The Rev. Charleston Wilson
In the Name of the Living God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
What is the very best thing you have ever tasted?
And, gentlemen, may I suggest right up front that, if you care about your safety and life-expectancy, you better be thinking about something your wife or your girlfriend makes on a regular basis!
Seriously, though, what is the best thing you have ever tasted?
I’ve got all sorts of things competing for my top spot. I’ve got visions of homemade goodies from childhood; I’ve got Malacy’s delicious rum cake; I’ve got my mom’s Southern-style cornbread; and I’ve got some treasured memories from the first time I ate a proper feast in France. I suppose the healthy among us might be thinking of a kale salad or something like that. Hey, don’t knock it. Sarasota Magazine featured the top three kale salads in the city in this month’s issue. It’s all the rage.
But, again, of all the things you’ve had and tried and made, what do you say is the most delicious?
Hold that thought. I’ll come back to it.
First, I want to talk about what happening at this wonderful wedding party we’ve just heard about in the Gospel according to St. John. The highlight of the wedding, of course, is that our Saviour takes something simple and ordinary like well water sitting in jugs and turns it into wine – and not into just a few liters of Two Buck Chuck from Trader Joes, but into a super-abundance of the very best wine!
If you like math, you’ll want to note that the six jars St. John mentions, which were used for ritual purification, each held about 30 gallons of water. Thirty gallons times six jars is, of course, 180 gallons of wine! Most of us don’t buy wine by the gallon (or do we?), so a little more math is in order to understand what’s going on.
In case, however, you think that’s too extravagant for one wedding party, remember that weddings at the time were week-long celebrations. Nevertheless, in terms of the standard 750 milliliter bottles – the ones on the shelves at Total Wine or Morton’s – we’re still talking about some 900 bottles! It’s a super-abundance of wine any way you slice it.
Ironically, an old friend of mine in Alabama called me this week and was agonizing about his daughter’s forthcoming wedding, particularly how much it was going to cost to entertain 250 guests. He asked me, specifically, to pray for the peace and presence of Christ. So in a very pastoral moment, I said, “I assure you that, by prayer and the Holy Spirit, our Saviour will be with your daughter at her wedding.” He said, “Charleston, I’m not talking about Jesus at the service; I’m praying he turns up at the reception!”
But the real irony, you see, is that he shows up every time we’re together for the celebration of the Holy Eucharist!
But, back to the party: you know, though, water is a curious thing, really. Foundationally speaking, back in grammar school we all learned that one molecule of water is comprised of two atoms of hydrogen and one atom of oxygen bonded together. Water, moreover, is the basic necessity of life. Symbolically and sacramentally, however, water is much, much more; it is cleansing and even regenerative.
And it is in this great miraculous act that both the symbol and substance of water are transformed into wine – the biblical symbol and substance not of ordinary life, but of extraordinary life!
St. John’s point becomes crystal clear: Jesus has come to transform the world.
But, like water, transformation is also a curious thing. Most of us think of transformation almost exclusively in terms of drastic transformation, say, like in Beauty and the Beast or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde – in other words, in terms of radical opposites.
And, of course, God can (and at times does) change things in the most radical of ways. He can take the very worst things and situations imaginable and create things and situations stunningly beautiful.
But that’s not really what’s happening at the wedding party, because, at this party, our Saviour takes something already good – namely, water – and makes it far, far better.
Likewise, He can take you and He can take me – feeble and sinful to be sure, but nonetheless created good in God’s own image – and, by the power of grace, can do an impressive renovation. “The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly,” saith our Saviour.
So let’s go back to the question on the table – the best thing you have ever tasted.
Not only is hard to narrow it down, but the trouble is, you see, that most of us think about tasting as a physical act linked to eating. But tasting is deeper still.
Legend claims the moment that the lowly Benedictine monk and cellar master, Dom Perignon, discovered Champagne he burst forth from the cellar, crying, “Come quickly, I am tasting the stars!” When De Chaulieu, the colourful eighteenth century French poet, first encountered Champagne, he wrote, “Hardly did it first appear than from my mouth it passed into my heart.”
And so it must be for each of us! The wine of grace – the cup of salvation – must pass from our lips to our hearts so that we, bit by bit, are transformed into something more than just good and necessary like water, but into something abundant and fit for service in the kingdom of God.
Finally, may I just add that, no matter where we spend our time looking for transformation, only our Saviour Jesus Christ can give us the abundant, transformed life that every human heart ultimately seeks.
What happened at Cana is available to you to me today right here in Sarasota.
If this sounds too much like what the tent revivalists call an altar call, may I remind you that each and every time we as Catholic Christians come together we in fact have an altar call: we are called up, one by one, to the throne of grace to receive the grace of salvation – the best tasting thing in this world and that which transforms us for service in the next.
Taste and see, my brothers and sisters, taste and see that the Lord is good.
Sermon preached by the Rev. Charleston D. Wilson
The Church of the Redeemer
Sarasota Florida
2nd Sunday after Epiphany
17 January 2016