Turning Water to Wine, The Reverend David R. Williams, Epiphany II--Year C--Jan. 14, 2007
 
Give us grace, O Lord, not only to hear your Word with our ears, but also to receive it into our hearts and to show it forth in our lives; for the glory of your great name. Amen
 
Imagine for a moment a tiny dot suspended somewhere in the space above the Crossing – maybe 15 or 20 feet in the air.  Picture in your minds a small, blue dot – right there. 
 
We shall return to this dot. 
 
Now fantasize another scene: A chemistry teacher stands before a group of high school students.  The young students are taking chemistry for the first time.  Several vials and flasks of colorful fluids sit on the teacher’s desk.  Without saying anything, the teacher begins to combine the liquids in some of the test tubes, pouring one liquid into the other, the colors at once changing. The students are mesmerized.  Wow! Then, suddenly, the teacher pours a flask of one chemical into another flask and poof! A cloud of smoke and fog flows from the container.  Eyes of the students are wide open.  They cannot believe what they have just seen. 
 
“How did you do that?” they ask. 
 
During a simple, festive wedding 2000 years ago somewhere in a Galilean neighborhood, the party runs out of wine. One of the wedding guests instructs the servants to fill the wine vats with water and then take the liquid from the vats to the wine steward.  The wine steward is absolutely amazed! He discovers the best wine he has ever tasted.  
 
No one in the party can believe just what happened.  Surely, the people at the party ask, “How did Jesus do that?”
 
How does one make wine from water?  How does one create a poof of smoke from the exchange of a couple of vials of fluid?
 
“It was a miracle of turning the weaker into the stronger,” writes a theologian of the early twentieth century. “The common into the precious, the despised into the excellent, the tasteless into that which gladdens the heart.”
 
How may we do the same, turn the very common into the most precious, the despised into the excellent?
 
At the leadership retreat of your vestry last weekend, the challenge for us was to maintain a momentum of renewal in the life of Holy Comforter with the usual limited money resources. How might we inspire a miracle? Could we build upon the new creative energy of our Christian Formation, Music and Worship programs and at the same time provide proper upkeep of these vast, well-used buildings – all with a shortfall in anticipated pledges? How do we turn water into wine?  How do we strategize a 2007 budget calling for $36,000 more than pledges received? Even though the pledge review raised more than we ever have, the needs always seem to outweigh the anticipated revenue.  This was the serious challenge of your chosen and hard-working leaders at retreat. 
 
As seen in your Comfortable Words this past week, the wedding feast is still in progress. In faith, we fill the vats with water. The stewards, your leadership, have not yet tasted all the results.   In the past week, new pledges have arrived.  Increases in pledges have been telephoned into the Church office.  That anticipated shortfall of $36,000 is now reduced to about $28,000.
 
In faith, the vestry moves forward in unanimity and with careful anticipation of a strengthened budget. The party goes on.
 
An interesting phenomenon in the science of astronomy refers to “dark matter,” that invisible, inexplicable mass of the universe. The mass, still on the learning curve of scientists, must be there, we imagine, because of all that we can observe and prove. In faith, we seek answers to the whole.   
 
In faith, we seek understanding of Jesus, the worker of miracles, the master chemist of water into wine. 
 
In 1990 a small satellite sails out of the solar system.  Voyager I has done its job and now leaves its home universe. Ground Control issues a command for the craft, now four billion miles from Earth, instructing it to turn around and take photos of planets previously visited.  In one photograph, Earth is captured as an infinitesimal speck of blue light. In this picture, Earth is smaller than a single pixel. 
 
See that itty-bitty blue dot – suspended above the Crossing. 
 
The late astronomer Carl Sagan was deeply moved when he saw the picture of the earth.  Focus on the dot as you hear his impression:
 
“That’s here.  That’s home. That’s us,” he says.  “On that dot, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out his or her life.  The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, live or lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.”
 
“Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.  To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.  To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
 
And we still are not sure how to turn water into wine?  We are challenged in efforts to balance church budgets?! We have not yet figured out how to ensure food to every living soul on that little blue dot?!
 
In the classroom, the amazed students inquire of their chemistry teacher once again. “How does that happen?” 
 
The teacher replies. “Asking the question, ‘How does that happen?’ is the source of your life and energy from now on and will get you through this science course.  Never cease to be curious and to ask that question.”
 
How does Jesus in the first recorded miracle of his ministry and journey to the Cross turn water into wine? The question remains.
 
But look at it this way: we become the new wine.  Baptized into the very divine soul of the Christ, you and I are transformed, water to wine. The weak become strong, the common is made precious, the despised is truly excellent, the tasteless gladdens the heart, and a tiny blue speck reflects our earthly island home. Miraculous.
 
We enable new ministries, balanced budgets are fermented, we find new ways to nurture the hungry and broken hearted, the wonderful stories of God’s people are shared and sung in faith.
 
As baptized children of God, we continue to ask the questions and to be amazed by the glory. Thanks be to God.
 
Amen.