“Dear
Molly and Joe”
(Lessons
from a Wedding Reception)
John
2:1-11
First
Presbyterian
The
Reverend Thomas A. Sweet
January
17, 2010
Late last fall, my daughter, Molly,
called from Los Angeles with the happy news that the love of her life, Joseph
Kostka, had proposed to her and that she had said yes, yes, and oh yes!
Already it has been an eventful
engagement. Joe gave Molly an
engagement ring the value of which equals the GNP of a small country.
But it wasn’t long before Molly lost the ring.
It was lost before Joe had had a chance to insure it and before Molly
could get it re-sized to fit more snugly. Joe
was great about it and they got an inexpensive band to put on Molly’s finger,
but the loss was a lingering sadness. Then
last weekend, Molly called with the amazing news that she had found the ring.
Actually, I think we heard her shrieks of joy all the way from LA just
before she called. It turns out that
Molly uses reusable grocery bags and, as she had not had to do a major shop
since Thanksgiving, when she finally went to do one last weekend and pulled out
all of the bags from the drawer where she stores them, there appeared the ring
that must have fallen off into one of the bags!
With a lectionary reading today about a wedding reception, there were some insights I found there that I thought I would share with Molly and Joe and so the sermon today takes the form of a note to my daughter and her intended, though, hopefully, you will find a thing or two of interest as well.
Dear Molly and Joe,
With the announcement of your
engagement to be married in October, you might imagine that I read our gospel
passage for this Sunday about a wedding reception in Cana of Galilee with rapt
attention. Given the way the
anticipated costs of your wedding are piling up, I took special notice of the
part of the story where water is turned into wine.
I want to look into that further!
As you know, I am completely approving
and happily pleased that you have chosen to make the journey of your lives
together. Even with all of the
details that need tending as you prepare for your wedding, the wedding is always
the easy part. It is your marriage
that will ask and require a lot of you through the years and of the two, wedding
and marriage, your marriage is the most important.
Still, at this point, I know you mostly are focused on the wedding and
the reception. First things first.
I have to tell you at the outset that
this might have been a different letter had I written it a week ago.
In times of high celebration, as indeed a wedding is, it is possible to
lose ourselves in all of the excitement and forget that there is a world out
there beyond our own circumstances. In
your marriage, you will be forming a very small and intimate community of two
– at least until my grandchildren come along!
But you also will continue to be part of larger communities – your
community of friends, the communities in which you will live, your work
communities, and the world community. It
is within this latter community that we all have been undone this week as we try
to comprehend the inexplicable horror unfolding in
I have learned in my life that just
because there is a question does not mean that there is an answer to it.
The book of Job in the Bible – you remember that story about the
grotesque suffering that righteous Job endured – is really about the
questioning that accompanies Job’s seemingly unfair suffering – Why?
How come? What does it mean?
Within the story, answers are attempted, but none of them is big enough
to ring true and some of them are downright cruel.
We always want answers in the face of tragedy because we fear the loss of
control when we cannot explain or place blame or otherwise account for it.
It makes us feel more vulnerable. The
explanations we attempt in are usually for our own benefit and comfort while our
blatherings add insult to injury for those already suffering.
Pat Robertson might feel less threatened himself if he thinks, as he
said, that the earthquake occurred because
We just have to allow that we live in a
world in which natural laws apply and that the same forces that make luminous
sunsets, purple mountain majesties, and cooling summer breezes also cause
earthquakes, tsunamis, and floods. How
else can we explain things like the two of you, Molly and Joe, filling these
weeks with the ecstasy of expectation while at the same time there is a young
man in Port-au-Prince I saw on television wracked with the despair of desolation
as he sits outside a grocery store reduced to rubble with his young bride
trapped, and likely dead, inside? As
winsome and wonderful as the two of you are, so, likely, was that young couple
in
There is a second lectionary passage
for this day – there always are four: Old Testament, Psalm, Gospel, and
Epistle – that seems fortuitously appropriate.
In the back story to Isaiah 62:1-5,
For (
and for
until her vindication shines out like the dawn,
and her salvation like a burning torch.
The nations will see your vindication,
and all the kings your glory;
and you,
that the mouth of the Lord will give.
You shall be a crown of beauty in the hand of the Lord,
and a royal diadem in the hand of your God.
You shall no more be termed Forsaken,
and your land shall no more be called Desolate;;
but you shall be called God’s Delight Is in Her,
and your land Married;
for the Lord delights in you,
and your land shall be married.
For as a young man marries a young woman,
so shall your builder marry you,
and as the bridegroom rejoices over the bride,
so shall your God rejoice over you.
God had promised to be wedded to
Well, I have digressed because of the
events of this week, but it was a roundabout way of saying that God has promised
to be wedded to you, too, come what may in your lives, and God will meet you in
both your hopes and your fears through all of your years.
That does not exempt you from tragedy but it does mean that, even in the
hardest and harshest times, as those in
So, that
wedding – God’s wedding to you – is the backdrop against which you will
give yourselves to each other in what the church calls “holy matrimony.”
Indeed, a wedding is time for grand celebration.
I admit that there have been plenty of times across the years when I have
questioned the wisdom of spending large sums of money on a wedding reception.
I have been curmudgeonly enough along the way even to have muttered
something like, “Why don’t they just take all of the money that is being
spent on the reception and put it toward a house or toward things that they are
going to need?”
But I have been wrong.
Celebration is important. The
wedding receptions in the time of Jesus lasted seven days.
(I am glad that cleared up!)
There was a lot of eating and drinking, and – yes, Molly, dancing –
during those weeklong parties. A ton
of food and wine had to be prepared in order not to disappoint the guests.
Among the poorer communities, wedding parties exacted an enormous
economic toll on, in those days, the groom’s family.
Although we often assume that the wedding in
So, in telling us that Jesus’
changing water into wine at a wedding reception was the first sign of his glory,
that is, of God’s favor, John must have wanted us to know that we are not to be so holy that we cannot be happy.
Too often, we make religion and God seem so dour, serious,
sanctimonious. In
other words, while there is surely a sacredness to life, a sanctity, one does
not have to be in a temple or a church or a quiet place to be present with God.
God also can be experienced in the midst of hustle and bustle, at a
wedding party, and as much in dance as in prayer, though dance can be thought
of, I think, as a form of prayer in which case, Molly, you come pretty close to
satisfying
But, it also is the case that all true
happiness has about it an element of holiness in which we not only acknowledge
but embrace our status as children of God and the vision of the kingdom of God
for life. To say it in a phrase, we
cannot truly be happy without also being holy.
We cannot go against the grain of the way God made life to be and
truly be happy. That is why, I
think, Jesus made the Beatitudes the centerpiece of his Sermon on the Mount.
You remember them, the blessing statements:
“Blessed are the poor in spirit
because the kingdom of heaven is theirs.”
“Blessed are those who grieve because they will be comforted.”
“Blessed are the meek for the earth will be theirs.”
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness because they
will be filled.” “Blessed are
the merciful because they will receive mercy.”
“Blessed are the pure in heart because they will see God.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers because they will be called children of
God.” The first word of each
of those blessings is, in the Greek, the word that means happiness.
The literal translation of all of those blessing statements really begins
with the word “happy.” “Happy
are the merciful, for they will receive mercy,” for example.
So, happiness and holiness fit together like a hand in a glove.
When you keep them together in your life, it will be as if the water of
your life is being changed to wine and you will experience, in the words of
Philo of Alexandria, joy, grace, and the sober intoxication of God’s Spirit.
Molly and Joe, I cannot wish for you
(or you, the hearers of this sermon) any more than that.
And even as I treasure the story of that wedding reception long ago in
Cana, I look forward even more to the celebration of your wedding in
Love,
Dad/Tom
Amen