During this season between Epiphany and Lent, the church is called to focus on the life and ministry of Jesus. Today we examine what it means to be a follower of Jesus. Nature of Christian discipleship is never the same; we are invited to redefine it as it evolves with each generation, hopefully for the better; because we just sang together Walter Chalmers Smith’s (1824-1908) hymn, ‘Immortal, Invisible, God Only Wise”,

“Unresting, unhasting, and silent as light,
nor wanting, nor wasting, thou rulest in might;
thy justice like mountains high soaring above,
thy clouds, which are fountains of goodness and love.”

One frightening thing about long pastorates serving the same congregation for this long as I have ( 24 years!) , is that you might end up having more ’former disillusioned members’ than current, active, faithful ones! I live among them; not all are disenchanted except perhaps they got their priorities a wee bit mixed up over the years, I see them early in the morning taking that bus to the Casino Rama in Orillia once a week. And I see the in the shopping malls and the streets-walking and jogging etc.

Therefore, thanks to Sunday shopping, with the mainline denominations consequently relegated to the sidelines in the former European Christendom, I have a personal reason to reflect on the question: How does Christian discipleship or following Jesus both inspire and distress you and me?

Was it not Humphrey Bogart who once said, ”the trouble with our world is that everyone is three or four drinks behind”! The wedding at Cana of Galilee is well known to all Christians, where Jesus turns Aqua mineral into Shiraz! 180 gallons. 7000 year-old Shiraz is my favorite flavor. Shiraz is a wonderful grape in Iran or Persia. During the European Crusades of military incursions by Christians in the 11th, 12th and 13th centuries to win the Holy Land from the invincible Muslims, a French knight smuggled this rare kind of grape from Persia and re-named it as Syrah in France. This is the only good thing that came out of the 300 year-long Crusades that I am aware of.

I always think of a very good friend, a former parishioner in Oxford Mills, Ontario in the Ottawa Valley, our very first parish where I was ordained by the Montreal and Ottawa Conference of the United Church of Canada, Ford Crozier; a very hard-working, affluent and successful farmer. In our first parish or pastoral charge, one sweltering July afternoon Ford drove in to the Manse/rectory driveway. But he would not get out of his car. I happened to notice that my neighbor across the street, a well known local teacher Winnie Lamrock, a Presbyterian teetotaler, was on her way back home from the Post Office with her mail. My friend came out and rushed back to his car! I wasn’t sure what was happening; I came out asked him: Ford are you all right? He whispered to me: I am OK but that Winnie is the problem! I replied: Winnie is the problem? He said: “Be quiet, Reverend; I stopped to have a beer with you!” Then I said, “Look I don’t have any beer!”. He shouted back, “I brought them with me, I don’t want her to see me bringing beer to the manse!”

In 30 odd years, not many people dared to bring alcohol to the manse! During the Christmas holidays, I was talking to Bram’s babysitter in Oxford Mills; I told her this story…and she laughed and laughed…now the whole villages knows about this!

Christianity is a cool religion, maybe the coolest of all! Our founder Jesus of Nazareth began his ministry with what could be labeled as bootlegging! The liquor store was locked tight for the long weekend. The cash bar at the wedding reception started running low. In most traditions, the bride’s family is in charge of the wedding reception. The bride’s father would go nuts should the guests complain about the dinner. We would do our best to avoid any awkwardness or humiliation.

This summer three bright young women in our congregation will celebrate their weddings .I would advise the parents to take time to read the second chapter of John’s Gospel and carefully make their plans in order to avoid embarrassing situations.

Everybody loves a good party…….good food and lots of drinks. On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee. Jesus launches his ministry at a huge wedding party. There’s Jesus. And Mary. The bartender. The DJ. In the streets of Dublin during the festive St. Patrick’s Day weekend, a policeman signals to an inebriate car driver to pull over to the side of the road, due to the fact that he appears to be driving erratically. He says to the driver, "You appear to have been drinking!" The driver answers, "No sir, I am just tired." The policeman looks into the car and notices that the driver is a priest! He also notices that there is an empty bottle on the floor. He says to the driver, "What is, or should I say was in this bottle? The driver answers, "Water!" The policeman says, "It is not, it's wine!" The driver looks up to the heavens and says, "Oh Lord, you have done it again!"

There is something mystical about the beginning of the New Year. We enter into a New Year, a new season of hope and resolutions. All will be different if not better in 2007 than 2006. 2006 was an upsetting, even a tragic year for so many caught in the misery of war, of poverty, of AIDS, of drugs; so much has gone wrong. To use the profound words of the African-American poet Maya Angelou, (Celebrations) in a world of dense walls of poverty, chains of ignorance, where it is convenient to close our eyes to the crying needs of the helpless, in a society dark with cruelty, let the people hear the grandeur of God through you, ‘to remind the people that each is as good as the other and that no one is beneath nor above you’ In spite of all this awareness, we cling to hope. I am a Pollyanna myself; although I was defeated in the municipal election in our city held in the fall, I got my doctoral dissertation completed and now I am getting ready to return to the Christ Church College, University of Oxford to defend my thesis in a few weeks! We always think the new must be better than the old and we enter each New Year hoping.

The fourth Gospel of John is different from the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, who disregard this event in Cana. Unlike the other Gospel writers, John tells us this delightful story, the very first sign that inaugurates the public ministry of Jesus.

Certainly, a marriage is the beginning of a new life for the couple most of the time. Well, not quite these days, I am afraid. Last week a Roman Catholic man and an Anglican woman - a middle-aged couple with adult children at college, both in their fifties, dropped by to plan their wedding. In fact, they have been living together for the past twenty-five years. They said that they didn’t have enough money to ay for all the expenses. Finally they came to see me to have their relationship formally blessed.

All we know about this wedding is that there have been some very special guests invited. Mary, the mother of Jesus, her firstborn son Jesus, who has assembled a group of followers. We don’t know the bridegroom or the bride. No word about the rabbi or the organist or the best man or bridal party. But we know it is the beginning of a ministry that will change the path of history forever. But no one knows this at the time of the wedding reception.

Ingenious enthusiasm gushes through this story, like the energy of new wine that promises new vitality, new hope, new resolve that greets the beginning of each new stages, experiences in life. A new wine of life pulsating with new dynamism. With his Greek erudition, John states in his Gospel, that “everything that was created received its life from him and his life gave light to everyone. Jesus, although had a brief but intense ministry, stayed away from the use of miracles. But he does not resist his mother’s insistence on the need of his intervention in order to continue with the wedding banquet and possibly tone down any embarrassment. We will never know what motivated or caused him to change his mind. The servants, his mother and his disciples were the only people aware of this supernatural interference with nature. Why would Jesus choose to turn 180 gallons of water into wine at a wedding in a small peasant village? We have no perfectly satisfactory answer to that question.

We are all invited to the wedding feast of new life in the New Year. We have all been consuming an inferior quality of wine. Whether inferior or inexpensive, our wine supply will run out. Our energies will dry out. So will our resources. We may choose to sit and wait or leave the party and walk home! Those of us who are aware of the unexpected, painful shortage of our resources, aware of our dreams shattered, aware of our hopes dashed, aware of our desire to struggle to continue, have a choice. One of my dear friends, Professor Harvey Cox used to say, ‘Whether we decide to choose or not to, still we are making a choice”! Become aware of our inadequacies and approach the abundant life we are God-given in Jesus Christ. We know the daunting way of the world. Also we are reminded of God’s agenda for an abundant life. As we enter this New Year, let us develop a theology or understanding of our resources, of our needs, of our responsibilities, of our stewardship as faithful Christians called to do God’s mission in our world, and re-examine our options and make up our minds to go to the sources of all resources…abundant life in Jesus Christ; as the Psalm for today (36) reminds us “we feast on the bounty of God’s house, God gives us drink from God’s river of pleasure—the fountain of life”.

Prayer:
Gracious God of feasts, banquets, weddings, new wine, new life and new resolve, may your glory be revealed in our management of our resources. Bless us as we choose to serve with you in the ongoing work of your creation. In Jesus’ name, Amen.