Being Christ's Co-Hosts
John 2:1-11
Eric in Kansas

Whenever I read the story of the wedding at Cana, which is our Gospel lesson from John today, I am reminded of the Jewish "berakah" (meal prayer) which gives thanks to God for the gift of wine in words taken from Psalm 104. The Psalm says, in part: "You cause the grass to grow for the cattle, and plants for people to use, to bring forth food from the earth, and wine to gladden the human heart, oil to make the face shine, and bread to strengthen the human heart."

"Wine to gladden the heart" suggests a warm and pleasant social milieu. This is why wine is served at wedding receptions and other festive occasions when friends gather. Indeed, Scripture likens friendship to wine; in the Book of Sirach, the writer says, "A new friend is as new wine...." (Ecclesiasticus 9:10)

What do you suppose would have happened there in Cana if the wine had run out? The guests would have been disappointed, I'm certain. They probably would have found a reason to leave earlier than they had intended; they probably would have gone away mumbling, muttering and murmuring about the stinginess of the host. Friendships might have been broken just because not enough wine had been provided for the party. Thank goodness Jesus was there to prevent that. His presence insured that friendship endured. The wine was not the miracle at the wedding in Cana; the preservation and enhancement of friendship, that is what our Lord miraculously accomplished there.

In her commentary on this episode, Gail O'Day points out that "in the [Hebrew Scriptures], an abundance of good wine is an eschatological symbol, a sign of the joyous arrival of God's new age." (New Interpreter's Bible, Vol. IX, p. 538.) This was the blessing and inheritance that Jacob received from his father Isaac: " May God give you of the dew of heaven, and of the fatness of the earth, and plenty of grain and wine." (Genesis 27:28)

In Baker's Evangelical Dictionary, Psalm 104 is used as a source text for the theological argument that God is "host" to humanity in the dictionary's entry about "hospitality." In that entry, the dictionary says:

Hospitality in the ancient world focused on the alien or stranger in need. The plight of aliens was desperate. They lacked membership in the community, be it tribe, city-state, or nation. As an alienated person, the traveler often needed immediate food and lodging. Widows, orphans, the poor, or sojourners from other lands lacked the familial or community status that provided a landed inheritance, the means of making a living, and protection. In the ancient world the practice of hospitality meant graciously receiving an alienated person into one's land, home, or community and providing directly for that person's needs.

In today's Psalm, we sang these words: "They feast upon the abundance of your house; you give them drink from the river of your delights." In these words as in Psalm 104, the Psalmist praises God as one praises a generous host.

I have mentioned before that I am now reading Robert Putnam's book Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community. In it Putnam documents the decline in what he calls "social capital" in our modern American culture at the end of the 20th Century and the beginning of the 21st. Putnam defines "social capital" as civic connectedness, that network of political interactions, casual associations, and friendships that keeps society functioning smoothly. Putnam seems to be suggesting, at least as far as I'm understanding the first part of his book so far, that there is a serious lack of the Biblical sort of hospitality Baker's Dictionary describes. Referring to Putnam, a correspondent of mine recently commented that "relationships in our day and our society have been weakened and soured by uncivility, self-centeredness, meanness (think of road rage, pro wrestling, [and] rapper ‘eminem'...)"

I believe it is a telling point that we have an old saying about relationships which goes like this: "Blood is thicker than water." In that old shibboleth, "blood" is meant to stand for ties of family and kinship, while "water" stands for non-family associations within the society, friendships, business relationships, and so forth.

When the Hebrews fled from Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, they were initially filled with joy and a sense of unity. On the far bank of the Sea, they stopped and celebrated. Moses and his sister Miriam sang a somewhat blood-thirsty song, praising God for drowning the Egyptians and celebrating the one-ness of "the people you have redeemed .... your people, O Lord." (Exodus 15:1-21) But almost immediately after that there was dissension in the ranks; the ties of friendshp and shared experience, the "water" from that old saying, that had bound the Hebrews began to be soured, to run thin indeed, and within only three days they found themselves literally out of water. They came to a place which they named Marah and there they found water, but it was bitter and they could not drink it. The name "Marah" is derived from that; "Marah" in Hebrew means "bitter." There, in an act not unlike the miracle Jesus performed at the wedding in Cana, Moses performed a bit of a miracle, converting the bitter water into sweet water. Perhaps this restored the social capital of the Hebrews, sweetening the "water" that flowed between them and allowing friendships to continue the way Jesus helped friendships to continue at the wedding reception.

There's a great old hymn that I considered putting in our service today, What a friend we have in Jesus. The hymn is really about prayer and grace, but that image of Jesus as "friend" is a wonderful one, if we mean by "friend" what I think the hymn is getting at. A few years ago, an author named C. Raymond Beran in the magazine Bits and Pieces offered these thoughts about friendship:

Friends are people with whom you dare to be yourself. Your soul can be naked with them. They ask you to put on nothing, only to be what you are. They do not want you to be better or worse. When you are with them, you feel as a prisoner feels who has been declared innocent. You do not have to be on your guard. You can say what you think, as long as it is genuinely you. Friends understand those contradictions in your nature that lead others to misjudge you. With them you breathe freely. You can avow your little vanities and envies and hates and vicious sparks, your meannesses and absurdities, and in opening them up to friends, they are lost, dissolved on the white ocean of their loyalty. They understand. You do not have to be careful. You can abuse them, neglect them, tolerate them. Best of all, you can keep still with them. It makes no matter. They like you. They are like fire that purges to the bone. They understand. You can weep with them, sing with them, laugh with them, pray with them. Through it all—and underneath—they see, know, and love you. A friend? What is a friend? Just one, I repeat, with whom you dare to be yourself. (C. Raymond Beran, in Bits and Pieces, September 19, 1991, pp. 3-4.)

That's what who Jesus is, "the one with whom you [can] dare to be yourself."

Although Jesus is not the host in today's Gospel episode, he certainly steps into the breach and, like a good friend, rescues the host from embarrassment. In doing so, he foreshadows the Eucharist, but he also demonstrates what the Hebrew Scriptures make clear about God, that God "God serves as host to humanity as the one who provides food and clothing for all." (Baker's Evangelical Dictionary, Hospitality) In the same entry from Baker's Evangelical Dictionary about hospitality, the author writes: "As persons originally alienated from God, Christians are invited to respond to Jesus as host in the celebration of the Eucharist and in anticipation of the eschatological messianic feast." A clergy colleague put it somewhat more familiarly when she said, "[Jesus is] pouring the wine and inviting us into a place where everybody knows your name and the bartender dies to save you."

If Dr. Putnam is right, and I think he is, the world, like the wedding reception in Cana, is lacking in sufficient wine (that is, positive social capital, hospitality, community-connectedness); if Dr. Putnam is right, and I think he is, then here as there, Jesus can supply what is needed. He has already supplied it to you, else why are you here this morning? You are here because you have heard Jesus say to you, as he said to the faithful Eleven on the night before his death, "You are my friends...." (John 15:14)

Jesus laid a burden on his friends, for he did not simply say, "You are my friends." Rather, he went on... He said, "You are my friends if you do what I command you." And what did he command us to do?

He was asked once what was the greatest commandment, and he answered with what we know as the Summary of the Law:

He said, "'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." (Matthew 22:37-40)

We who are Jesus's friends are his friends if we love our neighbors as ourselves.

We who have known Jesus's friendship are enjoined now to share it with others. In a sense, we are to "serve as co-hosts with Christ to a world consisting of those who are ‘excluded from the citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise' (Eph 2:12). Certainly, held up before the Christian is the model of Jesus, who serves as host to an alienated world, who commended hospitality in his teaching, and who himself is encountered as one receives the alienated person." (Baker's Evangelical Dictionary)

"Blood," to recall again that old shibboleth, "is thicker than water." The Blood of Christ, the Wine of the Communion, binds us more surely that the "water" of our social milieu. As Jesus's co-hosts, we are called to share that Wine with others and to invite them into the fellowship and friendship of Christ. It is the Church, Body of Christ, you and I, being Christ for the world, who are called to change the bitter waters of incivility, of lost social capital, of dwindling community connectedness into the fine new Wine of hospitality, compassion, justice, and peace, into the fine new Wine of friendship with God, the Cup of Salvation.

"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.'" The time has come to keep the good wine no longer to ourselves but to share it with others. As Christ's co-hosts, we are now to pour the Wine and invite the rest of the world into that place where the host knows everybody's name and the bartender dies to save them. This is the very ministry to which we are sent when we pray at the conclusion of the Mass, "And now, Father, send us out to the work you have given us to do."

Amen.