Rev. Tessie Mandeville
January 14, 2007
Christ Covenant MCC
Decatur, GA 30033

Jesus knew what it was like to “come out of the closet.” And just like some of us sitting here today, the timing wasn’t exactly what he had in mind. According to our gospel story in the book of John, Jesus, his mother, and his disciples were at a wedding and it was about to become a complete disaster.

Weddings during this time period traditionally lasted about seven days. Can you imagine? I don’t know about you but I wouldn’t want to spend seven days with my entire extended family! All those cousins, aunts, and uncles you haven’t seen for years and now they’re there, every moment of every day. But apparently that wasn’t the disaster for the people of that time! The disaster was that they ran out of wine. Because of the rules of hospitality, running out of wine would’ve been an embarrassment for the host family. It sounds to me like they could’ve used a better wedding planner and caterer, say people like Dionne and Traci (who are wedding planners and caterers), and they could’ve avoided this problem.

So Mary, Jesus’ mother, comes to Jesus and asks him to fix the problem, but Jesus doesn’t want to get involved. He says, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” Let me just say, if my Mother made a request of me and I turned around and said, “Woman, what concern is that to you and me?” I’m quite sure I would not be standing here today!

I get the sense that they’ve had these conversations before because Mary doesn’t plead her case or try to coax him. It’s almost as if she says, “There he goes again. He’s talking in those riddles. When he’s done, do what he tells you to do.” And she goes on about her business. She’s been in this movie before.

But Jesus says, “My time has not yet come.” He’s not ready to come out of the closet. He doesn’t want to do anything publicly yet. Remember, last week, Jesus was baptized and the scriptures tell us that the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form, like a dove, and he heard the voice of God saying, “You are my beloved; with you I am well pleased.” Maybe he wanted to revel in that a little bit longer, to feel more prepared before he started his public ministry. The timing wasn’t exactly what he had in mind but there was a need, and if we know anything at all about Jesus, we know he tried to meet the needs of his people.

Filled with the spirit of God, Jesus comes out and starts on his path of spiritual and physical healing among the poor, his path of challenging the social structures, and his path of creating a different world. By coming out, Jesus reveals things to us about the nature of God. The God that Jesus reveals acts with extravagance. The story tells us that there were six stone water jars. They were used for the Jewish rites of purification that called for the washing of hands and cooking vessels. It’s believed that each of those containers held 20-30 gallons of water in them. When Jesus turned the water into wine, there were at least 120 gallons of wine available for them. That’s a lot of wine!

A little girl returned from church and was questioned by her father about the Sunday school lesson for the day. She told him that the lesson was about the time Jesus turned water into wine. "And what did you learn from that story?" asked the dad. The child thought a bit and then said, "If you're going to have a wedding, you'd better invite Jesus!" (author unknown) There’s more than one level of truth in that statement. The point is not that Jesus is encouraging excessive drinking; I believe the point is that God acts with extravagance. God has a generosity of spirit toward us because we are God’s beloved.

Our God does not have a “mentality of scarcity.” In the economy of God, there is not only enough for everyone, there is abundance. Our economic system seems to be built on the notion of "not enough." Competition assumes that if you get more, I get less. But that’s not how it is in God’s economy. In God’s economy there is an abundance of love, mercy, joy and resources that we need in our lives.

The book of John is the only gospel that records this story of how Jesus turned water into wine. I believe it’s difficult for our 21 st century minds to believe that this miracle actually happened, especially since the earlier gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke don’t talk about it. Maybe you can look at it this way: In the words of Albert Einstein, “There are two ways to live your life. One as if nothing is a miracle; the other as if everything is a miracle.”

What concerns me most about this story, and the gospel of John in general, is that it’s often used to limit God’s extravagance toward all of God’s creation. The writer of the gospel intends to present the divinity of Jesus. New Testament scholar, Krister Stendahl says, "In the other gospels, particularly Mark, Jesus walks the earth as a human being- hungry, happy, angry, sad, in pain. In the gospel of John, his feet don't even touch the ground."

Of all the gospels, John presents the most hostile view of relations between “Jews” and Jesus. But when John is talking about the “Jews” he is not talking about the entire religion of Judaism; rather he is talking about a specific group of Jewish synagogue authorities at a specific time in history.

In Judaism, the rites of purification—the washing of hands and cooking vessels—were ceremonial. In this wedding story, the water jugs are empty and need to be filled. Some people have used this symbolism to say that when Jesus transformed the water into wine, he replaced the old (Judaism) with the new (Christianity).

But it’s important to remember that Jesus and his followers were Jewish themselves! I don’t believe Jesus is rejecting the jars and what they stood for; he is filling them. There is no replacement here. There is a creation of something new in the midst of Judaism, and birthed from Judaism itself. Misreading John is one of the biggest sources of Christianity’s anti-Semitic strain and it is dangerous.

Our God acts with extravagance. Our God does not have a “mentality of scarcity.” In the economy of God, there is not only enough for everyone, there is abundance. And in God’s economy, there is abundance of room for all of God’s people and all of our beliefs.

We are all created in the image of God and filled with the Spirit. Because of this, we have the opportunity to mirror the extravagance of God to ourselves and to one another. God’s abundance toward us can shape our own gospel of abundance toward those around us. We do not have to have a “mentality of scarcity”; that does not have to be our story. In fact, I got a glimpse of God’s extravagant love for me last week through all of you—the breakfast, reception, great worship, the fact that everyone wore pink—these all ways of God showing me love through your love for me.

The apostle Paul reminds us in First Corinthians that we are all filled with the Spirit and the Spirit has given us an abundance of gifts. Paul says, To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good . In other words, every gift we have is for the benefit of all; it is not for personal glory, but for building up the church and community.

I believe this is one of the many beautiful ways we see God’s extravagance in action. The list of gifts in First Corinthians is not meant to be exhaustive but it does tell us about many of the gifts the people in the first century had. There were some arguments at the time that some gifts were better than others and Paul is teaching them that all of them work together to build up the body of Christ. In the words of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.

In this way, God, in God’s extravagance, ensures that everyone’s needs get met. How wonderful is it that when you are struggling to make an important decision, someone here has the gift of discernment and can assist you? And what a gift it is that when you doubt God’s presence in your life someone here can offer you their faith until yours returns. What a blessing it is that when you need healing, someone here can pray with you and offer healing to you. We have everything we need. There is not only enough; there is abundance.

I believe our brother and sister, Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Coretta Scott King believed in the extravagance of God and acted from that place of abundance. They did not have a “mentality of scarcity.” They believed there was enough freedom and opportunity for all people in the United States. They and their allies understood that freedom and opportunity for African-Americans would not diminish freedom and opportunity for white people. In a similar fashion, the right of gay people to marry does not diminish the value of heterosexual marriage. In God’s economy, there is abundance of rights for everyone.

Lisa and I were blessed to have met Mrs. King five years ago in San Francisco. MCC San Francisco has a social justice foundation (Metropolitan Community Foundation), and each year we honor someone for their work in the community and world. Five years ago we honored Mrs. King for advocacy of LGBT people, and it was amazing to meet her, to touch her and to feel her spirit. It was a holy moment in time.

I invite you to attend an event this week in honor of Dr. and Mrs. King’s work for Civil Rights in this country. Their work in the African-American Civil Rights movement continues to inspire our own LGBT movement for equality. Mrs. King was a tireless advocate for our LGBT community because she believed and supported what her husband taught: injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Even though she was often criticized for her support of our community, she never wavered in her commitment to us and I am deeply grateful to her.

Jesus came out to start his new ministry and by doing so, revealed things to us about the nature of God. The God that Jesus reveals acts with extravagance. God has a generosity of spirit toward us because we are God’s beloved. Our God does not have a “mentality of scarcity.” In the economy of God, there is not only enough for everyone, there is abundance.

We are all created in the image of God and filled with the Spirit. Because of this, we have the opportunity to mirror the extravagance of God to ourselves and to one another. God’s abundance toward us can shape our own gospel of abundance toward those around us. We do not have to have a “mentality of scarcity”; that does not have to be our story.

“There are two ways to live your life. One as if nothing is a miracle; the other as if everything is a miracle.” My prayer is that we believe in and act from the miracle of God’s extravagance in our lives. May it be so. Amen.

Copyright © 2007 by Rev. Tessie Mandeville. Permission granted for non- profit circulation with attribution of author and venue. Other rights reserved