Second Sunday - Peace Sunday
Water Into Wine
John 2.1-12
When the wedding feast was over and all the guests had gone home, what memory would the happy couple take with them? Would they remember Jesus the miracle worker who saved them from loss of face by producing 150 gallons of vintage claret? So extravagant and over the top! Would their parents be forever grateful? Would the servants talk about it for days? Would the disciples still be too tipsy to recall anything very much? And would they recall the old Aramaic warning:
‘Please drink responsibly’?
Hopefully the more reflective guests would remember their Jewish scriptures, and all those stirring poems about the day when God would come among his people, and it would be like a wedding-feast.
Isaiah put it so powerfully: ‘As a bridegroom delights in his bride, so will your God delight in you!’ God loves us with a passion that deserves a celebration.
In our secular world, many turn away from God whom they see as detached from human cares. But though they deem themselves agnostic or unbelieving they are actually closer to gospel truth than they imagine, because the God they reject is not our God at all.
Our God is neither the God of ancient stoic philosophers nor today’s celebrity atheists. The God we know is not detached but wildly in love with people like us. And his love is totally extravagant.. over the top.
Fr.Austin scj