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Epiphany 4
2/2/2025

Jeremiah 1:4-10
Psalm 71
Luke 4:21-30

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Does the prayer of our psalmist this morning make any sense?

It is a prayer for protection, that God be a “rock of refuge, a strong fortress”.  This much seems straightforward; those in need reach out, and God is often such a resort. And yet we might imagine that if God were able to become such a fortress, and if – as he testifies – God has been the poet’s hope and trust since the days of his youth (vv6f), then why is there a problem in the first place? Has God failed to keep up what would seem to be his end of the deal?

There is at least a tension here, and perhaps it’s even worse than this. The poet isn’t in the throes of what we might call “general” suffering – illness or infirmity, poverty, a broken heart, or any such thing which even his persecutors might suffer at times. His suffering is specifically that which arises from the life lived according to the call of God. It would seem to be his own very faithfulness which has seen these hard times visited upon him. Later in the psalm (v20), he even “blames” God for what has happened, addressing God as, “you who have made me see many troubles and calamities.”

Taking seriously the things the psalm sets alongside each other, there emerges what is, perhaps, an unexpected account of what it means to live faithfully, and to pray. The psalm contradicts the simplistic notion that the faithful always have a good time of it. The faith of the poet here cannot be cast as a last resort for some kind of protection from the ills of the world, a kind of vaccine we take in order to ward off evil. Quite to the contrary, the prayer of the psalmist suggests that faith might actually be the thing which causes suffering for the believer – at least the kind of suffering that the poet experiences. For the “troubles and calamities” he experiences seem to be persecutions for what he believes in the first place. What he believes marks him somehow in the eyes of others. His faith marks him as different in what he will and will not do, in what he will and will not say, in what he looks to as a measure of truth. And this brings conflict in a world where the things of this particular God are rejected.

It’s common these days – within the church almost as much as without – to caricature Christian faith and prayer as a response to an experience of secular life. Believing is here something we do in order that our situation might be changed: we believe as a means to an end.

But, for the psalmist, it is what he already believes which has become the source of heartache for him, as it has become a focus for mockery (vv13,11). But this mockery is not for the poet a sign of God’s absence, but rather arises from the very presence of God in the poet’s life. And so, despite first appearances, there is no contradiction when the poet calls out to God for help. It is not that faith knows the presence and the absence of God, coming and going. It is that God’s presence is as much a problem as a solution.

And so the faith of the psalmist doesn’t come and go according to the circumstance. Faith is steady. It turns to God not simply because something has gone wrong, but because it has first known the “going right” which relationship to God has brought before. And so faith is no grasping at straws when all else has failed. Such a “faith” – so-called – does not know the God it longs for; it longs only for a change of circumstances and “hopes” that there might be a God who can bring this about.

But what distinguishes the psalmist’s hopeful faith from the simple wish for relief is the thing which will mark its arrival. Those who simply wish for change long only for a change of circumstance. It brings about in them no real change but the relief itself. And that is the end of the matter, until the next crisis arises.

But for faith which hopes for change – and so looks to a God it already knows as the agent of change – the outcome is marked not only by relief but by praise and thanksgiving which reflects a renewed experience of God’s faithfulness.

And so the poet finishes the psalm in a surprising way – not actually praising God yet but looking forward to the time of praising God:

²² I will also praise you with the harp
for your faithfulness, O my God;
I will sing praises to you with the lyre,
O Holy One of Israel.
²³ My lips will shout for joy
when I sing praises to you;
my soul also, which you have rescued.

The psalmist looks forward not only to his deliverance, but to the praise which will spring from his lips. For this deliverance will be something which marks a constancy in his life – a constancy which is God Godself. The psalmist’s life is structured not by the ups and downs, the ins and outs of human existence, but by God’s company along the way. His life is not simply a story of what happened to him, but a story within the story of God – a story within the call to trust God who is faithful. God’s love and faithfulness frame the psalmist’s experience in the bright times and in the dark ones. And so he does not simply suffer or celebrate according to the circumstances; he finds the call of God to be the way of understanding where he is, and what he is to be. In the good times, then, and in the bad, he continues to learn what it is to be a creature of this God, trusting in God’s promise to make peace of him and his circumstances.

And in the meantime, the poet gets on with the next thing which will be required if he is to remain faithful: the next word, or act, or prayer.

And this is God’s promise also to us. Though our experience of the world can feel harder because we believe, our faith itself is that God, and not anything other thing in the world, is finally to be trusted. And so we pray in confidence, trusting that nothing in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. With poet, we too will give thanks and praise, that this is indeed the case.

And, in the meantime, we too will get on which the next thing which faithfulness to a God like this requires: the next necessary word, or deed, or prayer.

Based on Epiphany 4C 2016

 

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Epiphany 2
19/1/2025

Isaiah 62:1-5
John 2:1-11

Sermon preached by Rev. Rob Gotch

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The last time I led worship here we read the texts for All Saints Day, which included the raising of Lazarus from John, chapter 11.  The lectionary finishes at verse 44, but it’s actually the following verse which informs us about the purpose of the story: ‘Many of the Jews therefore, who had come with Mary and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him.’  Scholars recognize this story as the seventh and final sign in the fourth gospel, which concludes the first half of John’s narrative, known as the ‘book of signs’, and leads into the second half, the so-called ‘book of glory’.

Today, we’ve heard the gospel narrative that John declares to be the first of Jesus’ signs.  As the church discovers during the season of Christmas, the Gospel according to John is deeply interested in exploring the meaning of Jesus through vivid images and metaphors.  The gospel opens with a prologue that recalls the creation story of God’s Spirit giving form to the void and God’s Word speaking light into darkness.  The prologue declares that the source and destiny of God’s creating is God’s Word, the Word which becomes flesh in Jesus Christ and dwells among us in glory, grace and truth to make God known.  Jesus is the form and light of God’s creating; the living one through whom all things came into being.

With the prologue having set the scene, the gospel then features the witness of John the Baptist: The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him and declared: ‘Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.’  The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed: ‘Look, here is the Lamb of God.’  The gospel then indicates that the next day Jesus decided to go to Galilee, bringing us to the passage we’ve heard today, which begins:  ‘On the third day …’  Of course, this reference to the third day already anticipates something significant about how the life of the crucified Jesus is made available to the world.

In John, chapter 2, the third day is the occasion of a wedding in Cana, to which Jesus, his mother, and his newly called disciples are invited.  This wedding occurs in a culture in which it’s common to serve the good wine early, and replace it with poorer wine as guests become too drunk to notice the difference.  Good news perhaps for wedding hosts, since celebrations typically lasted several days.  And yet, inexplicably, on this occasion the supplies don’t last the distance, and we’re left wondering about the dismay and embarrassment of the hosts.  At this point, Mary informs Jesus that ‘they have no wine.’  To which he replies: ‘What concern is that to you and me?’

This seems like a fair response.  After all, it’s not his responsibility to cater for the wedding.  But Mary is anticipating something of far greater significance than this celebration.  And this is precisely what Jesus is thinking when he adds: ‘My hour has not yet come.’  This references a narrative thread that appears later in the gospel.  In chapter 7, some people attempt to arrest Jesus, but no one lays their hands on him, because his hour had not yet come.  In chapter 8, after proclaiming himself as the light of the world, he again avoids arrest, because his hour had not yet come.  Finally, in John chapter 12, Jesus declares that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.  Now we discover that the hour he speaks of to Mary is the hour in which he’s to be lifted up on a cross to draw all people to himself.

This explains his initial reluctance at the wedding banquet, which now hints at another significant theme we must explore.  In John chapter 3, the Baptist speaks of Jesus as the bridegroom, and of himself as the bridegroom’s friend whose joy has been fulfilled.  Then in John chapter 4, Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at a well, noting how she’s had five husbands and her current partner is not her husband.  Is Jesus being presented here as a groom, and if so, what is the identity of the bride and indeed the nature of the pending nuptials?  Those who know the Scriptures may recall the prophetic Hebrew imagery about God as a husband who courts Israel as a wife, or the eschatological imagery of the marriage supper of the Lamb in Revelation 19.

Which brings us back to Cana, as Mary advises the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.  At his command, they fill six stone jars to the brim with water, and then draw out wine of the finest quality.  These six stone jars set aside for the Jewish rites of purification had been empty, just like the wedding supplies, but now they contain the abundance of a new dispensation.  Jesus attends the wedding as guest, but then becomes host, the one who embodies the hospitality of God, deconstructing cultic demands as the water of the old covenant becomes the wine of the new, a new covenant sealed in his blood and signed in his cup.  His hour has not yet come, but he is anticipating a banquet set for all humanity.  The wedding celebration of an unknown and unnamed couple presents any and all moments in which eternity enters the mundane as a sign of God’s revelation and offer of life.

Our world is in the midst of precarious times:  deadly wildfires around Los Angeles hint at what’s to come as global temperatures rise; a tenuous cease fire in the horrific violence between Israel and Hamas; Donald Trump to be inaugured for a second time as President of the United States.  It remains to be seen how these events will play out, and the world will look like in four weeks, four months and four years.

What is certain, however, is the church’s faith and hope in the one whose glory is revealed in death, and whose life is the light of the world.  As bridegroom, Jesus recapitulates the prophetic promise to vindicate the forsaken and desolate, gathering them as a bride in whom the Lord rejoices and delights.  Here is the table of the Lord, a sign of the wedding feast in which all things are consumed in his honour and service.  Our Lord’s hour presses in on us.

Here, we are made welcome by hospitality that is not of this world.
Here, the Spirit of devotion shared between Father and Son is poured out upon us.
Here, the exhausted old wine is replaced by the water of life.
Here, we are fed by the bread of heaven and cup of eternal salvation.
Here, we receive what we are and become what we receive.
Here, we are enlivened by the Spirit to be the body of Christ.
Here, we are sent by Christ and with Christ into the world.

And now to the God of all grace, who has called us to eternal glory in Christ, be the dominion forever and ever.  Amen.