Epiphany2C 2007
Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11
Where do we find joy? Pure, unadulterated, communal joy? When and where are the times when we, together, feel real joy?
Sporting events might provide us with opportunities to feel joyful…a type of spectator joy, perhaps. Sitting with friends we watch our team score the winning point and cheers, high fives and hugs abound…
I was listening to NPR this week and heard Barbara Ehrenrich talk about her latest book called Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy. Like the book Bowling Alone that came out some years ago now, Barbara’s book laments the loss of communal joy. She looks at the history of collective dance across cultures and the ages. Then notes that joyful rituals and festivities, once so widespread, are so few now.
So when and where do we joyfully gather?
Parties? Once in a while. But I’ve noticed a decline in those also. It is rare that a group is invited over to someone’s house. “I don’t have time to clean” is the reason given. “It’s too much work.”
How about church? Growing up, church was a very serious place. It was rare that I saw smiles in the building. Maybe at a baptism…but that’s about it. Rarely on a Sunday morning and never, never at communion.
It’s like Jesus wanted us to gather and focus only on suffering, pain, the blood of the lamb.
Is fun sinful? Joy a bad thing? In the Dutch Reformed part of
But today in the Gospel lesson Jesus is at a wedding party. A party! Wedding parties are still a lot of fun, a time of joy and celebration, a time of eating and drinking and dancing. Wedding parties are a time of communal joy.
Jesus is celebrating with friends and family at a wedding. And the wine runs out. So his mother pushes him a bit and Jesus changes the water into wine. A lot of wine. A surplus of wine. A lot of wine. This is Jesus first miracle and it has to do with a party.
No half measures here. Jesus first miracle is at a party and it has to do with wine. And he provides plenty… an overwhelming amount, actually. (We were joking this week that the disciples believed. Of course they did, they were probably toasted! The rest of the Gospel has them not getting it…doubting…)
This Jesus of the wedding party doesn’t square up with the serious, judgmental, grim God of the neighborhood I grew up in.
Nope. This is a God that loves a good party. This is a God of rejoicing and making merry. The “turn your mourning into dancing God.”
God creates us for joy! Gives us the capacity to be happy…to laugh and love and smile even in the midst of a fearful world.
God creates us to dance together. (Don’t get nervous, I’m not going to make you dance…I think it’s pretty cool that we are so ready to clap to the music here in a Midwestern Lutheran church!!)
How can we dance together if we are full of fear. Or carrying grudges. Or filled with hate.
Maybe we don’t get joyful because we have to many negative messages bouncing around in our heads. We have been told that we can’t dance, we aren’t worthy of dancing, we don’t deserve to dance.
I remember trying to comfort a little girl at the inner-city Philadephia day camp I worked at one summer. “I’m so stupid,” the six-year old said. “My Daddy says I’m stupid.” “We do stupid things, sometimes,” I tried to tell her. “That doesn’t make us stupid people.” My heart broke as I realized the messages of the world will probably win out over the message of God’s love and acceptance.
We are told we are stupid, slow, crazy, unworthy, evil, broken….so often that we believe it. And we can’t dance with those voices in our heads. We take on the messages that we don’t measure up, we aren’t good enough or strong enough or smart enough or fast enough. The church isn’t always helpful here…with an emphasis on our sinfulness and unworthiness.
How can we dance if we feel forgotten or forsaken?
In the first lesson from Isaiah...God tells the Israelites that their land is no longer called “Forsaken” or “Desolate.” God renames their land “My Delight is in Her”. “You shall be called by a new name.”
In our baptism our names are changed to “children of God”. When we gather at the table God calls us “beloved”.
We are no longer forsaken or desolate, but delighted in.
God delights in us. That is a good thing. Worth a party or two or three or four. Or one every Sunday morning!
God delights in us. This is a message easily lost in this serious, warring, fearful world. But perhaps if we learned to live out of a sense delight—of joy, if we learned to dance with our brothers and sisters…we would also share more and fight less.
There’s a thought. For living out of joy takes us out of the rat race, the need to accumulate and show off. Actions that often mask our insecurity and take us back to our own low sense of self-esteem.
Living out of joy can’t be done unless we trust that God provides…even the wine. God provides the community, the church, the challenges.
The original wedding wine was brought by friends in the first place. Every guest helped with the wedding feast. It was a communal act at the get-go.
Jesus just helped the party last longer.
So maybe joy isn’t gone. Maybe communal dancing still happens as we gather here, in this place, around the bread and the wine. Maybe we are still gathering together to celebrate being named “children of God.”
Party on!