Primary Text: John
2:1-11
Let the words of my
mouth and the mediation of my heart be always acceptable in thy sight, O Lord
my strength and my redeemer. Amen
I drove
slowly through the snow late last night, longing simply to curl up in my bed
and drift sweetly into sleep. Longing to be home. I was returning from a
funeral and visiting with a new clergy friend, and I knew that I had spent too
long talking, but the fellowship was good and like sweet water for my heart. I
knew that even though the conversations I had were good for me, I longed for
home, longed deeply for my bed, and for my eyelids to be able sink heavily as I
drifted to sleep. The snow whipped severely around and at times, disorienting
me to the point that I couldn’t even tell if I was moving forward or standing
still. As the minutes drifted towards hours and my soul grew weary.
As I drove
my mind was on the worship for this morning; my mind was on the begging
question of whether or not I would be ready, and I started to think about the
act of worship, for this is much of what I talked about yesterday with old
friends and new, and much of where my mind was. I started to wonder if we
grasp, even dimly what we are doing in worship. I wondered if I grasped it and
if I had explained or am even capable of explaining the breadth that is the
worship of our Lord. I wondered if I could find to the words to do so.
As I drove
I thought of our worship, the importance of both parts of it. There are two
parts in our worship. There is the liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Faithful
or the Sacrament. These two elements
contain the very essentials of what we need for a healthy spiritual life, for
we do not have life without the word; nor do we have life without the sacrament.
There are exceptions to these rules, but in the context of a healthy
congregation we must desire both and we need both for our growth and strength.
For it is in the word that we come to know God, it is in the word that we are able
to hear his voice. Yet the sacrament heals our hearts and our souls, it touches
us in a way that the word cannot; it goes beyond our very ability to
intellectually understand and touches us in a way we cannot quite grasp. In a
very real way we are both experiencing the sacrifice of God and in that
experiencing the eternal worship that we look forward to at the end of days.
Let us
pause for a moment and really look at the liturgy. It is designed to be an
invitation into the worship of God and even more importantly into experiencing
God. It is not a hope for the next great emotional high; liturgical worship, while
it can touch every element of the human being, is not there to give us an
emotional comfort or the warm and fuzzies, rather it is a hope to experience
God, even if only at the very edge of His being, even if it is only to view Him
from behind as he passes by, as Elijah saw him on the mountain.
Worship, like
the worship in the temple, is a dim image of what we are preparing for. We are
preparing for the final, the full participation in the marriage feast of the Lamb.
So it is that we start with an examination of our souls, where we look into
ourselves and see the darkness of our hearts. We cannot claim that we have kept
the commandments; we cannot claim that we have kept even the summary of the
law. For if we search in earnest, we see that we have failed to love God completely
and failed to love our neighbors completely; if we think on what Christ said on
the sermon on the mount, the bar is set high and our hearts long for our own
sense of justice, long to rule over ourselves, and long to rule over our
neighbors. We do not long to allow the sovereign Lord to be our ruler. For this
is the crux of the curse. This is why we reexamine this every week; this is why
we then call out to God – Lord have mercy! Christ have Mercy! Lord have mercy!
For it is only in His mercy that we can approach Him; it is only by the blood
of the Lamb that we can come to him; and it is in this outpouring of love that
our unruly hearts are brought into submission to His will.
The Introit
turns our hearts to the love of God. Recently we have started doing this
responsively and generally using a full psalm or at least a longer portion of
one. The Introit is a calling and an invitation to bring of our hearts into
deeper worship of God; it is a preparation to hear His word. The word of God
demands a response; the word of God is how we hear the voice of the Lord. The Gradual
calls us into hearing His word more deeply and beckons us to enter into the new
covenant, departing from the old; for as we enter into something new we enter
into something that is greater than the old. For the old was simply a dim image
of that which was to come; the old law only convicted us and brought us death.
The old covenant was completed in the new and the dim images that we see
swirling through the old were made clear when Christ came into the world. It is
in this new covenant that life comes again into the world. We stand with
eagerness to hear the proclamation of the Gospel and then we immediately
respond with the Creed. Historically in the catholic church the Creed came
after the sermon – but the reformers, I believe, desired that the people
respond with belief immediately following the proclamation of the good news in
the Gospel, and so this is what we do and then we hear the word expounded upon,
now in the sermon.
After the
sermon we enter into the Liturgy of the Faithful, into what is known more
academically as the Anaphora. Through this liturgy we begin to enter into intimate
worship of the Lord; we are called to come and experience Him. After we have
prayed for the whole of the church, after we have prayed for those who have
come before us, after us, and those who walk with us now, after we are reminded
that we are not alone but very much a part of something bigger, we are invited
to look back and look forward. We are invited to partake in the marriage feast
of the Lamb. We are invited to partake in the super that the Lord instituted.
We look back and look forward in this moment, for the event itself is timeless.
The event is eternal. We are very much partaking in something eternal. It is a
taste, a glimpse of what our participation in heaven will be. For in the
Eucharist we experience the once offered, sufficient sacrifice for all, not
represented – but re-experienced. We also, dimly experience the marriage feast
of the Lamb, promised for the time of eternity. The Eucharist, coming into it
and partaking in it, is in fact the pinnacle of worship. It is in this
strengthening and in this remembering and looking forward to the future promise
that we are strengthened to head into the world.
So, what
does this have to do with the lessons today? St. John’s Gospel is broken up
into two parts: the miracles and the
teachings. However, the whole of his gospel screams one thing – this is the
Lord, this is the Messiah, the Son of God, the very God incarnate among us. The
only way to escape this testament is to adulterate the text. St. John’s Gospel
tells us that something monumental has happened; that the very Lord has burst
into the world and that His love is overwhelming.
While it is impossible not to see
this testimony from the very beginning of his text, it is at the marriage feast
at Cana where Jesus’ first miracle was performed, that we slowly grasp his
bursting forth of Love, which is a prefiguration of the final supper, the supper
of the Lord. This miracle is so astounding for it was a profound act of Love.
If the hosts had run out of wine, it would have been an insult to the guests,
and it would have been tragically embarrassing for the new couple. It would
have been something like inviting people over for dinner and then saying you
forgot to actually buy food to make your guests dinner. Hospitality in Christ’s
culture was of the utmost importance. A wedding feast would have lasted days
and clearly the feast was all ready getting long.
However it
was not enough for Christ to simply provide them with some wine, it was the
best wine that was served at the feast. We know this because the organizer, the
feast planner, if you will, was angry because the best wine should have been
served first, and this was the best wine. It was overwhelming, a scandalous and
an astounding act of Love.
It was also
a prefiguring of something and a reveling. It was an act of re-creating. It was
an act of creation. When he turned water into wine it was a speeding up of the
very essence of the universe; the grape vines grow only when watered and over
time grapes spout; the grapes are juiced and fermented and finally after much
time and much work you have wine. This act of creation was sped up in these
moments. Simultaneously he uses a piece of the old covenant, the jars for purification
and fills them with what will eventually be a figure of the new covenant. He is
already starting to show that all things will be made anew, showing the
incredible pouring out of His love on the cross, the pouring out of the blood
of the Lamb for the making new of those who would hear the call and come and
partake.
Perhaps you
are wondering what does all this have to do with longing – which is where I
started; longing for bed, longing for rest, longing for home and for safety. We
long to be with God, we long for our hearts to be filled with His love. While
the curse causes us to desire to rule ourselves, we know deep down inside that
there is something greater than the ego, an ongoing ache for something more. We
are void and tired without this inflowing of His love. “As the deer longeth after water, so my heart
longeth after the Lord.” He is the only one who can fill this longing, who can
fill this want. It is Him alone who plants, who grows and who builds. While we
are active participants in history, history is made complete and redeemed by
God alone. In the end, His true justice will be served. While it may seem like
the road is long and unending and may seem to bring us nowhere, eventually we
find we have come a little closer to God and we know eventually we will be
brought fully into that eternal promise. When we come into worship, when we
enter into the completeness of the Eucharistic invitation we are drawn into a
taste of the long promised completion of all these things.
So come let
us put our trust in God, let us worship the One who creates, who builds and who
makes anew. Let us trust in the fulfillment of the promises that He is there,
that He is good, that His mercy is greater than anything that we could ever
imagine. Let us rejoice in the wine that is better than we could ever desire. Let
us partake in the marriage feast of the Lamb. Let us enter into that deepest
promised relationship with the Lord. For He has called and we have heard and
here we are, let us now be continually made into new creations and let us
rejoice in all He has done.
In the name of the
Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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