The Reverend Dr. Lillian Daniel
3rd Sunday after Epiphany
January 24, 2010
First Congregational Church, Glen Ellyn,
Illinois, UCC
www.firstconge.org
630-469-3096
This sermon was transcribed.
Introduction to the
Scripture:
The story we’re going to hear today is of Jesus’ first
miracle – the first miracle he ever performs.
He is an adult and is at a wedding, and they run out of wine. Jesus is there with his mother, Mary, and
Mary asks him to do something about this.
You will see that Jesus resists this at first, and you wonder if this
was the first miracle that Jesus had in mind – or what was going on with
Mary. She raised this boy, she knew he
was something special—what made her ask Jesus to do something about this
situation? When you read this scripture,
focus not so much on the miracle, but on the role Jesus’ mother plays in making
all this happen.
Scripture: 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:
This is going to be the only comparison that I draw between myself and Jesus… but my mother used to think I could do anything as well. You get that sense from this reading that Mary is saying, “For crying out loud, Jesus, you know you can fix this situation, you know you can do something about it—just give it a try.” What do you think Jesus was thinking, himself? Did he know he had the power to change water into wine? Is this my first miracle—is this what I want it to be—just keeping the party going a little longer? Do I really want to be pushed into my first miracle by my mother?
You can pick up Jesus’ irritation with his mother, with “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me?” ‘Surely that is not what I should be spending my divine gifts worrying about.’ And Mary says, ‘Just go ahead and do it, Jesus, I believe you can do this.’
This reminded me of my mother, who thought I could do anything, as well. She was always pushing me out there—further than I was willing to go. Always bragging about me, frequently saying things that were not true, but things she had convinced herself were true. In any situation, I invariably got some promotion, in how she described what I was doing. I remember when it was time for me to apply for college, she kept telling me to apply to Harvard. I would say, “There is no way I would get into Harvard,” as I knew the statistics and the grade requirements. She would say, “Just believe in yourself.” It would irritate me so much because I felt she didn’t understand the realities of my life. This even goes back to when I was a very small child. She was always trying to boost my confidence. She saw that as a big role of hers, as a mother.
A lot of times, people today will comment on my daughter, Abigail, and say, “Abigail’s personality is just like yours. She must be just like you were when you were a kid.” Abigail has a wonderful, outgoing personality. I respond with, “She may be like me today, but she’s nothing like me as a child.” When I was a child, I was very, very shy, and did not have an outgoing personality, and did not like to speak in front of groups of people. My mother knew this was an enormous problem, and it was going to “dog” me unless she got involved. She thought the cure for this was to continually put me in the spotlight and torture me into getting comfortable with it.
She had me take music lessons—I studied the violin for 10 or 11 years—and I was never able to sound good on the violin. Here, I am not being modest. This is just factual. When I would play the violin, I would look at the faces of those who were listening, and they were wincing. When people are twitching when you’re playing the violin, it’s not a good sign.
But, there was not a social event in our home that didn’t end with my mother saying, “Well, as the evening’s winding down, why don’t we have Lillian come out and play for us.” I would say, “Please don’t do that—nobody wants to hear me play,” and the people that heard my comment were nodding in agreement and adding, “Well, yes, it’s getting late,” while looking at their watches. She would insist that I come out and play and say, “I do this, Lillian, to boost your confidence.” Of course, I felt that it was having the opposite effect.
Another thing my mother would encourage me to do was enter speech contests. She believed this was another way to come out of your shell. This was very challenging to me because I grew up overseas–mostly in Asia. I would attend these English schools in former colonies of the UK—in Hong Kong, India and similar places. In these schools, when you were in a speech contest, it wasn’t like forensics or debate, what we were doing was literally memorizing poems or lengthy pieces of prose. We would be judged on how we delivered them. So, much of it was whether you had beautiful diction and, of course, a perfect English accent—which I didn’t have. I had to learn that, because I was being continually put in these contests. So, I figured out how to have the perfect English accent.
There was this one year when we lived in Hong Kong, and I was in the equivalent of the third grade, and I won the contest for the whole grade and whole island of Hong Kong. This in itself was not so extraordinary, because someone has to win every contest. But it was such a big deal because after I won, they found out that I was American—and nobody could believe this—that I could have won this contest. It was so impressive that they put a headline in the South China Morning Post that read, “American Girl Wins Speech Contest.” …as if to say, “One Legged Man Wins Olympic Marathon.” This just could not happen.
I went back and found the picture of this event. I’m looking very sheepish in this picture—slumped over, my hair in pigtails and the ribbon falling out of one of them, looking as though I’m being tortured. Behind me in the picture is this wonderful woman I will never forget: Miss Porter, my speech teacher. She was that wonderful drama coach that we all remember and love with the ‘bigger than life’ personality, and very much like my mother—always putting every kid out there, encouraging them to do the thing that they were terrified to do, rooting for them, encouraging them. She’s behind me with her hands around me, a big grin on her face, as if to say, “Lillian, I knew you could do this!” “American Girl Wins Speech Contest” “One-Legged Dog Wins Ballet Prize” She knew it could happen.
I have a confession to make, though, when it comes to this particular story—about the wine and the miracle and Jesus, and I will get to that later. Jesus’ mother pushes Jesus to create the new wine, and one of the key elements of this story is that Jesus doesn’t just produce more of the same, old wine that everyone has been enjoying. Jesus produces a wine that is fundamentally better than anything they have ever had.
That detail is so important to the story that it gets included in the gospel. We’re told that the people noticed this and comment—they can hardly believe it. Usually what the host does is serve the worst wine at the end, when everybody’s had a lot of the good wine already and become a little intoxicated, when they don’t have very good judgment. It’s as if then, you can get out that Trader Joe’s $3.99 stuff and nobody will know the difference. That’s the way it usually worked. But in this case, the wine gets better! How can this be?
The spiritual principle that’s being played with in the detail of this story—why does this matter—is that it gets at our motivations for generosity. It talks about the fact that we can all be generous, but it makes a difference what our motivation is.
For example, if your motivation is to gain the respect of the person you are giving this to, or to please somebody else, or to have them recognize you as a generous person, you’re going to give them the good wine first and have that be recognized. Then, it really doesn’t matter, if they don’t know if the wine is good or bad, you may as well give them the other stuff later. That’s because your motivation for giving is based upon their reaction. I would say, nine times out of ten, that’s why most of us are generous—and the world works pretty well that way. It’s fine.
But there’s another kind of generosity, where you give the very best wine to people who may not even know it’s good. You give the most precious thing you have, and they may not even know they’re getting it. In that case, you’re not giving in order to get their reaction, you’re giving out of a deep place of generosity, which I think is the generous place in us created by God in the way that we are made. We are made to be generous like God. It’s that kind of generosity—generosity without any thought as to what the reaction will be. That’s the “God” generosity that the wedding guests get when they get the good wine at the very end.
I have a confession to make about that. Contrary to that story, when I give wine away, there are times when I give away wine that I do not like. Have you ever done this? You know how it can happen. It doesn’t mean we’re evil—let’s just admit that this is something that might happen. You might have a gathering at your house and people might bring wine to your house and they don’t know what kind of wine you like. They might bring a kind of wine that you don’t care for. What do you do? Down the road, you may be invited to a party, and you may bring a bottle of wine to give. Are you going to bring a bottle of wine that you would be happy to drink yourself at home, or are you going to take this bottle that you don’t particularly like, and give it to the next group of people, the next party, and hope that somebody there will really enjoy that type of wine? There’s no harm in that, right? It’s sort of spreading stuff around.
I did this recently. I was invited to a potluck, and brought a bottle of wine. My host greeted me and said, “Lillian, what would you like to drink?” I said, “I think I would like a glass of wine.” The host then said, “Well, great, let’s open this one!” What could I do? I had to drink it. I couldn’t say “No, thank you.” I had to drink it. I was not saving the best wine for last. I was giving out of a different, more human, motivation.
There was a time toward the end of my mother’s life, when she had been ill for a couple of years and it was clear that she was not going to get better. It was New Year’s Eve, and the time of the millennium—the changeover—and that was a very important New Year’s Eve for all of us. We knew that we had to celebrate that New Year’s Eve, and that it had to be something very special. What we decided to do was to go to a party that her church was having. She went to a wonderful church in Washington, DC, that had decided to celebrate the millennium by having a wonderful New Year’s Eve party right there in the church—with decorations, and everyone dressing up. It just seemed like the perfect way to be together.
Before we left for the party, my mother pulled out a bottle of champagne that she had been saving for many years. It was a very fine bottle. She said, “I want us all to share this bottle of champagne right now,” which was a very natural thing to do, but poignant, given that her cancer treatments had come to an end and she was not getting better. She was ready to drink the champagne she had been saving. All of a sudden, her husband got very angry with her and said, “We’re not opening that bottle of champagne, we’re saving that bottle of champagne for a special occasion.” She retorted, “But this is the special occasion—this is the time to drink the bottle of champagne.” He said, “Absolutely not!” And they ended up getting into this ridiculous argument that almost ruined the evening, over whether or not to have the champagne. I remember her saying, “For crying our loud, why won’t you let us have this champagne?”
As the evening wore on, we came to realize that this argument was not about sharing this bottle of champagne, but a question of saving the best for last. If we had opened the bottle of champagne, we would be acknowledging what my mother was, in a sense, trying to say to the family, that this was the special occasion that we had been waiting for, and that there would not be another.
Her husband, in refusing to open the bottle of champagne, was saying, “I do not accept that narrative of the story. I do not accept that we are saving the best wine for this moment—there are still yet better moments to come.” It was a fundamental disagreement about the narrative and arc of her life.
I had my own, strange little episode just a week ago on Saturday, which caused me to miss being with you Sunday of last week.
On Saturday, I was having a perfect, relaxed evening. My husband, Lou, was working. The kids were home, and each of my kids had another friend over. I look back now as to what could have been going on. Was I stressed out? I had actually been spending about an hour on the computer, trying to convert my frequent flyer miles into a real ticket for my child, and that had stressed me out quite a bit, but I could manage it. And that was really all that I had gone through that was really difficult that day. I had been on the phone with the lady from Southwest Airlines, and was in the middle of buying tickets, sitting on my living room couch, doing just fine.
The next thing I remember is that I’m waking up across the living room floor, and I’m on the ground surrounded by EMT folks from the ambulance. The parents of one of my children’s friends were there, attending to me, and I jumped up, saying, “What is everybody doing here? What’s going on? What happened” They inform me that I’ve had some kind of a seizure, and I’ve cut myself open, and there’s blood everywhere. I’m trying to explain to them that I don’t have time for a seizure. I’ve got to be in church tomorrow and this is all a big mix up, and they’re clearly mistaken. This is of course, because I don’t remember any of this—and this is a mystery to me.
It was just an amazing thing because all things seem to come together in remarkable ways. When this thing happened, my children got on the telephone and the people from 911 coached them as to what to do with me and how to handle the situation. They called their friends’ parents, who were just coming to pick their children up, to come into the house. It just so happened, and it’s so wonderful that one of the parents is a Yoga instructor and one of the parents is a volunteer fire fighter. Just the perfect people—you’ve got the one person who knows what to do and the other who just makes you feel calm. “Yeah, you’re having a seizure, just relax into that. Do you want to put your feet up a little? Here’s a special bag for your eyes.” It was just amazing. It’s remarkable how just the right people get delivered to you.
I got to the hospital, and it starts to dawn on me that these people are not making this up and it’s not a practical joke, and all this is actually happening. I’ve become obsessed with all the things that this could interfere with. Not only Sunday morning, but what I also got upset about was that I had this trip to London planned for later in the week, and I was supposed to give a lecture at King’s College in London, through a program with Anglican clergy at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and I was very excited about that. What I was really excited about was that I was going to get to see a childhood friend, and I was going to get to go back and visit my childhood home and my school in London—which were things that I had never been able to do.
For many of you who have grown up in one place, there’s a place you can go back to and say, “That was my home,” or “That was my school.” But I don’t have anybody in my life who knows me when I was a little kid, and can say, “I knew you when…” This was my chance to connect with a woman who had found me through Facebook© a few years ago—who I had not seen in 30 years. Not only that, but she had arranged not only for me to connect with her, but she had found Miss Porter, my third grade speech teacher from Hong Kong, who had retired back in England. Miss Porter was planning to come to the lecture at King’s College and spend the day with us.
I was not going to let anything get in the way of my getting on that airplane to London. My face was all black and blue—and I had to visit about four doctors before I found one who would say that I could go. Obviously, he was the one with the most expertise, and deserving of my trust. He basically said, “The truth is a long airplane ride is a perfect place for somebody who has the possibility of having a seizure because you’re surrounded by other people and you’re strapped into a chair.”
The point is, I was hearing discouraging news from lots of people, and I was just waiting for the one person to give me encouraging news—who would say, “You should go for this. Don’t let this stop you—go ahead.”
I thought about all the people who encourage us in our lives—Jesus’ mother pushing him out there to do his first miracle, my own mother pushing me to torture people with the violin, Miss Porter, the doctors—all the people in our lives. We don’t always get the encouragement we need, yet we discover it in these amazing places. I thought about the way God calls each one of us to be an “encourager” of other people, and where we’re called to make that difference in someone’s life. How we’re being called to be the “good wine” for someone who has not yet received it.
Finally, I got to go to London, I made it there, all banged up. Obviously, one of the highlights was seeing Miss Porter, and my childhood friend, and getting to see my old house and my school—all these things coming together—and being able to thank Miss Porter for the difference she had made in my life. So often, we don’t get that chance to go back and say thank you to people—to thank my friend, and just to be grateful for having had the chance to go to the other side of the world and be there.
At the end of the day, at the end of the lecture, I was quite exhausted and finally had some time to walk back to where I was staying, and I realized that with all that I had tried to pack into this day-and-a-half trip to London, I had never actually set foot in St. Paul’s Cathedral, which is one of the most beautiful religious spaces ever made. So I stepped into the cathedral, which was just extraordinary. Normally, nothing would be going on there in the evening, but wouldn’t you know it, I was there just ten minutes before a worship service started. They were having a special vespers service to celebrate the week of Christian unity, and I just happened to walk in for it. So I sat down and was able to just receive the beauty of that service. If you’ve ever heard a service at St. Paul’s, it’s a men and boys choir, where the whole thing is sung and chanted in Latin. It’s just the most glorious thing to hear, as it echoes around the domes. It was so wonderful just to be able to receive that—particularly as one who leads worship. It’s such a blessing to just sit in the pews and be swept up in that spirit.
I realized in that moment that the great “encouragers” in our lives are not just the human ones—our mothers and fathers, teachers and friends, and people who tell us we can do things—but the great “encourager” is, of course, God. God is the great “encourager.” God is the one who creates us in all our glory, in God’s actual, divine image. But we are the ones who tell ourselves and each other, “Oh, you can’t do that—that won’t work.” It’s God who calls us to play that role for one another, and to tell each other, “You can do this,” to be “encouragers” of one another.
At the end of the service, I was so moved by it, I didn’t want to leave. I just wanted to stay there. The postlude was going on, and most people were leaving, and by then things were wrapping up. All of a sudden, out of a side door, these little boys started coming out in their red choir robes. I was in this week of Christian unity, being so warmly received by the Anglicans across the ocean, and watched these faces suddenly light up when an adult recognized the particular boy they were waiting for. A mother would jump up and embrace one and cart him off, and another little boy would come out and look around, and a father would come up to him, and another little boy would come out, and perhaps it was a grandparent who would come up to him. You realized that every little child that came out was being greeted—probably by that person who had given him the encouragement to “get up there,” probably the same person who said, “You ought to be in that choir, you ought to be up there singing in St. Paul’s Cathedral. It’s going to be scary, but you can do this.” And after they did it, that same person was waiting there with open arms to greet them.
I thought of my mother and the bottle of champagne that she did not get to drink—the way she wanted to save that for much of her life until she waited to pop the cork… but she never got to. Then, there in St. Paul’s, alone and remembering my mother, I realized, it’s not about whether we drink the champagne in this life. The great “encourager” waits for us when we cross from this world into the next. I have no doubt that each one of us will be like those little choir boys. And the one that has always encouraged us and called us forth will be there waiting, embracing us, greeting us. We will know what the guests at that wedding knew, that indeed, the best wine has been reserved for last, and Jesus was right to listen to his mother. Amen.