Sermon for Epiphany 2 Year C 2016 Bottle Shock In a twist of fate, along a dusty road, a wandering vintner and a struggling winemaker find their lives and their careers forever transformed by a blind Parisian wine tasting. Sounds almost biblical, right? And yet this is the start of the true story of how the entire world was introduced to the extraordinary wines of Napa Valley, California. The year was 1976 and Napa Valley was not yet known as one of the world s best wine regions. Jim Barrett had sacrificed everything in his life to realize his dream of creating the perfect Chateau Montelena. Meanwhile, in Paris, British expatriate Steven Spurrier want to educate Parisians on the new wines coming out of California. Steven owns the Académie du Vin, and is eager to travel to the United States in order to ensure that he has conducted his research properly. Californian Barrett wants no part in the competition, believing it to be a set-up designed by the French to humiliate New World wine producers. Barrett's son, Bo, having confidence in his father s vintages, secretly passes Spurrier a couple of bottles of the Chateau's chardonnay for the competition. Though almost none of the participants and even spectators of the blind wine-tasting expect that there will be any winners other than a wine produced in France, the new California wines are tastier than the old wines shocking the world. 1
But hopes are dashed when it is discovered that the beautiful buttery-golden wines have turned brown in their bottles. Bo and his father s hopes are dashed and they decide to have the whole vintage carted away for dumping. But it turns out that the wine has turned brown only temporarily due to a rare variation of something called bottle shock. (Which is the title of the movie about this event.) Fortunately this is discovered in time by the son who recovers all the discarded bottles of wine and travels to Paris to represent Napa Valley at the contest. After tallying the scores of the blind taste testing from the eight Parisian judges, Spurrier the British wine entrepeneur and all the Parisians and, I might add Bo are shocked to find that the Napa Chateau Montelena has won the chardonnay competition. This twist of fate and the resultant epiphany forever changes the fortunes of Napa Valley wineries and the global wine industry as a whole, since it revealed that the old French wines were in fact not unbeatable. The film ends with Spurrier making a prophetic statement that this is only the beginning, great wines will be produced from all around the world in places that had previously been unthinkable a new age of worldwide winemaking was beginning. The story of Jesus turning water into wine at the wedding in Cana, contains one of the most powerful messages in all of Scripture. But it seems that a lot of times, people get snagged on one of the details and end up missing the joy of the message. 2
What are we supposed to make of this story? If you think about it for a moment, you begin to discover it raises more questions than it provides answers. One New Testament scholar points out that though this is supposed to be a miracle story, no one gets healed. No blind person regains their sight, no sick child recovers their health, no storm is stilled, no lame person rises from a pallet and walks away. And on top of that what is going on with the enormous amount of wine? Six jars each containing about thirty gallons, that s about 150 to 180 gallons of vintage wine in all my, what a wedding reception that must have produced! What is Jesus up to here? Furthermore, what is going on between Jesus and his mother? He tells her to mind her own business because his time has not yet come, then acts as though the host running out of wine is simply not his or her problem only to do what seems a complete about face to solve the problem without so much as the host having a hint as to who has done it. Finally, the moment the deed is done, Jesus, his mother, brothers and disciples leave the party and head for Capernaum. What is going on here? 3
First, to get at the meaning of this story we need to know that John is a different sort of Gospel. John was not written to get the facts out there. John was written with the assumption that people already knew the facts about Jesus life it has even been suggested that John was written as a commentary on the other three Gospels. John is not looking to tell his readers what happened in Jesus life. John wants to tell his readers what the life of Jesus means... John seeks to proclaim what the core message is really all about. To enter the Gospel of John is to enter a world of symbols and stories that have at least two or three levels of meaning. The only way to get at John is to start out with the assumption that the message John wants to convey is below the surface and the details of the story are just a means to that end. So, let s go to the story with that in mind. The first thing to notice is that John does not call it a miracle. In fact, John does not call anything a miracle in his Gospel. Instead, John calls them signs. This was a sign for people, something that would inform people about what they might expect from this Nazarene, something that would point them toward a deeper meaning. Apparently none of the other Gospel writers thought the miracle at Cana as something worth recording. They were much more impressed with the healings and exorcisms. But John remembered Cana. John saw in the miracle at Cana a sign that served to define the very purpose for which Christ had come into the world. The servants at the wedding saw water turned into the finest wine. 4
John saw a man who in this first sign declared himself as an agent of transformation. Remember, it is only in the Gospel of John that Jesus is recorded as saying, I have come that they might have life and have it more abundantly. This statement, I believe, is what the miracle at Cana is all about. Water, the basic necessity of life, is changed into wine the symbol not just of life, but of abundant, joyous, and celebrative life. If you go into this thinking wine is evil, you miss the boat completely. Wine in Scripture is a symbol of joy and warmth, of celebration and abundance. In changing the water into wine and allowing the wedding celebration to continue, Jesus is clueing people in on his mission. Jesus has come to transform the world. We often think of transformation in terms of opposites. We think of the ugly turned beautiful as in Beauty and the Beast or the kind Dr. Jekyll transformed into the cruel Mr. Hyde. Or we think of change to something unrecognizable like the caterpillar transformed into a winged butterfly or the transformer toys where a boat becomes a robot. And it is true that God can and does transform people in those ways. God does take mean, ugly lives and transforms them into beautiful angels of mercy. 5
God does take us when we are crawling along on our bellies and gives us wings to fly. God does take us when we are broken and make us whole. But there is another type of transformation that is shown at Cana. At Cana, the object of transformation is something that is already good and pure and necessary. There is nothing that needs fixing in the water. Water is good. The message of transformation at Cana is not about making the bad good, but about making the good even better. This well-known story with its many unanswered questions is clear about one thing: Jesus has just created a super-abundance of wine that will keep the wedding festivities going for many, many days. It is the first of Jesus' signs self-revealing windows through which we can see who Jesus really is as he manifests the creative abundance of God's gracious presence. Unfortunately, the members of the wedding party are so preoccupied with their celebration that not even the host knows what has taken place. The steward knows it is the very best wine he has ever tasted but hasn't a clue where it came from or how much there is. Talk about a blind taste-testing! Only those with Jesus his mother, brother and disciples see what has happened. In the abundance of the best wine God's new age is breaking in. They know Jesus is the one who has done this. 6
As the first of his signs, Jesus not only revealed his glory disclosed to them who he is and his disciples see and believed in him. John is inviting us to see what Jesus' disciples see. The lessons this morning, paired as they are, press us to see the fulfillment of God's steadfast love, gracious faithfulness, merciful righteousness and justice all this abundance of God's goodness is "housed" in his incarnate presence in Jesus. In this setting of worship, they invite us to taste and see that the Lord is good, to drink deeply in the rivers of delight and fountain of life, and share in the abundance of life he came to give the abundance and variety of gifts of Spirit present in this very room and all around the world. For it is only in tasting and seeing that we really know what scripture tells us is true. In tasting and seeing, the love of God in Jesus Christ transforms what is good into something even better. What do people see when they look at our lives? Do they see that we have access to living water? If so, then that is good, and those who are thirsty will be drawn to the source of that water. But there are many who don t feel thirsty. They are living decent lives and are relatively happy with their lot. Is there any indication in your life and mine that we serve a God who turns water into wine? 7
And if you remember the story, it s not just cheap wine, it s the good stuff it s the unexpected, bottle-shocking Chateau Montelena. Do people see your faith as something that turns water into wine or does it look more like turning wine into water? Does your life reflect the miracle at Cana? What would our lives look like... what would our church look like, if we let Jesus turn our water into wine? What a bottle-shock that might be! 8