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Wine-ing about the Water

31/1/2020

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“They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine.” John 2:9


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One of the traditional readings for the season of Epiphany is the account in John’s gospel of the Wedding at Cana, the first of Jesus’ miracles. Jesus is made aware at a wedding banquet that the host has run out of wine, and after some persuasion tells the stewards to fill six stone water jars to the brim. And on tasting the water, the master steward finds this is the finest wine and he now has about 120 litres of it. And the celebration continued..


I have always wondered at the necessity of this miracle, a rather frivolous use of one’s power you might argue. But I wonder if this miracle might also be seen as an act of great compassion.


I have been reading a book by Edoardo Albert called “Edwin” which re-tells the story behind the Northumbrian King Edwin around 600 years after this wedding at Cana. In the book the King himself his holding a wedding banquet. Aethelburh his new bride has come to Edwin, and with her a priest Paulinus and it is through these two that Edwin becomes to be introduced to the Christian faith.


So imagine this wedding banquet being held by King Edwin, imagine the nobility that has been invited to share in the feast, imagine the banquet hall filled with guests – and the King wanting to make sure his guests are entertained. So he calls for those gathered to share stories of the adventures and quests. And it is Paulinus, not wanting to waste an opportunity to share the gospel, who stands up and tells the story of this Wedding at Cana.

But it is at the point in the story when the host of the banquet runs out of wine, that Paulinus asks his audience what they would do should that happen at the King’s banquet: “Cut off the stewards head!” “Feed him to the dogs” “Feed him to the Britons” are their barbarous and drunken replies.

Perhaps then, Jesus’ intervention in the case of the empty wine glasses may just have been an act of compassion rather than a flamboyant party piece.

Perhaps Jesus sees the consequences of the stewards miscalculation and takes the opportunity to spare him the suffering of such a mistake. And in the process, may even have elevated him in the eyes of the bridegroom.

The wine came from simple ordinary water.
The ordinary was turned into the best of all.
A mistake was turned into an opportunity for promotion.
For this really is a miracle of transformation.

When God comes to earth, to share his life with us, he does not come as a new order of being, but as a human. God takes our human nature and transforms it into the divine in the person of Jesus.

And I think we are called too to follow that pattern of taking ordinary things, and turning them into extraordinary things. Whether it is water, or our human lives, God has the power of transforming them into something special.

We might ask how God is going to transform the world, and bring about his kingdom here on earth? It is not by wiping away everything there is and starting again, but by taking what we see and touch here and now, and transforming it, so that it might fulfil God’s purpose.

Our lives might seem ordinary, but they are capable of being transformed, just as the water was transformed into wine.

Just as a musician might take sounds and compose them into a melody that can lift our hearts and souls.

Just as a painter might take coloured dyes and create a picture that takes our breath away.

Just as an author might take words and create vivid pictures in our imaginations – that take us away to lands and times beyond our own.
So each of us can take the things we have been given – our sorrow and joy, our labour and rest, our success and failure – and with the help of the Holy Spirit, transform them into something extraordinary and holy.
We give thanks that through Christ water may be turned into wine, and that through Christ with us, the ordinary things of our lives may be transferred into miracles of the extraordinary.

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January 2020

2/1/2020

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          "God Calling"
"In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1:1

150 years ago Alexander Graham Bell was developing his ideas for a device to help those with hearing difficulties and in 1876 he finally came up with a device for transmitting one’s voice and patented his ideas for the telephone. Both his mother and his wife were deaf, and no doubt such a device was useful around the house for finding out what was for dinner or for summoning people to you. The first successful telephone conversation consisted of the famous words “Mr Watson come here, I want to see you.” It wasn’t long though until Bell realised the universal application of this device he had incarnated and global communication technology was conceived.

Alexander Bell knew that a word would be required as a universal greeting for the telephone, so if you were speaking to someone in a different time zone you wouldn’t need to worry about whether to say ‘Good morning’ or ‘Good afternoon’. Bell wanted the word ‘Ahoy’ to be the universal greeting for answering the telephone, but it was Thomas Edison who devised a new word ‘Hello’ which finally won the day.

This New Year’s Eve as we ‘Facetimed’ friends in America and recorded video messages to email to friends and family – I wonder what Alexander would make of this technology revolution and the relative ease of communicating with people all over the world. Today we can text, video message, call, facetime, whatsapp, anybody, anywhere and at anytime. We have instant communication with everyone at the press of a button. It is simply amazing.

In the Archbishop of Canterbury’s New Year Message, he encourages us to reconnect with people. To choose just one person and reconnect with them, either by text, phone call or whatever means necessary. To reconnect with others in some way, to reach out to them and speak words of friendship. Justin Welby said that sometimes we think of heroes doing great things, but we can all be heroes to someone. He says: “Every time we reach out and connect with someone it is an act of heroism..don’t underestimate it.”

If there is one resolution we can make this year, then why not let it be this: to reach out to others and offer them words of friendship. After all that’s exactly what God has done for us. In that baby born in Bethlehem, the Word became flesh and lived amongst us. God reached out to us with the Word. The very first global communication, long before Alexander Graham Bell patented his idea. A Word that goes out to all the world, as God connects with us in a new way. This universal word in which God says to us “Hello”.




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    Author

    Julian Sanders

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