Glory Within the Routine
Pastor Mathew Magera – 1/20/19 – Sermon 326
St. Thomas Lutheran Church, Trufant, MI
To God be the Glory!
Grace and peace to you from
God our Father, from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Amen.
One of the easy ways to
understand the word glory as it is used in Scripture is to understand it as
God’s presence. With the help of certain stories in the Bible, we can discover
how this is true. In the Old Testament, Moses had the opportunity to see God,
or at least the back of him. God had to cover Moses’ eyes as God’s glory passed
by. In the New Testament, at Jesus’ birth we remember that the glory of the
Lord shone around the shepherds when they were told to go to Bethlehem. Both of
these are examples of God’s presence.
With that in mind, Jesus
reveals his glory for the first time in this miracle at the wedding at Cana. He
reveals who he is. But, it’s not what we expect. It’s not what we have
envisioned in our minds over the years as we’ve heard the story. As we enter
the scene, I want to remind us how this season of Epiphany that we are in is
all about how Jesus reveals the power and will of God. Earlier this month on
Epiphany Sunday, I mentioned how I wanted us to think about these Sundays in
the Epiphany season with our spiritual eyesight in mind. I want to return to
that this morning as well by looking at the same three questions as they relate
to Jesus revealing his glory at this wedding: Where is Christ revealed? How
does God free us from our nearsightedness? How do we reveal Christ to others
and give God glory?
Where is
Christ revealed?
With that in mind, let us
prepare to enter the story. I heard a funny story about how Jesus and his
disciples finished off a long day of preaching around the countryside one day.
Exhausted, they walk into the local tavern for a drink. As they walk in, Jesus
tells his disciples, “don’t worry, I’ll pick up the bill today.” That certainly
brought some smiles to their tired faces. So, Jesus walks up to the bar and
signals the bartender. The bartender comes over and says, “what’ll you have?”
Jesus replies, “13 waters please.”
No, that’s not biblical, but
it reminds us of Jesus at the Wedding in Cana. Where is Christ revealed in this
first miracle, or sign as John calls it? When you read it, there are no neon
signs. There are no crowds. I know what you're thinking. Of course there were
crowds, it was a wedding! Yes, it was a wedding. Yes, I imagine there were lots
of people around. But, none of them, not a single person was paying attention
to Jesus, save for his own disciples.
To help you see how this
sign unfolds, I'm going to give you a speaking part. If you would help me out
and find a pew Bible and open it to page 1649. I want to show you exactly
what's taking place. While you are turning there, I'll introduce the setting.
Jesus and his disciples were invited to a wedding. The party was amazing but
they had run out of wine. This is one announcement you would not want to make
at a party like this. So, Jesus' mother seems to know where she could get more.
After his mother seems to have won the argument with her son after Jesus
refuses to be involved, this is what happens.
If you all on the organ side
would read verse 7, then I'll have you all on the other side read verse 8.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled
them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the
banquet.”
Two instructions. Two simple
instructions. Two simple and very predictable instructions. Yet, within them
something happens. Did you see it?
Let's do it again, start
with verse 7.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled
them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the
banquet.”
We have one instruction.
Then a second instruction. Yet, it is in between where the miracle happens but
that miracle is masked by the cover of these ordinary actions. No ceremony. No
pomp and circumstance. No crowd. Nothing to see other than a few servants doing
their job.
Jesus reveals himself here
in the mundane routine of a few wedding servants. Jesus didn't say any magic
words. Jesus didn't levitate or put a cloth over the jugs of water. All he did
was say "do this" "do that." All the servants did is the
work servants normally do. But, this time, even in the mundane routine, Jesus'
glory is revealed. Jesus shows us that it doesn't require something big and
flashy for him to be revealed to the world. It doesn't take suspense or lights
or video cameras. It doesn't take anticipation, planning, or organization. It
doesn't take anything big at all. Jesus reveals himself in the ordinary
routines of life.
How does God
free us from our nearsightedness?
This reveal of Jesus tends
to catch us by surprise because we might have assumed that everybody at this
wedding saw what happened, that everybody knew it was Jesus who did it. It just
might benefit us, however, to consider this isn't true. Nobody saw it. Nobody
knew who did it. Except his disciples.
We often tend to look for
Jesus in the big out of the ordinary experiences. What Jesus is telling us
today is that if that's the only place we look, that spiritual nearsightedness
is creeping up on us once again. If we're only looking in one place for Jesus,
we're missing him. And we do this. Think of why some people only come to Church
on Christmas and Easter. It's different. It's out of the ordinary. It's big.
It's festive. If people make time to come to worship twice a year, they're
going to pick Christmas and Easter, not the second Sunday in June and
September. We look for God in the big but when we do, we miss such events like Jesus
turning water into wine.
Christ comes to free us from
this, to point us to the small, away from the loud place and to the quiet
places. We get so used to these big and powerful stories but we don't want to
forget that Jesus isn't all about being noticed in big ways. Jesus comes into
this wedding feast and nobody knows what he did except those who follow him
closely. Everyone else would need something big in order to know it was Jesus.
Everyone else would've needed a magic trick, a top hat and a magic wand to see
what Jesus was doing among them because that's where they would have been
focused, that's where they would have looked.
There are times even when I
think we as a congregation might look only for the big reveals of God's glory
and not for the small ones. It becomes about that which is visual, more people
in church, more offerings, more kids, more help. These are areas that tend to
prompt us that God is doing something in our midst. To that, if you are bold
enough to say this is where you are looking for signs of God, in attendance,
offerings, kids, and help, then I will be bold enough to say that you have
missed him.
Jesus wants to open our eyes
and look beyond what we can see, so that he can show us himself already at work
performing signs and revealing his glory in all of the regular routines of our
daily lives and ministry of His Church. That is where we can look for God's
glory revealed. That's where we can look for miracles, for signs. What can we
do with what we have? What can Jesus do with what we have? If we look at this
story of the water turning to wine, we see Jesus can do quite a bit with so
very little. Have faith! Be freed and let God reveal himself through the
routine, through the normal.
You don't have to look for
the big and flashy. You don't have to look for pomp and circumstance. You can
see Jesus with the same power, the same glory, the same love, grace, mercy, and
forgiveness even within our normal. He is there and he is continuing to reveal
himself.
How do we
reveal Christ to others and give God the glory?
In no way do I want to
downplay events such as took place in Bethlehem or on Calvary and I don't think
that was Jesus' intention either. However, when we think about how we can
reveal Christ to others, I think some of the most impactful experiences we can
share are ones that are relatable so as to say that even in your everyday life
where God may or may not be a primary part of it from your perspective, God is
still there. God is still working. God is still changing things for your
benefit because he loves you. Even if you don't notice it. Even if you don't
see it. Even if you may never know it was him.
How can we reveal Christ to
others and give God the glory? We can spot God in our everyday and talk about.
Have you ever seen those security signs either on the road or in a public
building that say, "See something, say something." If you see God,
even in small ways. Say something. What are the routine ways in which God
reveals himself to you in big ways?
John 2 tells us that Jesus
turned water into wine only to help a family save their reputation in front of
their guests. It wasn't a healing, he didn't raise anyone from the dead, but he
still revealed himself and it was nothing less of his glory. Afterall, Jesus
didn't make just one bottle of wine. He made gallons upon gallons of it. That's
like asking for a bottle of water and being given Lake Michigan. This is the
abundance Jesus gives us, even in the quiet, normal, routine.
This new freedom can mean
lots of things for us. But, maybe it might mean that we'll see God's divine
glory a bit more often in our lives than we might think. When we see the hungry
get fed, when the homeless are given shelter, when children are given three
meals each day, when the despairing are comforted with hope, when the sad can
dry their tears with the Gospel, when we see these things happening in our
congregation, in our community, these are just as big as Jesus changing water
into wine, just as big as his birth in Bethlehem, just as big as his
resurrection from the dead. We are seeing the very glory of God. Praying for
someone over the phone, offering to help someone in need even in small ways,
these have the transformative effects of Jesus turning water into wine. Better
yet, we have been given the power to do them!
There’s a story of a retired
Lutheran pastor who lived near Boston and was going to be preaching in a small
country church in New York state one Sunday. A little while after leaving home
on Saturday afternoon, he remembered he forgot to stop at his church to pick up
some communion wine for the next day. He turned around, got to the church and
grabbed the first bottle he found, a half full bottle from last Sunday. About
halfway through Connecticut he stopped to use the bathroom and throw out his
empty water bottle. As he pulled back onto the road, his car hit a small ice
patch and swerved a bit. A police officer nearby saw what happened and pulled the
pastor over not knowing that the car slipped on ice. The officer came up to the
window and asked where he was headed. The pastor told the officer he was headed
to preach at a small country church in New York the next morning. Then the
officer mentioned he saw the car swerve a while back and asked if the driver
had been drinking. He replied, “no, sir, only water.” The officer looked into
the passenger seat and saw the half full bottle of communion wine and asked,
“what’s that about?” The pastor looked over and acted shocked at the sight of
the bottle sitting there and exclaimed, “Jesus did it again!”
I want us to be freed to
look at Jesus working in our routines that we might be able to exclaim “Jesus
did it again!” We typically think that “glory” is the bright shining presence
of God, the white-hot holiness of the divine that is so stunning, even Moses
had to be hidden in the cleft of a rock to keep it from frying him to a
crisp. But, as Jesus shows us, glory is
also less than that and because of that it makes itself much more. Jesus' glory
comes to us in the routine. With that in mind, let us take that into our
routine this week to look for it, to be changed by it, to be given hope by it.
To God be the glory, now and always. Amen.