by Rev. Fred G. Garry - January 14, 2001
Texts: Isaiah 62 and John 2 There has been a longstanding debate
in this country, carried on mainly by clergy, over whether or
not the church has any business getting involved in social issues,
social concern, or social struggles. The debate has many aspects,
many elements, and many factions. On the far end of the spectrum
you have individuals who feel the church should do little more
than address social issues, be involved in social activism, and
peace and justice for all. On the other far end of the spectrum
you have individuals who believe the church has no business but
the gospel. Preach the gospel, evangelizing a lost and dying
world. Save the soul and the rest will take care of itself.
There is a certain amount of logic to
each side. For those who hope for the church to be defined by
a social gospel you have the precedence of Jesus and the Old
Testament prophets fighting for the widows, the downcast, the
outsider, feeding the poor, comforting the sick. I can hear Isaiah
here, "Comfort, 0 comfort, my people;" I can see Jesus
having compassion for the crowd and feeding them. There is a
certain amount of common sense that while we all need repentance,
we might listen more with a full stomach. This is what I call
the "Head Start" preaching program. Yet, there is also
a certain amount of sense to be found on the flip side. Before
Jesus offered comfort and care, healing and feeding, "he
came preaching and teaching repent and believe." -Jesus
didn't offer condoms or safe sex tips to the woman caught in
adultery or the woman at the well; he didn't say to Zacheaus,
"you are a victim of circumstance," or to the Pharisees,
"everyone has their opinion." He said, "I didn't
come to bring peace; I have come with a sword. " Or the
words of the Baptist, "I baptize you with water, he will
baptize you with fire."
As a youth I was nurtured by a congregation
who articulated the far end of the spectrum, where the saving
of the soul was the sole purpose of the church. 1 can remember
an atmosphere of ridicule and disgust for helping agencies, or
social agencies, as phony Christianity, or the gospel of good
intentions doesn't save the soul from Hell. Just to be fair I
have had many opportunities to hear the same sort of accusation
leveled at evangelicals, that they have a self-serving piety.
Yet as a youth I have to say the message
I heard most clearly was save the soul and the rest will take
care of itself; the church has no business in social causes,
for this pollutes and distracts us from our real mission, the
great commission. We are called to baptize, not to harmonize.
Lying beneath this view were two deep convictions: first the
world is an evil and sinful place a few days from being consumed
by God's wrath; and the second is that the only good thing, and
in essence the only truly good people, were "God's people."
While others could do good deeds, real righteousness, real goodness
only came from God, and God only uses those who are called and
chosen, who have committed themselves to the Gospel.
To maintain such a view is hard. You
have to be very careful with your associations and with your
exposure to the world. If you don't watch out, you will find
your eyes are off the prize and you are lost to the wiles of
the devil whose snares and traps are everywhere. Like the parable
of the bridal party where the lamps have to be kept lit and watch
needs to be diligent, so was the life lived for God.
I carried most of these convictions with
me when I started to work in a grocery store in college. I came
in with many firm and clear definitions about life, about goodness,
about what was right and wrong, who was good and who was evil.
When I came to this store with a gay bathhouse across one street,
a crack house across another, prostitution at night, homeless
people rousted from the front benches in the morning, the clarity
of my convictions began to be challenged. Many of the markers
and symbols of evil and sinfulness ... well ... were not symbols
anymore, they were Jeff, and Tony, and Bob, and Marcy, and Issom.
Issom was a name one of my co-workers at the store; he received
this name in prison. His real name was Effender Mack. No one
ever really knew why.
Most importantly though I came face to
face with the reality of poverty, with the complexities of addiction,
and the subtle pervasiveness of crime. For a young man of twenty,
born and raised not only in the comfort and seclusion of upper-middle-class
suburbia, but also the clarity and purity of charismatic evangelicalism,
this was a baptism of fire. For truly many of the easy answers
about life, answers that seemed to make so much sense when you
are only talking to people like yourself, so many of these answers
were burned away. In the place of answers came many, many questions,
and yet there was something more than just questions.
More important than the questions was
a deep and burning desire to step into the fray of life. To never
again be secluded, safe, above the world. For I came to realize
that many of the definitions and decrees that I had held could
only be maintained at a very safe distance from the challenging
fray of real life.
In our passage this morning from the
gospel of John we have a very similar situation. Jesus is in
Cana, a small town in Galilee, and by the way, two thousand years
later, is still a small town in Galilee. Jesus and his mother
come for a wedding and the wine ran out. She calls him and bids
him to fix this situation. In one of the most intimate of exchanges
in the gospels Jesus complains, but follows her direction. I
am glad to see that Holy Mary, made Queen of Heaven by centuries
of devotion, was also a somewhat pushy mother; and Jesus, a reluctant
son. For reluctantly he bids servants to fill six empty clay
jars with water and bring them into the feast.
It is this last detail wherein we find
the reason why this instance is the first miracle of Jesus and
a story receiving great detail by John. For the truth of every
story is always in the details for John. The detail, six empty
clay jars for purification, reveals the tension, the contradiction.
The contradiction is that these are very significant jars, meant
for a very exclusive purpose. These were jars to hold rainwater
for ritual baths of purification; ritual bathing had taken over
the Jewish faith at the time of Jesus. This is the reason why
the Pharisees were always upset by how impure Jesus lived.
There are two significant things that
happen here. The first is that the jars, having now contained
wine, would have been ruined. They no longer could be considered
a pure vessel, they would have been seen as contaminated. The
second significant factor is that the jars themselves represented
what had become of the church, or synagogue, at the time. The
church had become an empty jar, exclusive, obsessed with purity
and rituals few could truly follow. The church had in essence
lost 0 relation to the world. Hence, when Jesus fills the jars
with wine, changing the water, he was filling the church with
life, wine represents the fullness of life and joy.
Everything that Jesus did from this point
on was a kind reaffirmation. From eating with prostitutes and
sinners, to healing on the Sabbath and challenging the obsessive
legal codes of the Pharisees, he was changing water to wine,
and many felt, ruining the purification rituals, the empty, exclusive
jars. Again and again, the gospel records Jesus leading his disciples
not away, but into the fray of life, and when they did try to
withdraw, life followed them. To him came the outcasts, the lepers,
the broken, the possessed, and the children. Real life, with
all its ambiguities and complexities, with all the broken pieces,
warts, and moments of grandeur, he lived real life.
Tomorrow is Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
I think it would be hard to find a better example of someone
who was willing to take his faith into the real fray of life
in this last century than Dr. King. Eloquent, provocative, and
determined he accomplished more by the age of 39 than can be
seen in many, many lifetimes. Where would civil rights be today
if he had not -said, "I have a dream?"
Yet, for me the greatest and most challenging
charge King made was a letter he wrote from the Birmingham Jail.
He wrote the letter in response to criticism that he was not
acting as a pastor should, taking church folk in the wrong direction,
not being a responsible leader of faith. He wrote his response
on the margins of newspapers and scraps of paper for he was jailed
in isolation without representation. Finally he was given a pad
of paper to complete this prophetic response. The letter as a
whole is devastating in its clarity and dogged determination
to step into the fray of life. The most convicting moment for
me though was the address itself, the first four words of the
letter, those to whom the letter was written, those who had criticized
his actions, "my dear fellow clergymen."
When I first saw to whom this famous
letter was written what came after was just an echo of a great
conviction. Like the water to wine at Cana was the image of what
was to come, bringing the reality of life into the church, so
was this address, "my dear fellow clergymen." For with
these words it was as if he took me by the hand and with a loving
voice, walked me back into the fray of life, into the rough and
tumble, the ambiguity and chaos of life's margins and marginal.
This address is like a gentle call, "come sit with me for
a spell and let's talk about what is right and wrong, here in
the fray."
There were two key criticisms to which
he gave a response. The first was that the non-violent form of
demonstration he was teaching and promoting were illegal, and
frankly, non-Christian. History has a way of casting a light
that is profound like no others. For as I read this criticism
and thought about his response, how can peaceful protest of moral
evil, no matter the consequence be wrong, as I thought over his
words I couldn't help but think of 1968 and the riots that swept
our country. Where would we have been as a nation had not this
man preaching non-violence for the last fifteen years?
The second criticism is one I would like
to end with today and practice tomorrow. The second criticism
was, now is not the right time for this, for action. Curious
enough in our passage today, what do we find Jesus wrestling
with, it is not my time. In spite of this protest Jesus turned
the water into wine, as did Dr. King two millennia later. For
as to time he said, it is always the right time to do what is
right. It is always the right time to do what is right.
We all have our opinions and our convictions.
We all have our questions, some even have answers. And while
these are good to have and often enable long car trips to be
decorated with colorful moments of conversation, what we really
need is courage. Courage to step into the fray of life, courage
to be in the midst of brokenness, courage to turn water into
wine no matter what time there is, or is not. More than any question
or answer, we need the courage to follow Christ, to do what is
right. Amen.
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