{"id":296,"date":"2013-02-10T16:25:37","date_gmt":"2013-02-10T21:25:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/?p=296"},"modified":"2017-10-26T22:20:52","modified_gmt":"2017-10-27T03:20:52","slug":"sermon-gathered-in-second-sunday-in-epiphany-jan-13-2013","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.newunionchristianchurch.org\/home\/2013\/02\/10\/sermon-gathered-in-second-sunday-in-epiphany-jan-13-2013\/","title":{"rendered":"Sermon: Gathered in Second Sunday in Epiphany, Jan. 20, 2013"},"content":{"rendered":"

Texts:<\/span> Isaiah 62:1-5; \u00a0John 2:1-11; \u00a0I Cor. 12:1-11<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Gather us in\u2026.the new hymn says.\u00a0 Gather us in\u2026the lost and forsaken, the rich and the haughty, the proud and the strong\u2026Gather us in and hold us forever.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s one of my favorite new hymns in our new hymnal.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It appeals to that piece of me that always feels like a chick in need of a mother hen, the vulnerable self that wants to be brought home.<\/p>\n

Gather us in—-give us a heart so meek and so lowly; give us the courage to enter the song\u2026.Gather us in. \u00a0\u00a0I think it is the human condition to feel an exile, a separation, to know the loneliness of change.\u00a0 I read an article last week about Adam Lanza, the young man who killed the hard drive on his computer, then killed 27 people beginning with his mother, and lastly turned his gun on himself.\u00a0\u00a0 The article wrote of how Adam Lanza lived in the world of his computer, rarely needing to leave the house.\u00a0 Several lines in the article jumped out at me:\u00a0 \u201cOur lives are becoming more transmitted than lived.\u201d\u00a0 \u201cTechnology enables us to live alone together.\u201d\u00a0 And social networking may give the \u201cillusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.\u201d<\/p>\n

As far away as the time of the writer of the last chapters of Isaiah might seem, they are nonetheless quite relevant to our modern anomie, a condition of social instability and personal, even spiritual alienation\u2014that feeling that there isn\u2019t enough love, and there isn\u2019t enough experience of God\u2019s presence and support to sustain a person or a community..\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0The people of Israel had seen their city sacked, their temple burned, their leaders expelled from Jerusalem, and many of the best tradespeople and artisans hauled to a foreign country to do slave labor for the victors.\u00a0\u00a0 While we may not feel that our city is sacked, we do have our days of looking at our beloved towns and cities and bemoaning their change, and in some ways to us, their degradation.<\/p>\n

With the historical background of the Babylonian exile giving metaphorical shape to realities in our own lives, or at least in the lives of people we read about in the newspapers, if not people we know rather more intimately, the words of this third prophet of the school of Isaiah, penetrate to that vulnerable place in all our souls:<\/p>\n

\u201cYou shall no more be termed Forsaken; and your land shall no more be termed Desolate;\u00a0 but you shall be called \u201cMy delight is in Her, and your land, \u201cMarried\u201d;\u00a0 for the Lord delights in you.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/em>There in the wasteland and insufficiency, a prophetic voice asked them\u2014and \u00a0asks us\u2014to see beyond \u00a0misery and all the ruin at their feet to a new day.\u00a0 They were given a new identity\u2014one chosen by God, who would call them \u201cMy delight is in Her\u201d and they were to discover that they had far more than the past to give them meaning.\u00a0 From this point on, they also had a future contained in the promise God would marry them.<\/p>\n

In the prophecy of Isaiah, God is the actor\u2014the people of Israel are the object of the action.\u00a0\u00a0 Marriage is the verb.\u00a0 This is not like marriage on the human plane where two equal parties fall in love.\u00a0 This is another kind of marriage, with God actively choosing a people who seem most unlovable and unlikely.<\/p>\n

The poet George Herbert captures some sense of this side of God in his poem:\u00a0 \u201cLove Bade Me Welcome.\u201d\u00a0 It begins this way:<\/p>\n

Love bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,<\/em><\/p>\n

Guilty of dust and sin.<\/em><\/p>\n

But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack<\/em><\/p>\n

From my first entrance in,<\/em><\/p>\n

Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning<\/em><\/p>\n

If I lacked anything.<\/em><\/p>\n

God as quick-eyed love!\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that a marvelous way to put it?\u00a0 No matter where you are in your spiritual journey, God is looking out for you.\u00a0 No matter how reluctant and unworthy you might feel, the quick-eyed loving nature of God asks if you lack anything.<\/p>\n

It is not surprising therefore that the creators of the lectionary linked this passage from Isaiah about God\u2019s extravagant love and marriage to an unlikely people to the story of Jesus at the wedding in Cana.\u00a0 The Gospel lesson for today is not really about changing water into wine in any literal sense.\u00a0 It is a report of a SIGN.\u00a0 It is not a miracle story.\u00a0 John\u2019s gospel \u2013 the most theological of the four Gospels, and the least connected to the actual life and actual words of Jesus–does not portray Jesus as performing miracles, as in the other gospels, so much as providing \u201csigns\u201d, indications of the \u201cglory\u201d which is to come and which is breaking in on the world at the time of their occurrence.\u00a0 There are, in John\u2019s gospel, seven such signs…seven being the perfect number.\u00a0\u00a0 The events at the wedding in Cana of Galilee are the first sign, verse 11 tells us, revealing his glory, and his disciples believed in him.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The sixth sign is the raising of Lazarus from the dead.\u00a0 The seventh sign, of course, is the resurrection, on the third day.\u00a0 All of them illustrate a holy extravagance, that goes beyond any reasonable limits.\u00a0\u00a0 Religion often tries to box in and limit God\u2019s love to only those who conform to some way of thinking, believing, worshipping, or acting, limited to those whose past is clean of any sins.\u00a0\u00a0 At its core, John\u2019s gospel is the gospel of holy extravagance that knows no limits.<\/p>\n

In the Old Testament the word \u201cglory\u201d is shekinah<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0 Rich in meaning and overtones, \u201cglory\u201d can mean \u201cthe dwelling place of God.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 These key words:\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cthird day\u201d;\u00a0 \u201cwedding feast\u201d; \u201cmy hour has not yet come\u201d \u2013 a phrase recast at the very last when Jesus prays with the disciples before his arrest, \u201cNow is my hour come\u201d;\u00a0\u00a0 \u201cwine\u201d;\u00a0 \u201csigns\u201d;\u00a0 \u201crevealed his glory\u201d;\u00a0 and \u201cbelieved in him\u201d–these words and phrases\u00a0\u00a0 are indicators that we are dealing with far more than an interesting little event in the ministry of Jesus.<\/p>\n

For John, these words hold deep symbolic meaning and point from the beginning of the ministry of Jesus to its end.\u00a0 Each sign indicates God\u2019s extravagant grace, mercy, love and capacity to fill empty vessels with the best wine of celebratory joy.<\/p>\n

Remember, Jesus describes himself as a bridegroom, and his life with his disciples as one long wedding celebration.\u00a0\u00a0 The author of this Gospel may also have been the author of the Book of Revelation who speaks of the bridegroom coming down from heaven.\u00a0 A wedding is a joining, a uniting.\u00a0 Here it clearly stands for the wedding of the human and divine–in Jesus, but also in the everyday affairs of humankind, the mundane business of\u00a0 familial formation and celebrations.<\/p>\n

John has Jesus at the most ordinary of locations,\u00a0 not in the synagogue as with Mark, not in his home town synagogue in Nazareth as does Luke and as we shall hear next week, not on a figurative Mt. Sinai giving a new set of teachings in beatitudes as does Matthew\u2014but amid ordinary life at a wedding reception–which in those times would be an event that lasted about a week.\u00a0 Behind the story is a theological affirmation:\u00a0 Jesus is Lord\/Messiah.\u00a0 He is Lord wherever he intrudes among us, bringing \u00a0extravagance into our empty places, into the places where it seems we have run out of the juices of life that spur our joy in it.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0His presence there inaugurates, for John, a new family, a new group \u201cgathered in\u201d, as our opening hymn this morning said.<\/p>\n

Jesus becomes, in this story, on the \u201cthird\u201d day of his ministry (evoking the thought of the \u201cthird\u201d day after his death), the new path to God.\u00a0 \u00a0The story serves to illustrate the theme set forth in the prologue:\u00a0 the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory\u2026full of grace and truth.\u00a0\u00a0 Or, as I kept saying throughout Advent and Christmas, God became one of us so that we might become like God.<\/p>\n

Once I saw a banner that said:\u00a0 \u201cThe sign of God\u2019s presence with you is that your feet are where you did not expect them to be.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tomorrow is the celebration of the birthday of a modern day hero, martyr\u2026Martin Luther King, Jr.\u00a0 Despite all the changes, ours is still a world of racism that none of us really experience.\u00a0\u00a0 Ours is increasingly a world of violence, when non-violence might be a more effective means of solving some of the world\u2019s most vicious hatreds.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe the sign for today points our feet to take us to that worship service tonight at Central Christian Church at 6:00; or to march in that parade tomorrow.\u00a0 Maybe the sign for today invites us take up the last cause of Dr. King, from the last sermon he gave at Riverside Church in April, 1967, 40 years ago, \u00a0of the need for our nation not to be the military force that uses violence to suppresses violence\u00a0 in the world but the peaceful friend that builds a new humanity through diplomacy and humanitarian assistance.\u00a0 Perhaps the more important application right now would be engagement with our leaders at all branches of government about the culture of guns and fear of others to create once more in America a model of a nation of neighborliness.<\/p>\n

The call of God is made to a community of people to be a communion with God\u2014and with one another.\u00a0 \u201cGather us in\u2014not just in buildings, small and confining;\u2026 not in some heaven, light years away\u2026Gather us in and hold us forever;\u00a0 gather us in and make us your own; gather us in, all peoples together\u2026fire of love in our flesh and our bone.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Texts: Isaiah 62:1-5; \u00a0John 2:1-11; \u00a0I Cor. 12:1-11 Gather us in\u2026.the new hymn says.\u00a0 Gather us in\u2026the lost and forsaken, the rich and the haughty, the proud and the strong\u2026Gather us in and hold us forever.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s one of my<\/p>\n

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