Dear friends,
Welcome this week’s update, including a copy of the sermon I preached this morning in Lealholm and Egton. For details of all the exciting events and services we have coming up, please check out the calendar on our website at this Link:
Middle ESK Moor - Services and Events Calendar
As I said in my last email, there is the option to connect to an RSS feed, so you can add the Services and Events Calendar to your computer or phone. The ‘Calendar Feeds’ link is in the top right hand corner of the calendar page.
I do hope you have a good week. Do get in touch with me if there’s anything you think I can help you with.
With blessings and all good wishes,
Anthony
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Collect for the Third Sunday of the Epiphany
God of all mercy,
your Son proclaimed good news to the poor,
release to the captives,
and freedom to the oppressed:
anoint us with your Holy Spirit
and set all your people free
to praise you in Christ our Lord.
Amen.
Revelation 19.6-10
Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunder-peals, crying out, ‘Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.
Let us rejoice and exult and give him the glory, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and his bride has made herself ready; to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linen, bright and pure’— for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.
And the angel said to me, ‘Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.’ And he said to me, ‘These are true words of God.’ Then I fell down at his feet to worship him, but he said to me, ‘You must not do that! I am a fellow-servant with you and your comrades who hold the testimony of Jesus. Worship God! For the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.’
John 2.1-11
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’
And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.’
His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’
Now standing there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’ And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it.
When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom 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.’
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
Sermon
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our rock, and redeemer. Amen.
A question for you to ponder this morning: I wonder if we expect God to do spectacular things in our lives or in the world?
I’ve been thinking about the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine over the last week while I’ve been preparing this sermon. I started thinking about how expensive some wine can be, and wondering whether such fine wine is really worth the money. I decided to buy a few bottles of nice Fairtrade wine from Sainsbury’s this Christmas. As it was Christmas and we had folk coming I pushed the boat out and paid a bit more than usual - £6.99 each for a couple of nice bottles. Quite extravagant really but at least I knew that, with the wine being Fairtrade, the South African farmers were getting a good deal. My extravagance had been playing on my mind though, so I Googled how much the most expensive bottles of wine actually cost. I’m by no means a wine connoisseur but I had a good idea that decent, old French wine would be much more expensive than the wine I’d bought. Hundreds of pounds per bottle maybe? Or even into the thousands for the very best? My £6.99 for a bottle was surely quite reasonable?
Well, I can honestly say that I was absolutely gobsmacked by what my Google search revealed. The most expensive bottle of wine ever sold was back in 2012 and it was a 1947 bottle of Chateau Cheval-Blanc Bordeaux. Can you hazard a guess as to how much that bottle sold for? £236,786! Yes, that’s right! Nearly a quarter of a million pounds for just one bottle of wine!
The Chateau Cheval-Blanc Bordeaux wine was unique because it shouldn’t have been as good as it was. Facing hot weather that was ruining their crops, the 1947 batch of wine was almost the ruin of Cheval-Blanc. And because no one had mastered refrigerated wine making in 1947, quite a few vats ended up with yeast going bad because the fermentation process had stopped. But not all the vats went bad, some survived and made one of the best Bordeaux’s in the world. For that reason, an unknown buyer purchased a bottle for that whopping price of £236,786 at a Christies auction in Geneva. Bottles had previously sold for around £9,000 each but with an ever-diminishing supply, the price started to rise sharply. In 2008, a lucky buyer purchased a case for just over £113,000, before one of those last bottles went for that nearly a quarter of a million in 2012. Cheval-Blank is now a multi-million-pound brand, still based in Bordeaux. Their vineyards spread extensively over the French countryside, and you can go on expensive visits to taste what’s probably the best wine you can get nowadays, if you’re prepared to spend a lot of money, of course!
Back at the start of Jesus’ ministry, wine-making, of course, wouldn’t have been quite as sophisticated as it is today, but wine was an important part of life. Because of the warm climate and lack of clean water, wine was an everyday commodity because of the sterilisation effect of the alcohol in the wine. Wine effectively made water safe to drink.
Our gospel reading today describes Jesus’ first miracle at the start of his public ministry. Jesus goes to a wedding at Cana, a beautiful little village in the hills of what is now Northern Israel. The wedding would have been held outside, and all the community from the village and the surrounding area would have been invited. The feast would have lasted a few days. But the lack of wine at this wedding was a serious problem. The inability to provide what the guests needed was a failure of hospitality that would have brought shame on the wedding hosts.
In our passage from John, we could ask why the family of the bride and groom failed to provide enough wine? But actually, it was ancient custom for the guests to bring wedding gifts in the form of food and wine; these gifts would have shared the burden of providing for such a large group. So, the family’s lack of wine might indicate to us that there was a lack of community support for the family, exacerbating the family’s lack of resources.
Jesus’ response to the family is one that we would expect from a friend and faithful community member. Jesus’ provision of wine is a sign of shared hospitality. And one gift of the Holy Spirit freely available to us today is that same shared hospitality. Rather than serving the cheapest wine near the end of the wedding when people would have been too drunk to notice the difference, Jesus brings to the party a surprising abundance of fine wine. An astonishing abundance and act of hospitality when you look at the maths:
- Jesus had 6 stone jars filled with water.
- Each jar would have contained at least 100 litres.
- So, that’s more than 600 litres!
- Or, if you prefer, that’s more than 800 standard 75cl bottles of wine!
A lot of bottles!
So, if there were 800 people at the wedding, say, that would have been an extra bottle per person. That must have been quite a party! Quite a celebration! Jesus isn’t holding back here, he’s providing much more than was needed. There’s an over-abundance of wine! And it was the very finest wine. If we equate finest with ‘most expensive’ (as is often the case in our modern consumer-orientated world) we could say that Jesus was effectively giving away 800 bottles of Cheval-Blank Bordeaux. And, if we could buy 800 bottles at £236,786 per bottle, which of course we can’t, that would equate to nearly £190 Million worth of wine!
Clearly Jesus provided far much more than was needed!
An over-abundance of provision!
And this over-provision of wine is intended by John, I think, to draw parallels with God’s work in the universe and the world. Surely, there are many more stars in the sky than are needed? There is an over-abundance of stars. And when we look at our natural world, we can see abundance in so many places too. There is an over-abundance of fish in the sea, for example.
The beginning of Jesus’ ministry marks the start of God’s new work in the world; work that had been long-awaited; work to build God’s kingdom: the place where this an over-abundance of God’s love. The wedding at Cana story plays on the theme of insiders and outsiders. Jesus reverses expectations regarding who fits into those categories. And this first sign of Jesus’ glory is revealed to just a few, and it is not those who we would probably expect. We might have expected the groom or the bride to play a key role in John’s passage, noticing how Jesus has saved their family from shame. But they don’t feature, except that they are part of the community enjoying the party. We might have expected important guests to have had inside information about where this good and abundant wine came from, but it’s the servants who get the sneak preview of Jesus’ glory in this story.
Our Gospel story shows that God’s abundant provision of life goes beyond our anticipated boundaries. Jesus meets people in need with overwhelming generosity but in quite an un-assuming way. Jesus’ first miracle didn’t involve the saving of a life or the raising of the dead: it involved saving a couple from the shame of having the wine run out at their wedding.
Jesus met those people at their point of need.
And Jesus does the same for us.
Jesus’ love is matched only by his generosity; a generosity that led to God choosing to die for us. God was so generous that he chose to come into the world as a tiny baby and die on a cross as a fully-grown man. God chose to die for us so that we could be set free. And Jesus’ actions at the wedding in Cana provided the guests with more than they needed.
The events at Cana show us that miracles can happen right in front of our eyes without us realising it. Only those who filled the jars, and Jesus’ mother and his followers, were aware of what really happened. The chief steward might have assumed that miracles always took spectacular form (like the stories in the Old Testament); it probably didn’t occur to him that a miracle had just happened, quietly, in front of his very eyes.
So, I wonder whether we always expect God to do obviously spectacular things in our lives or the world too?
We can fall into the same trap as the chief steward, when we always expect God to intervene in an obviously spectacular way. The intervention of the Holy Spirit is often, rather, a still quiet voice. And if we can quietly accept the Lord Jesus into our hearts;
if we can accept his hospitality; if we can accept the power of an abundance of love, grace and forgiveness, then we can quietly accept the miracle of Jesus that is right in front of our very eyes.
The same miraculous power that flowed through Jesus at the wedding in Cana is available to us through the power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus’ provision of wine is a sign of shared hospitality. And one gift of the Holy Spirit freely available to us today is that same shared hospitality. So, as we continue to work together in this place to build God’s church, let’s ask the Holy Spirit to help us share God’s hospitality with others.
Let’s share God’s over-abundance of love!
Amen.
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The Reverend Anthony Bennett
Interim Minister – the Benefice of Middle ESK Moor
middleESKmoor.org
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These two books, edited by Jane Williams, are continuing to be very helpful with planning my sermon writing:
Williams, J (2009), Ed., ‘Lost for Words, A Sermon Resource for the Anglican Three Year Cycle,’ Redemptorist Publications, Chawton, UK.
Williams, J (2011), Ed., ‘Lectionary Reflections, Years A, B and C.’ Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, London, UK.