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Meditation: “Turning Water into Wine” by Debbie Celsie

Sunday, January 26, 2025

 

When we pick up today in the life of Jesus, his public ministry had not yet officially begun. He had been baptized by John the Baptist, he had gathered some disciples, and he had been doing some teaching. The setting where he turns water into wine we hear happens at a wedding in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, as well as of course, Jesus and his disciples. Now, in those days, weddings were different from ours today. They weren’t just a few hours long; they were feasts that lasted days, sometimes up to a week. Family and friends traveled from far and wide to celebrate together yet they were not just private events that you went to thru invitation but public displays of community where all were welcome, something along the lines of what we would know as an open house. Running out of wine at such an event was just not good for the obvious reasons we may think but would have significant consequences. In a culture that placed immense value on hospitality, failing to provide enough for guests could cause a major disgrace and bring public humiliation. Guests might interpret the shortage as a lack of planning, care or financial hardship which could strain relationships and harm the hosts’ standing in their social circles.  So, when a Mary hears that the wine was indeed gone, she goes straight to Jesus and tells him ‘They have no more wine’ and regardless of Jesus’ response to her she turns to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you to do. and sure, enough Jesus tells the servants, “Fill the jars with water,” and they were filled to the brim. Now John doesn’t tell us exactly when the water was transformed—was it in the jars? Was it as they poured it out? We don’t know. What we do know is that by the power of God, the ordinary was transformed into the extraordinary.

Now, one of the challenges of all scripture is that there is  more to it than meets the eye, it’s not always just what it appears to be and if we don’t know a lot about the passages that come before and after what we are hearing,  we may be missing supporting information and input that would be helpful to our understanding. For instance, a scripture such as this may leave us fixated on the miracle and wanting or expecting miracles of our own, Let’s face it, at one time or another we all have found ourselves in need of one. Sometimes it’s because of choices we have made. Other times, it’s through no fault of our own but because of decisions made by others. And sometimes, terrible things happen simply because we live in a broken world. So, when we pray for a miracle that doesn’t come, it’s natural to ask, “Why? And when we face challenges, pain, or loss, “why” often becomes even louder and louder. If God is all-powerful and all-loving, why doesn’t God always intervene in the ways we hope for? Why are some prayers answered with miracles, while others seem to be met with silence? As humans, it’s hard to reconcile with this and to even begin to understand why some experience miracles and others don’t. This tension is not new.

Throughout history, people of faith have always wrestled with this mystery.

Now to be fair to the word, we look through the Gospels, although we see people flocking to Jesus, desperate for healing, for provision, for hope, only some are healed; others are not. Clearly if we know our bible, miracles are not presented as guarantees to fix every problem. Even in our world today, we hear stories of healings and answered prayers, many of us have witnessed them in our own life, yet there are prayers that we, that you and I have prayed that haven’t been answered the way that we had hoped they would. Loved ones lost, diagnoses that don’t change, or situations that seem to remain hopeless.

In Barbara Brown Taylors  book ‘A Preaching Life ‘ she talks about a new grandma who as she holds her new granddaughter and as she looks down at her sweet little face, she thinks about how this new being does not yet know he much courage it takes to be a human in this world today, it is easy to see that this new little sweetheart doesn’t  know anything about arthritis or thunderstorms or depression. She does not lie awake at night worrying about her relationship, or her job, or her death. There is no fear in her eyes. Her world is as wide and safe as her mothers’ arms, and this is all she knows.                                                                                                                                           

But as she ages, she will know and learn more. She will learn that bees sting, and roses have thorns and that other children push and throw rocks. All of this is part of growing up. It is not the only part by a long shot, but it is the hard part.  And it is a part of what it means to be a human being. Year after year, growing up, we add to our experiences of the world and gradually we get a sense of our own power. We find we can make certain things happen and we can prevent other things from happening. We can make friends, and we can make enemies. We can say yes, and we can say no. Some of us get so carried away with this discovery that we begin to think we are in control of our lives. We come to age, and we decide what we want to be, we open bank accounts and make five-year plans. We take our vitamins and work out and get some exercise. We space our children out and raise them by the book, and nine tenths of the time it seems to work.  Until something happens.

The income evaporates, we lose our job, the doctor finds a spot on the Xray, a marriage falls apart, a loved one dies, and it's like being trapped in an automobile when the brakes fail. In a split-second everything changes. One moment we are safely in command of our journey, the next we are not. “I’ve lost control of my life” is what good people say when bad things happen to them, but it is not true. Human beings do not lose control of their lives, what we lose is the illusion that we were ever in control  in the first place, and most of us go back to the drawing board again and again because we think there must be some way to work it out, to fix it, to get back what we have lost, to make things alright, to recapture the normal. We convince ourselves that if you just do everything right that everything will somehow always be ok.

 

But we remember stories of all the people that call on Jesus and get what they want. Isn’t that the way it seems to work?  The storm stops, the demon departs, the little girl gets up from death and walks. Those are stories we have Heard over and over and those are the stories we hold onto. And I am in no way telling you to stop hoping and praying for miracles, I don’t want you to give up on them. It is true we are called to believe but I want you to think more carefully about what we are called to believe in. Are we called to only believe that our prayers will be answered that things will turn out the way we think they should, that we will get what we want, is that the message, is that our takeaway from this story and other miracle stories like it?

 

I have come up with some truths we can hold onto as we wrestle with these questions.

 

The first is that these are not stories about how to get God to do what we want, which is just another way to stay in control.

Second,  "Miracles" generally refer to supernatural events that defy natural laws, while "signs which is what John called these things that Jesus did  encompass those miracles that are specifically meant to point towards a greater truth or divine power, often acting as a validation or confirmation of a message or person's identity, In the Gospel of John, we see Jesus perform seven of these signs, starting with the one we hear of today and  John tells us that these signs were written so that we may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, There are written down for one reason, and one reason only and that is to prove that Jesus  was no ordinary man.

Three, as humans, we tend to focus on the result. We often pray for miracles hoping that our trials will disappear, and we want the miracle because it feels like proof of God’s presence and when the miracle doesn’t come, we can feel abandoned or question God’s love. there is a delicate balance between God’s power and the free will we the people have been given.  Not everything in life is in God’s hands—our choices, and the choices of others, shape the world in ways that sometimes bring beauty and sometimes bring pain. But just because some prayers are answered doesn’t mean God is absent from the lives of those whose miracles don’t come true. God’s love doesn’t play favorites. It has always bothered me when people go on about the power of prayer and how someone or something has been spared yet don’t consider what that means to someone else listening who wasn’t so fortunate. Real faith means recognizing God’s presence isn’t measured by outcomes. It’s found in the strength to endure, even in the middle of the storm, even as we walk through fire, even when the world feels shaky. It's the peace that sustains, and the grace that carries us forward, even when life is devastating and hard. Faith isn’t about believing only when we see results—it’s about trusting that God is with us in the waiting, in the heartbreak, and in the journey. God’s answer to our prayers is not about Gods ability to change someone or something but the grace that is given to endure.

 So, let us hold fast to the truth that God’s love is constant, not contingent, and trust that in every moment—whether in joy or sorrow, triumph or trial—God is with us, offering peace and grace to carry us through.

Faith invites us to shift our focus from the outcomes we desire to the presence we are promised—a God who never leaves us, even when the miracle we hope for does not come.

So, may we find comfort in knowing that God’s power is not in fixing every broken thing, but in walking with us through the brokenness, giving us strength to rise and courage to hope again.

 All Glory be to God

© 2015 Queensville Holland Landing United Church

20453 Leslie Street, Box 82 

Queensville, Ontario

L0G 1R0

(905) 478-4781

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