"A Successful Launch" (Sermon)

“A Successful Launch”

John 2:1-11

Allen Huff

Jonesborough Presbyterian Church

6/12/16

         Over the last couple of weeks, Marianne and I have been watching a robin’s nest in our yard. By the time we noticed the nest itself, it held three eggs. Cradled in that exquisite weave of grass and twigs, each half-inch by three-quarter-inch oval gleamed with all the blue brilliance of the earth in a photograph from space.

When I peeked in the nest a few days later, one egg had hatched. The tiny, still-blind hatchling raised its bald head until the translucent skin of its earthworm-thin neck was stretched taut. It opened its yellow beak, wobbled for a moment, then wilted into a heap across its unhatched siblings. Lying there, the little beast looked half bird, half rat, and half dead.

         All three babies have hatched now. Before long, their mother will ease them out of the nest. And – if we can keep our cat away from them – they will soon be foraging independently through lawns, fields, and blackberry thickets, and singing from tree limbs and rooftops.

         Most parents desire this for their children – a successful launch. They want to see the young people whom they have raised and nurtured move on to discover their identity and their place in the world.

         A successful launch requires many more years and much more heartache for humans than for birds, of course. Maybe birds do learn some things, but how to fly, how to find food, and how to build their unique nests, all of that is genetic knowledge. And that’s true for birds and bears, spiders and salmon. It’s a kind of ordinary miracle how particular species follow God-given imprints to keep their kind thriving and adapting.

         Miracles abound in the world, especially when it comes to beginnings. Then again, miracles are all about beginnings. They’re all about transformation. And it seems to me that for us, transforming miracles have little to do with defying nature. They have to do with helping us to live as authentic, God-imaged creatures, loving and beloved human beings.

         Mary, Jesus, and the disciples are at a wedding. At their best, weddings are testaments to a miracle – the miracle that occurs when two people recognize that by some holy, spirited touch they are being transformed into a loving and beloved wholeness. In that transformation they discover what is most completely and authentically human about themselves. Of course, fully realizing discovery requires the hard work of marriage. Marriage happens over time, as two people spread their wings and commit themselves to all the ordeals, failures, compromises, adaptations, forgiveness, successes, and joys within the concrete, mundane realities of relationship. Marriages are where water becomes wine. Still, even the simplest wedding can declare the most grateful joy and the brightest hope.

         Mary seems to understand this. So, when the lack of wine threatens to stall the celebration and humiliate the host, she turns to her son and says, “They have no wine.”

And Jesus says, “Mom! That’s not our concern. Besides, I’m not ready to go public yet.”

Unfazed, Mama Bird slips her beak into the nest and gives her fledgling a nudge. Mary turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you.”

         After Jesus responds to his mother’s irresistible prodding, everything changes. This transforming experience launches Jesus into the life of God’s Anointed One. It weds him to his purpose. And according to John, the marriage begins immediately.

         As soon as Jesus publicly embraces his identity and authority, he does something that not even the most respected rabbi would even consider. He thrashes his way through the temple, upsetting tables and chasing off those who had turned the miraculous, life-giving faith of Israel into just another organized religion based on wealth, power, and routine. The synoptic tradition of Jesus clearing the temple at the end of his public ministry is probably more historically accurate. Such reckless abandon would have been punished quickly and severely. It would have ended Jesus’ ministry, but John positions the event to demonstrate the radical effects of Jesus’ own successful launch.

         Think about it: Birds must leave the nest to live as birds. Wine must be poured out in order, as the psalmist says, “to gladden the human heart.” (Ps. 104:15) In the story of Jesus cleansing the temple, we see Jesus acting in a kind of mother-bird role, kicking his fledglings out of their all-too-comfortable nest, because only there will they learn to fly.

Now, we do need nests, don’t we? We need communities in which to grow and develop, and places to which we can return for rest and renewal. Still, neither Jesus’ Lordship nor our discipleship happens in the snug isolation of sanctuaries and fellowship halls – at least not in any way that makes a transforming difference in the world.

         When we wed ourselves to our own God-given imprint, to the purposes and potentials of creatures made in the image of God, we begin to experience the exciting implications of the truth that the miracles that really count are not about defying nature and ending all suffering. They are about becoming authentically human, here and now.

         If I could wave a wand and cure cancer, dementia, ALS, heart disease, and acne, I would do it. But I cannot.

I could tell you that God can, but then I’d have to add something like, If you just have enough faith, or, If God so chooses. And so, while claiming to declare God’s power, I absolve myself from responsibility by laying all potential disappointment on your failures or on God’s capricious whim.

         Still, when you are stressed, in whatever way, I will pray with you. Prayer pours me out. It connects me to you and makes me more human. And I pray that it does the same for you, that it helps you to recognize a fullness in yourselves, that it helps you to see your situation as a kind of nest, a launch pad for experiencing life as a miracle of grace, in all its suffering and all its gladness.

         Those stone water jars are kind of like nests. The water within them is unremarkable until Jesus pours it out for others. And there is not one of us here who, in the hands of Christ, cannot become a miracle poured out for others, as well.

It’s just so easy to get comfortable snuggling in nests and idling in stone jars. It’s easy to confuse discipleship with sitting in pews, committee meetings, and following protocols. The challenging, indeed the saving grace of Jesus is that he sees so much more in us than we see in ourselves and in each other.

What we may see as something weak and watery, Jesus sees as the makings of holy and spirited wine.