Sermon for Sunday 19th January 2025

By David Bayly

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Bible Reading

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John 2:1-11

​On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you?[a] My hour has not yet come.”5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. 9 When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

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Ordinary yet Extraordinary

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Do you like parties?  Most people do but some can’t stand them.  Last year was a big year for both Janet and myself as we have been telling everyone endlessly.  At the beginning of the year lots of people asked whether we were having a party but we were a bit undecided as when you get “elderly” they don’t have quite the same alure as when you are younger.

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I was always very much “into” birthday parties when I was a young lad.  The main alure of course was the thought of receiving presents and also the party food.  Sandwiches, cakes and especially jelly and blancmange.  As I moved into teenage years other things associated with birthday parties became more interesting as passing the parcel gave way to postman’s knock.  Does anyone remember “postman’s knock”?

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In the gospels we don’t have much information about what Jesus did during his early life.  Also the gospel writers quite naturally recorded his teaching, his miracles, and his interaction with the religious authorities and especially the events of the last week of his life.  We don’t have much detail if any of how he lived a normal life.  Where he stayed.  What he ate and drank.  How he related to the normal people he came into contact with.  We have a hint that as he developed his ministry his relationship with his family was “difficult”.

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When I read the passage from John’s gospel I was struck not by the miracle of the water into wine itself but by the domestic details that John recorded.  Mary, Jesus’s mother was invited to the wedding celebrations as was Jesus and his twelve disciples.  Now Jewish weddings at the time of Jesus were not religious events so Jesus was not there to officiate in the wedding but rather to celebrate and to use the Americanism “to party”.  And what a time they would all have had.  Wedding celebrations at that time lasted for at least 7 days and in some cases up to 14 days.  Now that is some party.  And Jesus did not just make a token appearance before he went off to perform some more worthy functions.  No, he was there until the wine ran out.  And the other very human aspect of the incident as recorded by John is the fact that even though Jesus was about 30 his mother still wanted to tell him what he should be doing.  My little boy!

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So I think this passage reminds us again that Jesus was truly human as well as truly divine.  He was an ordinary man who enjoyed parties and even went as far as scolding his mother for telling him what he should do.  When Jesus spoke in the synagogue of his home town Nazareth people were amazed.  Jesus the carpenter teaching like this!  Jesus.an ordinary man yet with extraordinary powers, as the miracle of the water into wine demonstrates.

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When I looked at the reading from Corinthians I was again struck by the interplay of the ordinary and the extraordinary.  In his travels through what is now Turkey and Greece the apostle Paul told people about the amazing events that had happened in Judea.  About this man, Jesus who was also God made man.  He spoke about Jesus’s life, death and resurrection.  This message had a great effect on people and severely polarized his hearers.  Some wanted nothing to do with this Jesus but others wanted to hear more and believed that Jesus was God’s son.  Paul rented a house from Titius Justus in Corinth and lived there for about a year and a half teaching those who believed about Jesus and guiding them in how they should live their lives.  But then Paul felt he must move on and this group of ordinary men and women were left on their own to try and live in the way that Jesus had modelled.  They had no New Testament to help them and no Christian books or internet discussions.

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As you would expect with any group of ordinary people, over time a number of different opinions arose regarding the ordinary aspects of life and how these should be addressed by people trying to live in accordance with the life and teaching of Jesus Christ.  These were ordinary people who had become followers of Jesus but held very different views on a number of matters.  This difficulty prompted them to write to Paul and although we don’t have their letter we have Paul’s reply where he gives guidance on divisions and immorality in the church, questions about sex and marriage, matters of conscience, church order, gifts of the Holy Spirit and the about Christ’s resurrection.

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As ordinary people trying to live close to God Paul reminds them that people are very different and that they have different spiritual gifts.  He reminds them that there are different ways of serving but the same Lord that is served.  He goes on to say that there are different abilities to perform service but the same God gives ability to all for their particular service.  In other words God gives us all different abilities and we need to accept that we are different and we should accept others with different views and abilities.  Paul finishes with the encouragement to people struggling with life by saying that God’s spirit is shown in some way in each person for the good of all.

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Ordinary people like you and me trying to live close to God, being helped and guided by God’s Holy Spirit.

We all are given spiritual gifts that help in our day to day life.  Think of people you know who have the gift of wisdom.  Who are able to help when we don’t know the way to go.  Think of those people who have the gift of friendship and are able to get beside others and support them in difficult times or share in times of great joy.  Think of those people who can show practical love.  Those who bake cakes for others, those who help in the garden or by acting as an unpaid taxi drivers.  We all have been given spiritual gifts which sometimes are manifest in practical ways.  Don’t think that because you feel unable to pray out loud in meetings or to have amazing faith or to be are able to work miracles that you are less a Christian than those who give a bunch of flowers to those who are grieving.  God’s Holy Spirit guides and directs us as we try to use the gifts he has given us for God’s glory.

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Small acts of kindness show our love for God and for our fellow men.  They enable us to live a full life in contact with the God who loves us, forgives us when we go wrong and wants to share our lives with us.  As we try to live in contact with God he will enrich us daily.

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In the mid years of the 1600’s a baby boy was born in Frech Lorraine who was named Nicholas Herman.  He was of humble birth and was generally unlearned in the matters taught in school.  We don’t know much about his early life but at some time he worked as a footman to the gentry and later as a soldier.  In 1666 he felt God’s call on his life and became a lay brother in a Carmelite monastery in Paris where for the rest of his life he was known as Brother Laurence.  His was not a life of preaching or healing others but a life of prayer and working in the kitchen to look after the other monks.  What made Brother Laurence such a great man was not his theological discourse or his explanation of the scriptures but his awareness of the presence of God with him whatever he was doing.

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He said, “The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer, and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were on my knees at the blessed sacrament”.  Sounds a bit like Master Chef, but with serenity!

He also said that he realised that “our sanctification did not depend upon changing our works, but in doing that for God’s sake which we commonly do for our own”.  And he was a great advocate of small acts of kindness.  As he put it 350 years ago  “we ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed”.

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Each of us “ordinary people” are able to be extraordinary using the gifts that God gives all of us.