isaiah 62:1-5, psalm 36, john

Do Whatever He Tells You
Sermon, January 17, 2010
Texts: Isaiah 62:1-5, Psalm 36, John 2:1-12
Every year in Confirmation Class, I begin just about every quiz with this question: “Why did Jesus come into
our world” The four main reasons I look for are from the very first lesson of our class time together; these four
answers more or less form the outline for all our class lessons throughout the year. The four main reasons: Jesus
came to show us the Way of God, the Personality of God, the Love of God, and He came specifically to die for us.
Now, Jesus came to earth, of course, for many reasons. He came to teach truth. He came to show us how to live
and love. He came to show us God’s love. He came to heal the sick, to minister to the needy. But all those
reasons are really incidental to His ultimate purpose. He could have done all those things without being born as a
human. He could have simply appeared, without literally becoming a person. But, Hebrews 2:17-18 tells us, "…
for this reason He had to be made like us in every way, that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in
service to God, and that He might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because He Himself suffered when
He was tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted. We do not have a high priest who is unable to
sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are, yet was
without sin." Jesus was made like us in all things. He walked our roads in life. He felt our hunger and our
loneliness. He cried the tears of those who grieve deeply. He knew all about injustice and betrayal. Yes, Jesus
was a man of sorrows, well acquainted with our grief. But He was also well acquainted with our joy. He had friends
and family He dearly loved. He delighted in children. He delighted in dinner parties, and in wedding receptions with
lots of wine, as we just read. He enjoyed life and the people He encountered in life. In Jesus, we have a Savior
who knows all about the highs and lows of our lives because He lived it all among us. He was like us in every
sense, fully human … and as such, He is the perfect sympathizer, and the perfect sacrifice on our behalf. And He
is fully God. He is the perfect high priest, the perfect connection, the bridge between God and humanity. As John
says in the introduction to his Gospel account, John 1:14 “The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we
have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.”
We confess in the Apostles’ Creed, “On the third day He …” what “He rose again from the dead.” And that’s
a remarkable tenet of our faith. Well, according to the Gospel of John, on the third day He … went to a wedding.
What’s so remarkable about that On the third day of His public ministry Jesus chooses to show up with His
disciples at a wedding. He doesn’t go to the power center in Jerusalem to launch His ministry; He goes to a little
ordinary town in Israel to a wedding celebration, a place where there is eating, and drinking, and dancing and
loving, a place where people are enjoying each other’s company and celebrating the establishment of a new family,
where a man and a woman pledge themselves to each other for life. All these things were going on at this wedding
in Cana where the guests didn’t realize that God was right there with them, in the midst of their present moment.
In my line of work I get to go to a lot of weddings. I also get to go to a lot of weddings where I’m not in charge;
in fact, one year ago yesterday I was at my nieces’ Friday night wedding in my Pennsylvania home town. I had an
afternoon flight and a frantic rental car ride to get there in time, which included getting stopped by the police for
weaving in and out of traffic in sight of the church at two minutes before wedding time … to make a long story short,
the officer was kind and my niece was late, so I made it. One of the things that always impresses me about
weddings is how hard everyone works to create a happy “moment”; Wendy’s wedding was no exception. In the
more elaborate weddings somebody has been wondering for months, even years, about dresses and attendants,
churches and music, receptions and food, the relatives they hope will come and the relatives they hope will not
come. After the engagement is formally announced come the months of hard work to make all of these dreams for
that perfect moment come true. (I often counsel couples planning weddings that sometimes there’s a little too
much hard work, which can detract from the “moment”, but I digress …) Then, finally, the big day arrives. The
organ music swells and the mother of the bride rises and the congregation rises with her. I vividly remember my
niece Wendy appeared in the doorway on my brother’s arm … and I remember thinking it’s one of the only times
I’ve noticed how much my brother grew up to look like my Dad. I remember how she almost hovered down the
aisle in a spectacular dress. Like I’ve seen at so many weddings, the groom stood so tall at the front of the church,
looking better than he is ever going to look again … I’ve been there, about 35 pounds ago. It’s always a glorious
moment! For that moment in time, time seems to stand still. No one in the church is thinking about their problems,
about their stress at work or home, about the teenager who won’t talk to them, or even about their illnesses. For a
moment, there is just sheer happiness as the realities of life are simply bracketed out. And that timeless “moment”
is extended throughout the celebration … the ceremony, the pictures, the limo ride, the reception. It brought tears to

my eyes to see my parents on the dance floor, after all their ordeals that previous year. And I just had a blast
dancing with my sister, my cousins, my nieces … it felt in a way like we were all somehow ageless. Time just stood
still, the cares and worries of life were a world away, until finally, it was time for all of us to go home … to go back to
the real world, back to the realties of how it is in life.
That was exactly what Jesus entered when He went to this ordinary wedding in ordinary Cana on the third day
of His public ministry. His mom is there, His friends are with Him. There, Jesus’ mother comes up to Him and
says, “They have no more wine.” Now, we don’t know. Maybe she expected a miracle from Him. Or maybe, she
just wanted Him to run to the Cana liquor store. Or maybe she was telling him the way it is: the wine has run out,
and when the wine runs out, the reception will be over. The wine is about to run out, the reception will end, the
“moment” is about to be over, and it will soon be time for all of these now happy folks to go back home … back to
the money problems, the health problems, the way it really is. The wine is gone. At first Jesus seems to be
nonchalant about it; he replies, “Dear Woman, why do you involve me My time has not yet come.” Which
paraphrased means, “Oh, mom, this isn’t my problem.” But you can tell from the context that He must have said
this with a twinkle in His eye, with a wink and a nod to this woman who reared Him, because His mother
immediately knew He was up to something. The words are no sooner out of Jesus’ mouth than Mary turns to the
servants and says, probably with a knowing smile of her own, “Do whatever He tells you.”
By the way, that line ought to be underlined two times in your Bibles. “Do whatever He tells you.”
What do you do when your “wine” is running out Now that’s a metaphorical question, of course, metaphorical
for any moment of shortage, any moment of crisis, any moment of loss, any moment of need. Every person in this
room lives with a quiet fear that the hour will come for you when things will just run out, when the well will go dry,
the wine will run out, and you will have nothing left to give. When your wine, whatever it may be, threatens to run
out, look to Jesus, and do whatever He tells you. When the joy of life threatens to run short, look to Jesus, do
whatever He tells you. When your power and strength for living your life with integrity and sobriety fails you, look to
Jesus, do whatever He tells you. When you are running out of patience, when you are running out of money, when
you are running out of time, when you are running out of health or desire or energy, when you are running out of
ideas … whatever it is, look to Jesus and do whatever He tells you. Don’t think about it, don’t overanalyze it, don’t
wait for a “better” time to do what He tells you to do, just do whatever He tells you to do. Just do it. He is the One
who has the capacity to do something about your need. Do what you know is right. Do what you know is
honorable. Do what you know is good. Do whatever He tells you to do. By the way … you don’t have to wait until
all your own resources are gone before you look to Jesus and do what He tells you.
What is it that Jesus decides to do He decides to turn ordinary water into wine. Jesus, whom John the
Baptist has just declared to be the Savior and Whom the disciples began to follow because they expected Him to
do something big … Jesus is moved by the ordinary situation of a young, obscure, anonymous couple whose
happy moment is almost over. Just as they, along with everyone else, were about to stop the celebrating and go
home and return to the real world and the severities of their lives, Jesus chooses to launch His world changing,
time-shaking ministry right there in Nowhere Special with what John tells us is Jesus’ first miracle … a miracle that
seems almost frivolous, if not downright reckless. I mean, according to the text, He gives what amounts to one
hundred and eighty gallons of wine to people who have already been drinking! That’s a lot of wine. The master of
the banquet said to the groom that most hosts bring out the Boones Farm or Thunderbird after everyone has been
drinking for awhile, but you have saved the best wine for last! What extravagance. Now notice, no one here is
healed or fed. No injustice is made right. We are not sure that there are even any lessons learned. So the reader
is tempted to think, “O Jesus, don’t waste your miracle-working power on this. Hurry on to the centers of power in
Jerusalem and take over, and do something big!” But more often than not, that is not the way the gospel works.
The redemptive, life-saving, life transforming, miracle working power of Jesus begins right there in the present
moment in this ordinary events and gatherings and celebration of life with ordinary people.
The text tells us that it was precisely because of Jesus’ almost reckless extravagance in Cana that the
disciples came to put their faith in Him. This was a God they could give their allegiance to. They put their faith is
this God become man Who cared to enter the present moments of their daily lives, even their celebrations, their
festivities, their social gatherings. And they also put their faith in Him because they saw what happened when
servants did what Jesus told them to do. And so they became His servants, doing what He told them to do.
By the end of the New Testament, and then throughout Christian history, it is clear that the disciples put their
faith in Jesus Christ and did what He told them to do, and went on to make the most miraculous things happen
wherever their very ordinary lives took them.