the victory of UT, fans of USC were not celebrating. They were not cheering. Two years ago, I was in Houston for game seven of the world series. And I was cheering and I was cheering. And then, for some reason, the manager at the time pulled Zach Greinke, who was pitching great. And then the ‘Stros gave up some hits and the Washington nationals and ended up winning. And I walked away quietly and drove home quietly. It did not feel good to lose a game seven, but I bet it felt good for the nationals to win. Two years before, I had celebrated as the Astros had won in Los Angeles against the Dodgers. Dodgers fans weren’t happy that day. Most celebrations, as well, have to do with invitations. You can’t invite everybody to your wedding. It’s logistically a nightmare. Kids can’t invite everybody to their birthday party. Oftentimes, there are people you don’t want to come to a party. People you would rather not talk to. Its like, “why didn’t he invite cousin So-and-so? You know why I didn’t invite cousin so-and-so. So there’s a concept of celebrations that has an in-group and out-group, but there is no outgroup with Jesus. Jesus doesn’t turn one jar into wine but six. Jesus doesn’t save the party for one or a few, but for all.
Jesus likes to party. He doesn’t want us to feel sorry. When others think that they’re not fine. He turns the water into wine.
To be faithful to Jesus, we need to show the world why we are celebrating, why we can be joyful even in the midst of the challenges. We can receive joy and peace at the Lord’s table. Now I am definitely not saying that you should feel guilty if you are not happy. As Ecclesiastes has it, there is a time to laugh and a time weep.
We remember Christ’s sacrifice. And yet, Christ’s sacrifice is not the end of the story. Easter comes three days later. Death is defeated. We turn that mourning into dancing. All of us are not always in the same place in this. All of us are not always ready, but part of being the church is taking on the celebration for our brothers and sisters. When those around us cannot, we don’t make them. If life is hard and you cannot celebrate right now, we stand with you as Jesus stood with his disciples. We mourn with those who mourn. We cry with those who cry and we laugh with those who laugh. We stand together with a God who stands with us. As Paul said in 2 Corinthians “Blessed be the God of comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.” 2 Corinthians 1:4 ESV
Confession, as well, is not about feeling guilty but letting go of those things that keep us from love and keep us from our neighbor and keep us from God. Talk of sin is not talk of guilt but the relinquishing of guilt at the foot of the cross. It is letting go of the no we tell ourselves about ourselves, and accepting the yes of God. As Paul says earlier in 2 Corinthians, “for all the promises of God find their Yes in Jesus.” So when you celebrate, when you have the joy of faith, it is not at the expense of your brother, Christ’s love is not zero-sum. All our included and all are invited to the table of Christ’s love, because the God who created everything saw you as worthy of celebrating, not just you, but all of those around you. Your joy does not mean your neighbors sorrow. The joy of God is not in touchdowns or home runs but in the Lord of all creation claiming, even you, as lovable. God not only loves you, God likes you. So let’s celebrate today. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.