johns-gospel

God at Work

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Lesson: John 2:1-11

I love officiating at weddings, and I work hard to make sure at least my part goes smoothly. In my experience, however, sometimes things happen at weddings that good planning won’t solve. There was the limo driver who forgot to go back and pick up the bride after he dropped the bridesmaids at the church. There was the best man who got sloppily drunk before the ceremony. At an outdoor wedding officiated by a friend, there was the duck who landed right between my friend and the couple, and then sat there quacking through the entire ceremony.

What happened at the wedding at Cana? Poor planning, or bad luck? Jesus’ mother says, “They have no wine,” but what she really means is, “They have no wine. Fix it, Jesus.” Despite his reluctance, Jesus tells the servants to fill six large stone jars with water, and to draw some of that water, now turned to wine, and take it to the chief steward. The chief steward doesn’t know what Jesus has done, but he does know wine, and he’s amazed at the quality. Most hosts would serve the best wine up front, wanting to make a good impression. They’d save the cheap wine for later when the guests are less likely to recognize the drop in quality. But this host, the steward assumes, has ignored the traditional timing, and saved the best wine for last.

Last week, Jesus’ baptism showed us how he took his place among the ordinary folks. Today’s passage is intended to show us this is no ordinary guy. John tells us this is a sign, a sign that revealed Jesus’ glory. Because of this sign, his disciples “believed in him.” The point of this miracle, this sign, is not, “Wow! How did that happen?” It’s “Wow! Who did that?”

All the signs and miracles in John’s gospel point to who Jesus is. That’s the purpose of John’s gospel, as the narrator explains in the closing verses of the book. As one commentator puts it, biblical miracles are signs that say, “God at Work!” The wedding at Cana not only shows us that God is at work, but something of what God is like, what God is about, and therefore, what Jesus is like, and what Jesus is about.

The stone jars held water used for the rite of purification. They represent the purity code and its distinctions between who and what is “clean,” and who and what is “unclean.” Jesus turns that water into wine, and these concerns about clean and unclean give way to joy and celebration. Jesus provides this celebration with the very best wine, in abundant quantity. The jars are filled to the brim. The God that Jesus reveals isn’t obsessed with what’s clean or unclean but is characterized by lavish generosity and extravagance. That the good wine had been saved “until now” is a symbolic way of saying that in God’s own timing, the Messiah had come.

If these biblical miracles are like a sign that says, “God at Work,” how can we see God at work now? One way to look at it, as C. S. Lewis and others have pointed out, is that many of Jesus’ miracles are small, fast examples of the big, slow acts that God performs all the time. Every harvest God feeds the multitudes with many loaves multiplied from a few grains. Every summer, along sunny hillsides not far from where I live, God turns water into wine. Jesus does the same thing fast and on a small scale.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., whom we honor this coming Monday with a national holiday, wrote: “At the center of the Christian faith is the conviction that in the universe there is a God of power who is able to do exceedingly abundant things in nature and history.” The miracle, the sign at the wedding at Cana connects Jesus to this God – our God who is able, as King puts it. God is able to create and sustain the world. God is able to work through human history to save that world. King described how one event followed another to bring a gradual end to the system of desegregation. He concludes, “These changes are not mere political and sociological shifts. … When in future generations men look back … they will see God working through history for the salvation of man. They will know that God was working through those men [and women] who had the vision to perceive that no nation could survive half slave and half free. … The forces of evil may temporarily conquer truth, but truth ultimately will conquer its conqueror. Our God is able.” God is able; and the miracles of Jesus show that he, God’s son, is also able.

Turning water into wine at a wedding might seem like a trivial way to announce that Jesus is “God at Work,” given all the weighty concerns of the world: racial inequality, economic injustice, climate change and the L.A. wildfires, terrorism, war, and on and on. It was only a private party, after all. Only Jesus’ mother, the servants, and the disciples ever did know where all that great wine came from. Oh, and of course, we do. We, the readers of John’s gospel, know, as well.

At the wedding at Cana, Jesus supplies what is needed so that the celebration can continue. He does it quietly. It isn’t a flashy show of divine power. Most miracles aren’t. There are miracles of love and justice and hope taking place all around us: extreme acts of generosity, gracious acts of forgiveness; people overcoming their fears and standing up for what is right; people healing what seem to be unbridgeable divides. All these miracles point to the sign that says, “God at Work,” the sign that says God’s promise to the least and the last, to the lost and the lonely, is there in fullness, in abundance, in the Spirit of Jesus Christ. So that the celebration can continue.

© Joanne Whitt 2025

Resources:

Cornelius Plantings Jr., Beyond Doubt (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2002).

Martin Luther King, Jr. “Our God Is Able,” in Strength to Love, (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2010).

David Ewart, http://www.holytextures.com/2009/12/john-2-1-11-year-c-epiphany-2-january-14-january-20-sermon.html. 

A Prayer for Those Sent

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John 17:6-19

   I’m not a big fan of the Farewell Discourse, the long pep talk that Jesus gives the disciples in John’s Gospel the night before his arrest.  John’s Jesus is mystical and prescient; I much prefer Mark’s down to earth Jesus.  The Farewell Discourse showcases this mystical Jesus, and besides that, it repeats many variations of “I’m in God, and God is in me, and I’m in you, and you’re in me, and God is in you …” to which one of my fellow seminarians responded under his breath, “Goo goo a’joob.”  If you don’t get the reference, go ask a baby boomer.

   John 17:6-19 is the prayer that follows the Farewell Discourse.  The repetition continues with Jesus using the word “world” over and over.  The Greek word is κόσμος, or cosmos, which we probably think of as the universe, but in Greek it implies a system, an order, and especially in John’s gospel, the human system that creates alienation from God.  The cosmos is the social construction of reality that divides people, that creates systems of who is in and who is out, who is at the top of the heap and who is at the bottom.  This is the system that would oppose a reality with God’s love at the center.  In John 3:16, we’re told it’s this very cosmos that God loves; it’s this cosmos that God intends to save.

   Some read this passage and conclude that because the disciples “do not belong to the world, just as I [Jesus] do not belong to the world” (vs. 14), Christians should turn their backs on the world.  Some Christians separate themselves from the secular world; they won’t vote, take up arms, take oaths, or hold public office.  But Jesus is sending his disciples into the world, into the cosmos, into the social construction of reality: “As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world.”  As a Presbyterian, part of the Reformed tradition, I have inherited a long-held belief in living our faith in the world: whatever concerns humanity and its welfare is the concern of Christians.  There is nothing that is not God’s business.

   Jesus sends his disciples into the cosmos, into the social construction of reality, in order to transform it.  Thus, the Reformed Tradition has a long history of political activism aimed at helping God transform the world to look more like God’s Kingdom; going upstream, as it were, to address discrimination, poverty, disease, war; advocating for the marginalized and oppressed.  Presbyterians have a big fat book of social witness policies adopted by our General Assembly on everything from gun violence to racism to abortion to capital punishment to LGBTQ+ rights.

   A brief cul-de-saq: In any discussion of churches and activism, someone inevitably wonders about the “separation of church and state.”  The First Amendment to the Constitution restricts governments, not churches.  It says Congress can’t establish a religion; it can’t make any religion the official religion the way the Anglican Church is the Church of England.  The courts have interpreted this to mean the government can’t do anything to promote any particular religion or religion in general.  So you can’t require prayer in public schools, or put a nativity scene on public property.  The First Amendment also says Congress can’t get in the way of religious practices.  The government can’t require Jews to work on Saturdays or Jehovah’s Witnesses to salute the flag, and it can’t stop any student in any school, public or private, from praying before an exam.  Essentially, the government can step in only if a religious practice is dangerous to health or safety. 

   This point is crucial in our current political climate: The First Amendment allows churches to advocate for political change, but not to replace the secular government with a faith-based one.  My Presbyterian ancestors fought for this.  Simply put, if someone says, “I can’t do that.  It’s against my religion,” that’s perfectly fine.  That’s religious freedom.  But if someone tries to say, “You can’t do that.  It’s against my religion,” the First Amendment should put a stop to it. 

    But back to the Farewell Discourse.  Like Jesus, all good leaders, teachers, pastors, mentors, and parents know that you do your best to prepare folks and then you send them out into the world.  You pray you’ve done enough to get them ready for what they’ll face, and you pray that what they’ll face won’t hurt or destroy them.  In this season of graduations, Jesus’ prayer is particularly poignant. 

   At the end of the War of Independence, General George Washington had fulfilled his duties as Commander-in-Chief of the army. He sent his own farewell letter to the governors of the thirteen states, closing with a prayer that echoes Jesus’ prayer for his disciples and all our prayers for those whom we send:

    “Almighty God; We make our earnest prayer that Thou wilt keep the United States in Thy Holy protection; and Thou wilt incline the hearts of the Citizens to cultivate a spirit of subordination and obedience to Government; and entertain an affection and love for one another and for all Citizens of the United States at large, and particularly for those who have served in the Field.  And finally that Thou wilt most graciously be pleased to dispose us all to do justice, to love mercy, and to demean ourselves with that Charity, humility, and pacific tempter of mind which were the Characteristics of the Divine Author of our blessed Religion, and without a humble imitation of whose example in these things we can never hope to be a happy nation.  Grant our supplication, we beseech Thee, in the Name of Jesus Christ. Amen.”

   We are sent into the world.  And Jesus continues to pray for us.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved. 

Vines and Branches

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John 15:1-8

Jesus describes himself as the vine, while his disciples are the branches. One way to look at this is that the disciples get nourishment, fuel, even life from Jesus. His teachings inspire them, and will bear fruit in them.

But this metaphor also implies attachment. Branches are connected to the trunk. Jesus uses the word “abide.” “Abide in me as I abide in you.” Jesus is describing a closeness, a connection, an attachment that, frankly, makes me uncomfortable. It feels claustrophobic. Maybe that’s in part because as a woman born in the mid-20th century, I bristle at the thought of being subsumed by anyone, disappearing into someone else as most women have been required to do for much of history. Just who is “Mrs. John Smith” after all? We have no idea, right? She’s disappeared into Mr. John Smith.

There’s also that pruning metaphor. Hacking away branches so the plant can produce more fruit? And these branches are burned? There seems to be a warning or at least a scolding in here. What do we do with that?

Can these verses be understood in a way that does not give me the creeps?

It’s crucial to note these verses are part of the Farewell Discourse which, in John’s Gospel, Jesus delivers the night before the crucifixion. Jesus knows what’s coming and is saying goodbye. As Karoline Lewis writes, “‘I am the vine and you are the branches’ is both promise and possibility.” In this metaphor, the disciples are given a purpose: go bear fruit. Bear the fruit of the relationship, the lessons, the life they have witnessed in Jesus. The promise is that they won’t be alone. “Abide in me as I abide in you.” No matter what the days ahead bring, Jesus will be with them.

Further, if I step back from my initial claustrophobic reaction, I’m challenged to take seriously the questions, “What does it mean to be a branch on Jesus’ vine? How might this promise shape our actions?” In recent years, we’ve seen a rise in what’s called Christian nationalism, which, as someone put it, is “just plain old nationalism in which Jesus is trotted out as a mascot to endorse something that bears absolutely no resemblance to the Sermon on the Mount or apostolic Christianity.” What is glaringly missing from Christian nationalism are these very questions. I have seen no conversations from among Christian nationalists about what Jesus, the Jesus we meet in Scripture, actually wants for us or for our world, or about what he might actually do in the face of the issues with which people are concerned.

Perhaps we, as his followers, need to be reminding ourselves that Jesus is the vine, and ask how his branches ought to live.

Bearing fruit is a condition of being a disciple. Disciples are recognized by their fruits; that is, by their actions. Bearing fruit means loving our neighbors as ourselves and doing the work of spreading God’s love to all our neighbors. If we turn to Scripture, and we should, Jesus taught that our neighbors include everyone and most particularly, the lost, the least, the despised, the outcast; the people most folks really would rather not have as neighbors.

Which brings me full circle to my claustrophobic response. Jesus’ vine and branches metaphor is communal. It speaks of dependence, interdependence, and mutuality. The branches need the vine, but the vine also needs the branches. Not only are we not lone rangers or self-made in spite of our culture’s pretending otherwise, but, as Debie Thomas writes, “…the point of my Christian life is not me.”

In February I met one of my daughters for a weekend in Paso Robles (which, sadly or hilariously, locals pronounce păs´-ō rō´-bŭls), California. We toured a vineyard, and because it was February, there were no leaves on the vines. Without leaves, the grapevine’s branches were a bare, chaotic tangle growing out of the trunk. They reminded me of Muppet hair, maybe Beeker’s or Animal’s wild mane.

Debie Thomas again: “We are meant to be tangled up together. We are meant to live lives of profound interdependence, growing into, around, and out of each other. We cause pain and loss when we hold ourselves apart … in this metaphor, dependence is not a matter of personal morality or preference; it’s a matter of life and death.”

And in our world, today, it clearly is.

© Joanne Whitt 2024 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Karoline Lewis, , https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/fifth-sunday-of-easter-2/commentary-on-john-151-8-6
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2021/04/easter-5-b-2021-vine-branch-questions/
Debie Thomas, Into the Mess & Other Jesus Stories (Eugene OR: Cascade Books, 2022).