Today’s sermon is part 2 of the sermon I started last week. The thread that connects them is water. Life on earth is very wet. Now Dr. Vaughn will give a pop quiz. How much of the earth’s surface is covered with water? (This is the audience participation segment, so don’t be afraid to shout it out!) The answer: about 75%. And how much of the human body is water? About 60%.
Water is easy to define: it’s two molecules of hydrogen and one of oxygen. But what do we mean by “miracle”? Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? A miracle is supernatural intervention in the normal order of things. A miracle is when we pray for rain in the midst of drought and get a downpour. A miracle is when someone with an advanced case of cancer goes into remission and is still healthy years later. How do you define miracle?
Probably all of us have personal stories or stories that have been handed on to us of events that seem miraculous. But I’m equally certain that we have as many or more stories of times when miracles did NOT occur: prayers unanswered… cures that did not happen…
Skeptics can raise many objections to miracles. They rightly point out that the universe is a finely calibrated mechanism. Light travels at about 186,000 miles per second, no more, no less. I’m told that if water froze just one or two degrees above 32 Fahrenheit or boiled one or two degrees below 212 that life on earth would be impossible. Either earth would be a frozen wasteland or all the water on earth would boil away, and our world would look like Mars or the moon. How can God intervene in this system without creating havoc?
My point is that it’s easy to find arguments against miracles. But we’ve all had moments when the odds have been stacked against us and somehow the miracle occurred: the rain came, the cancer went into remission, the check really was in the mail.
Maybe there is another way to explain miracles that preserves the integrity of the natural world and also allows for divine intervention. Perhaps a miracle is not something that happens OUT there but something that happens IN here, inside us. A miracle is less a change in the world, an intervention in the natural order; a miracle may instead be a change in us. Perhaps the real miracle is when our eyes are open to see God’s hand at work in the world around us.
And that brings me back to Jesus and the wedding feast at the Episcopal Church in Cana. I know they were Episcopalians because they drank all the wine and asked for more! On the face of it, this appears to be a simple story. A wedding party ran out of wine; Jesus took six enormous clay pots of water and turned every drop of it into the finest wine. That’s a miracle by any definition.
But let’s change our perception just a bit. Isn’t water always turning into wine? Wine, like the surface of the earth and our bodies, is mostly water, and water is always becoming wine. It falls to earth as the rain in Napa or Sonoma counties in California or in the Burgundy region of France. The roots of the grape vines draw it up from deep in the earth, and it fills the clusters of grapes. The juice of the grapes is squeezed into vats and aged in barrels. Then it is decanted into bottles, shipped all over the world, and we buy it at Publix or the Pig. Water has become wine again, just as it has for thousands of years.
Is that a miracle? It can be a miracle when God opens our eyes to see it as one.
What I’m going to say next is especially for Ben and Vera whom we’re about to baptize. The rest of you may listen in but this part of my sermon is for our special guests.
Ben and Vera, in a moment I will take water, the very same water that covers much of earth’s surface, the same water that makes up 60% of our bodies, the same water in which Jesus was baptized, the water that becomes wine in the vineyards of California and France, the same water that he turned into wine at Cana, and I will pour a little of this water three times on your heads, and a miracle will take place.
I doubt that there will be any thunder or lightning; you are unlikely to feel or look different, but everything will be changed. In the water of baptism God claims you as his own forever; you became an inheritor of the kingdom of God; you will be numbered among the saints on earth. In baptism God makes a promise never to forsake you. You may forget your baptism; you not only may, you will break your baptismal promises. But God will never forget that you are his beloved son or daughter.
Today you begin a journey, a voyage across life’s sea. There is water all around you and within you. Water is a very good thing. We cannot live without it. But I think we need more than water; I think we also need wine.
There are moments when the water of life becomes wine, when life suddenly becomes intoxicating, when friendship blossoms into romance, when words are no longer enough and we simply must burst into song, when we stand on top of Shades Mountain and watch the colors of dawn or sunset transform it into a magical kingdom.
Ben and Vera, tomorrow is the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He knew a thing or two about miracles. He watched as injustice was turned into justice and suffering was redeemed. He watched as power yielded to love.
Ben and Vera, my prayer for you is that there may be many moments when the water of your life becomes wine, when your eyes are open to see God’s hand at work in the world around us. But I also pray that you will be a part of that transformation, that you will seek out those who are less fortunate – the hungry, the homeless, the sad and weary – and be a part of the transformation of this world into the kingdom of God.
To help you on your baptismal journey, I have several gifts I want to give you on behalf of St. Alban’s.
The first gift is this t shirt. In the early church, newly baptized persons wore white robes to symbolize their new lives in Christ. This t shirt will help remind you of what happened today. On the back it has the word “Christian” surrounded by several synonyms for Christian: saint, child of God, and so on… The second gift I have for you is a small container that I want you to fill with water from the baptismal font and take with you. Baptism is powerful. The story is told of the great German Reformer Martin Luther that once when the devil tempted him, Luther shouted at him, “Be gone, devil; I am baptized!” When temptation comes, remember that you are baptized.
And the third gift is a small cross. The cross may be the ultimate symbol of how God turns water into wine because the cross shows us that God can turn defeat into victory, darkness into light, and death into life eternal.
Welcome to St. Alban’s, Ben and Vera. And bon voyage!
