The Wine has Not Run Out: January 16, 2022

January 21, 2022

SECOND SUNDAY AFTER EPIPHANY 

THE REV. DANA VANVLIET-PULLIN

YEAR C

 JOHN 2:1-11

It seems like it was just Christmas and we were celebrating the birth of Jesus. It was just a few weeks ago we were decorating a tree, opening presents, celebrating with family. But then the tree and decorations were taken down, the celebrating was over, the families returned to their own homes.

But in that short time since Christmas we have also had the Magi arrive and meet the new baby and deliver their presents. The Epiphany of the Lord. And then the next week just like that we are out in the wilderness with John and celebrating the baptism of Jesus, a grown man in a week. And here we are at the wedding and Jesus is turning water into wine, his first miracle.

We have traveled rather quickly from Jesus’ birth to hearing about a grown man showing the sign of his glory in front of his mother and his disciples, turning water into wine but here we are at the wedding feast watching and listening as Mary tells Jesus, “They have no wine, the wine has run out.”

Have you ever felt like the wine has run out, that you feel Empty inside, like you don’t know where your strength is coming and how you are going to face another day? When we think about the last two years of living through the pandemic and how we can feel that we can feel inside like our wine has run out, the glass is not half empty, but entirely empty. We can try to be positive and like at the glass as half full but we are tired of the way our lives have been under such stress for the last two years and our wine has run out and there is nothing left to give.

The wine has run out, we are dry, just like wine can be dry, we can lose our color, our warmth just like wine and the pandemic isn’t the only thing that can cause us to feel this way. We might have a death, a divorce, a loss of a job, an unanswered prayer. They can all make us feel like the wine has run out and our glass is empty!

We want to start hearing the good news, the good news that the numbers are coming down, people are healing, we can get back to church again. We want to start feeling that the glass inside us is starting to fill. All the wine has not run out.

But we cannot do this alone. Let us go back to the wedding and stand watching Jesus turn water into wine. Just what we are praying for in our own lives.

In the first sentence of our reading it says it is the third day. This can mean a few things, it could be the third day that Jesus was in town, the third day after he called the disciples or it could be the third day, the third day when Christ has risen.

Christ is refilling us, making in us a new wine, a new life. We are filled and our glass is flowing over with wine so we can share our new life with others. We are full of the Holy Spirit again. Just as Jesus filled the jars at the wedding, he has filled us.

We are transformed form the people of the pandemic to the people of new hope in the Lord.

In the Book of Common Prayer, the Great Thanksgiving, Eucharistic Prayer B is preparing us to drink the wine of the Last Supper. The priest tells us that God sent Jesus to be incarnate from the Virgin Mary, to be Savior and Redeemer of the world. In him we have been delivered from evil and made worthy to stand before God. In Him, we have been brought out of error into truth, out of sin into righteousness, out of death into life.

Every Sunday we are made new again, we are refilled. Everything that was old is made new. Our Sorrow is turned into Joy, our fear about the future turned into hope and courage.

Christ’s glory was revealed at the wedding in Cana and it is revealed to us when our empty glass is revealed and flowing over with Christ’s unending love for us and his world.

Miracles still do happen, so just when we think out glass is empty and all the wine has run out; we can’t give up hope because Jesus can still turn water into wine.

Amen.