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Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Home Page
The Rector's Welcome
Worship
Sermons
Music & the Organ
Newsletter
Schedule & Events
History
Programs & Ministries
Tour the Building
Links
Map & Directions
Monthly Calendar
Fr. J. D. Ousley
14 January 2007Jn.2“The Best Wine”
In the Name of God: Creator, Redeemer, and Sanctifier. Amen.
"Intense, pure tastes, with a beautiful balance of Chardonnay fruit, oak and acids and a kind of comfortable and comforting elegance." A "blackberry-cherry fruit, spices, great warmth, a very special mineral underpinning and an intriguing touch of bitterness at the end. Drink this in tiny sips over many hours and each taste is a like a world in itself."
Even people who don't drink are familiar with the enthusiastic language used by wine experts to describe their favorite wines. The experts will risk sounding pretentious or silly, they will say anything in order to put into words the qualities that make good wine.
[In the case of the second wine referred to by the expert, the wine ought to be good: it costs $1,400 a bottle!]
The Gospel lesson today also is about good wine — the very best wine. In the lesson, Jesus and his disciples, along with Christ's mother, find themselves at a wedding reception. The reception is so jolly that the guests consume all the wine that the groom had purchased for the occasion.
So Christ changes water into wine, which allows the celebration to continue. Of course, like all of Christ's miracles, this act is symbolic. The water changed into wine is a sign of the generosity of God — a sign that God wants human beings to rejoice in the gifts of creation, in human fellowship, and in social customs like marriage.
The wine also symbolizes the revelation Jesus brings. For the people at the wedding reception exclaim that the new wine is better than the wine originally provided by their host.
This was an unexpected treat: even the most thoughtful host doesn't uncork her best wine at the end of the party, when her guests have already dulled their palates with a lot of food and drink!
So the point of the story seems to be not just that God is a generous God — but that the new wine of Christianity is better than the old wine of the Hebrew religion.
This idea is made more explicit in today's Collect. A Collect is a prayer for this day in the Epiphany Season of the church year. The prayer asks that Jesus Christ may be "... known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth."
"Known, worshiped, and obeyed to the ends of the earth." In past times, church members might have assumed that Christian missionaries would eventually spread the message of Christ throughout the world.
Today, though, some of us might wonder about the implication that all followers of other religions will one day "worship" and "obey" Jesus.
Does our prayer imply that at some point in future, all Muslims will follow Jesus Christ as their Lord? For one thing, this prayer seems to preclude "interfaith dialogue" with persons of other religions. The prayer seems to assume that at some point, everyone will come to accept the "best wine" of Christian faith.
On the other hand, many people do become Christians. The prayer does reflect the reality that people every day find the brightest spiritual light in the way of Jesus Christ. Every day, people leave other faiths and convert to Christianity. In our own congregation in recent years, we have witnessed the baptisms of converts from all the major religions, as well as baptisms of adults who had no religious background.
For these converts, as for the celebrating crowd at the wedding reception, God saved the best wine until last.
Despite all these converts, though, other religions pose tough questions for us who follow Christ. While I can't answer all of these questions, it seems to me that one general strategy is to encourage people who want to "follow Christ as their Lord and Savior," as the Baptismal vow says — and at the same time, we can remain open to dialogue with people of other faiths and of no faith.
My own approach would be to emphasize the positive, not the negative. It is a tremendously good thing that Christ came into the world. Our world is full of darkness, and we need the light of Christ — "in whom," as the Bible says, "there is no darkness at all."
After a child is baptized, his or her godparent receives a candle that has been lit from the Paschal candle that was first brought into church on the previous Easter. The candle may then be lit every year on the anniversary of the child's baptism as a reminder that divine light blessed the child on this particular day.
Such a blessing is, indeed, cause for celebration. For baptism locates a person on a certain trajectory. The baptismal vows made in the child's name direct the child to toward a force beyond herself or himself. The vows place the child under the grace and truth of God.
On this view, it's easy to be positive about our faith. We might even express the hope that, according to the Collect, the revelation of Jesus Christ will spread throughout the world.
We can do this, I think, and still avoid what is sometimes called, "triumphalism." We don't need to believe that Christianity should "triumph" over every religion.
Our religion doesn't need to conquer other religions, so that in the end, there will be only one faith left, Christianity. This was the mistake some of the Crusaders made and it's not a mistake to be repeated.
For that matter, triumphalism is bad within the church, too. It can divide Christianity. It can lead members of a particular denomination to believe that only they are really following the way of Christ and therefore only their church deserves to survive.
According to this view, not only will followers of other religions be knocked flat, but many churches will have to be folded into one church that is supposedly superior to all the others.
Triumphalism within Christianity is also distasteful. And it defies common sense.
For surely there are good people in other churches as well as in other religions — and, for that matter, among those with no religious belief at all. Do I really expect everyone in the world will one day worship and obey Christ in exactly the same way that I do?
This view is especially difficult to hold if I also believe that the best wine comes with Christ. For wouldn't we expect the highest religion to be inclusive?
A loving and generous God isn't interested in triumphalism. This God doesn't want to make winners and losers. Rather this God draws all creatures toward himself with love.
There still may be spiritual winners and losers. In the reading we heard earlier from St. Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians, Paul notes to the Corinthian converts that "when you were pagans, you were enticed and led astray to idols that could not speak." Mistakes can be made in religion.
In the search for God, people misuse their freedom. There are always lots of examples of false religion–"idols that could not speak."
So as we celebrate the baptism today of two new Christians, and as we give thanks for the light of Christ that has entered into the lives of these two families, let us also give thanks to God that his light continues to lead us — that God always offers the best wine, the wine of grace and truth.
And now unto that same God Father, Son, and Holy Spirit be ascribed as is most justly due all might, majesty, power, dominion and praise, now and forever, Amen.