The Second Sunday after the Epiphany - January 17, 2010

"Words of Hope"

The Rev. Stephen Elkins-Williams

We may have come to church today in need of words of hope. All week we have watched the wrenching devastation caused by the earthquake in Haiti: tens of thousands killed, many more injured, even more rendered homeless. Hospitals, churches, schools and orphanages were destroyed. The small, painfully slow progress made in trying to improve the life of this exceedingly poor nation was all but wiped out. It would be difficult to name any other nation on earth that has suffered more than the people of Haiti.

The Gospel reading for this Second Sunday after the Epiphany, which we have heard many times, can seem irrelevant. Two thousand years ago Jesus changed some large stone jars of water into wine to save a sagging wedding reception. What has that got to do with us and with the sagging hopes of the Haitian people?

Not to be too facile about it, this Gospel story has everything to do with us and how we perceive and act upon the challenges of our world. First of all, it is told by John as “the first of [Jesus’] signs” which “manifested his glory,” i.e., which proclaimed to the whole world, then and now, that “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3:16). Rather than abandoning the world to its own devices, as we may sometimes feel is the case, God sent his Son, Jesus and threw in his lot with the world, if you will, suffering with us and sorrowing with us and rejoicing with us.

One self-righteous televangelist this week had the gall to suggest that had superstition and voodoo not been part of Haitian history and culture, this earthquake would never have happened. What a callous disregard for human suffering and what a distorted view of scripture’s message about God. Time and again the Bible tells us of God’s love and forgiveness, even when we children do not return it. “Your love, O Lord, reaches to the heavens, and your faithfulness to the clouds,” today’s psalm proclaims. “Your righteousness is like the strong mountains, your justice like the great deep; you save both man and beast, O Lord.” Jesus taught that the very hairs of our head are numbered and that God longs for union with us – just as the father watched eagerly for the return of his prodigal son. Jesus came, he declared, not “to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him” (John 3:17).

And not only is God allied with the world, today’s Gospel story tells us, but secondly it declares that God is also powerfully and efficaciously active in it. Jesus succeeds in providing what is needed for the wedding guests. By transforming what is already available in the difficult situation, by changing the water into fine wine, he brings to fulfillment the divine intention of fuller life. In this and many other stories, e.g. the feeding of the five thousand, several different incidents of an enormous catch of fish, etc., scripture calls us to have faith in God’s loving power to provide.

Our inclination when faced with difficulty is to focus on our helplessness and to lament what is in short supply. Too often our vision is limited to our seemingly hopeless situation and inadequate resources. But we are to have faith in God’s loving and efficacious power, that God will increase and transform what we already have into what we need. The whole world seems to have been shocked into that realization by this earthquake. Countries of every political persuasion are pouring supplies into Haiti as fast as the compromised, already limited infrastructure will allow. We have always had the resources to address widespread poverty in our world. We have only lacked the vision and the faith to take action. Perhaps the grace in this calamitous situation is that we will begin to cooperate more closely together in meeting the needs of all God’s children.

Today’s Gospel story then, far from being unconnected to our world and to the events of this past week, offers us words of hope. Not only are we to remember that a loving God is present among us “even to the end of the ages,” but we are also called to focus beyond our own helplessness. Believing in God’s power and munificence, we are, like Mary, to take our concerns to Jesus in prayer, confident in the Divine response. Also like her (who prepared the servants), we are to take action, doing whatever we can to cooperate in making the best use of the resources available to us. Such faith in action will flourish beyond all our expectations. “Glory to God whose power, working in us, can do infinitely more than we can ask or imagine: Glory to him from generation to generation in the Church, and in Christ Jesus forever and ever.” Amen.

Psalm 36:5-10; John 2:1-11