“Seeing the Daisies” based on Psalm 89:1-8, 14 and John 2:1-11

Christianity has a weird relationship with food. In the abstract, with the Communion Meal at the center of our shared worship history, you might think we’d be especially great at seeing the sacredness of food. I think it is fair to say that you’d be wrong.

Before the Christian Testament of the Bible was even complete, we have letters from Paul to various communities saying, “please pay attention to each other when you gather for Communion and Worship.” Because, apparently, the rich people were bringing feasts, the poor people were bringing what they had, and ALREADY they weren’t actually sharing. The inequality of the world was coming to the Communion Table, and Paul was displeased.

I’ll also note, that I’m not delighted with his answer to this conundrum. Instead of urging sharing, he told people to eat at home in advance rather than feast in front of hungry others.

After the letters of Paul, but before Christianity really got its foothold in the world, much of the tradition was carried on by the Desert Fathers and Mothers. This may be news to you, I hadn’t heard of them until seminary. These remarkably faithful humans felt a calling by God to devote their lives to prayer, and went out into the desert so as not to be distracted by the drama of human life. Quite often others came to them seeking their spiritual wisdom. The ones who gathered around these desert wisdom teachers eventually became monastic communities. Cool. One of the problematic little nuances to this though, was that many (most? all?) of the desert fathers and mothers in their zealous pursuit of God and rejection of things of humans, were known for not eating and claiming to be sustained simply by the love of God.

Now, I’ll say that these desert parents look a lot more like John the Baptist than Jesus to me, but still, our faith probably wouldn’t have made it without them, so they’re in our religious DNA.

This underlying hostility to food can still be found in a lot of Christianity, it was striking to me last week as I gathered together readings about the sacredness of food and other “pretties” in life, that books I thought would have some delicious bit of reflection on the profound wonder of reading a ripe apple instead recommended abstaining from the joy of food and considering eating a necessary evil. FACEPALM

Now, we insert our Gospel lesson into this conversation! So that we can hear this while also holding among ourselves compassion for those who struggle with addiction, it probably helps to remember that water in those days in that part of the world was not safe for drinking, and wine was what was commonly consumed. It was a lot less potent than what people drink today, and I think the focus here is on abundant provision rather than specifically on wine. We aren’t celebrating drinking, but rather the continuation of a meal where people celebrate – which today can happen with all kinds of drinks.

Jesus is a guest at a wedding, where they are running out of wine which would have been embarrassing to the hosts and likely cut off the party, but didn’t fall under the responsibilities of Jesus. There is no consensus on why Mary intervenes. Perhaps the wedding hosts were her extended family. Perhaps she was ready for him to get on with his ministry. Perhaps this whole story is used by John as a foreshadowing of the later feeding narratives. I can’t tell you.

What I can tell you is that this story is in the Gospel of John, and is considered by Christian tradition to be the “first miracle of Jesus” and what he actually does is make a ridiculous amount of really good wine that enables a wedding feast to continue and the wedding hosts to save face.

When we look at the problems of the world, this one seems pretty small. It does, indeed, initially seem beneath the attention of Jesus – at least the Jesus of the Gospel of John who is a human who has amazing powers like making water into wine.

But perhaps the idea that this miracle is beneath Jesus comes out of that anti-food and anti-drink part of Christianity. The part of our faith that is AGAINST the world and its pleasures. But, friends, I tend to prefer the part of our faith tradition that is FOR the world, and reminds us to attend to and savor and enjoy the pleasures of life.

Jesus gets accused of being a drunkard and a glutton. Jesus’ followers are accused of breaking the sabbath by munching on some wheat while they walk through a field. Jesus horrifies the faithful by eating with the “sinners.” One of the VERY few narratives in all four gospels is the feeding of the multitudes. And, we have this story, Jesus turning water into wine.

Whatever our tradition may say, we follow Jesus who was into food and getting food to people. He did NOT tell people that it was holier to be hungrier. I think he thought of food as a God given gift of abundance that should be shared between God’s beloved people. And based on Jesus’ fairly excellent social analysis, and his capacity to see the blight of the poor, he knew better than to claim being hungry was GOOD. Because hunger was killing people.

Bill McKibben in Deep Economy says, “for almost all people throughout history (and for most people still today) ‘the economy’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘What’s for dinner?’ and ‘am I having any?”1 That’s the world Jesus lived in, and the one we live in.

So, if you’ll allow it, I’m going to add a little bit of imagination to the text. I don’t think it takes too much. Jesus and his family may have been very poor, at the very least they were landless when land usually meant sustainability. And they were near a lot of Empire violence, which doesn’t tend to bode well for already vulnerable people.

Because Mary intervenes, I think it is mostly appropriate to read this story as if she’s related to the hosts. Worrying about each other’s problems is a family thing. And if Jesus and his family were poor, and this family hadn’t been able to provide enough wine, it seems like we can pretty easily imagine that they too were poor. And maybe we can even consider that many of the wedding GUESTS would also have been people living in poverty. The exact kind of people who didn’t get a lot of invitations to fancy dinner parties put on by rich people – like in some parables.

So, Jesus – a materially poor guy – is at a party with a lot of other people who don’t have an excess of calories or luxuries, and he is asked to help prevent some embarrassment by providing some wine. And he does. He keeps the party going. The people get to connect with each other longer. The hosts are relieved.

The story says that he provided BETTER wine that what they’d all started with.

For me, today, that’s the crux of the story. Jesus wants good things for people, in abundance. The amount of wine said to be produced was actually a bit obscene 😉 It isn’t carefully proportioned, it isn’t “just good enough.” It isn’t leftovers from someone else’s fancy party. It is the good stuff, in abundance, because everyone is worthy of good food and drink. Because Jesus is a person of God, the one who made the world of abundance and asked us to distribute the goods so that everyone gets what they need! And it is ALL the good stuff.

Many of us will sit down at tables this week to savor a feast. If you don’t have other plans to do so, please come to the Spaghetti feast on Friday at lunchtime! It also promises to the be the good stuff in abundance.

Whatever table you sit at, with whatever company you will be keeping, I hope you will take the time to savor every bite as a gift from the God of Abundance who wants us to receive good things.

As our poem said today:

We walk on starry fields of white
   And do not see the daisies;
For blessings common in our sight
   We rarely offer praises.2

The good stuff is all around us, in food and in beauty. We’re called to notice. We’re called to savor. We need the chance to say thank you to the Holy One for the good!

Of course, there is always a next step, the one where we keep working for God’s vision of a world where those resources of good and abundant food are accessible for everyone. But, first, dear ones, first eat and savor. John says Jesus first gave a gift of abundance to a people who didn’t expect it, but enjoyed it. We are fed to feed, blessed to be blessings, loved so we can love. Receive what you are given, and enjoy it. It is the Jesus way, even if Christianity can’t always seem to remember that! Amen

1Bill McKibben, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future, (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2007), p. 47.

2Ella Wheeler Wilcox “Thanksgiving” https://poets.org/poem/thanksgiving-1

Rev. Sara E. Baron 
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady 
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305 
Pronouns: she/her/hers 
http://fumcschenectady.org/ 
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

November 19, 2023