I.N.I.

a sermon to be preached at Cheshire Lutheran Church, Cheshire, CT on the 2nd Sunday after the Epiphany a. D. 1995 (15 January) and based on the Gospel for the day, John 2:1-11.

Grace, mercy and peace be yours in Christ Jesus, our Lord!

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

I guess the gift giving season is over, unless you’re one of those rare few people to tuck away a few choice presents to bring out during your Second Sunday after Epiphany celebrations. We’re definitely past Christmas anyway. And some of us are probably in the winter doldrums. This coming Saturday, we’ll be a third of the way through winter, and still without any snow to speak of. It’s a dreary time of year that could stand being pepped up with gifts and presents.

Into this drear of long nights and leafless trees, comes today’s Gospel about a wedding party. Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding. Jesus gave the bride and groom a wonderful present. And Jesus continues to give good gifts to his friends, to us.

Jesus is the gift giver. He gives the gift of his presence among us. He gives the gift of his power. He gives the gift of faith and forgiveness.

Sometimes we don’t recognize the gift of Jesus being present among us. Our text points out that Jesus was invited to this wedding in Cana. How many other weddings left him out? How many other weddings didn’t invite him?

One thing this can teach us is the blessedness of having Jesus with us day to day. He’s not just for Sundays. He’s for in between, too.

Jesus gladly went to the wedding at Cana. He gladly visited people’s houses for meals. He joined people at the lake. He went hiking with them. Jesus saw the sights in the big city with his disciples.

In other words, Jesus was present in the daily lives of his disciples. This was a gift to them. They were people just as much as we are and needed to have someone they could count on just as much as we do. He was there for them when they needed him.

He’s here for us when we need him, too. One of Jesus’s gifts to us is to be a ready friend on our days of joy. He is with us on our wedding days, or days we get promoted, for example. But he’s also with us on days of sadness. He’s with us when we get laid off from work, on the day we discover our spouse’s unfaithfulness, the day we have to face up to the habit that is dragging us down, or the day the doctor gives us the tragic diagnosis. Jesus is present with us on every day of our lives. This is one of his gifts to us. We just so often don’t see it.

He accomplishes this wonderful feat today in a different way from the way he did it with his first disciples.

Today, Jesus is with us through the means of grace (that’s out technical term for Baptism, Communion, and the Word of God). These means bring us the forgiveness of our individual sins. They are the way we encounter God today.

In Baptism, Jesus comes to us daily as we remember each day that we are baptized and can drown our old sinful selves under the cleansing waters that bring us the forgiveness Jesus won for us on the cross. In the Lord’s Supper, we eat his body and drink his blood, taking the Lord into our bodies with the grace that is ours. In God’s Word, the written Scriptures glow with the presence of the Lord at any time, day or night, that we read our Bibles, any time that we hear them read, or that we remember verses or passages that we have learned. God does not come to us today except through these means, but come to us he does.

He is his own gift to us. Jesus is the gift giver and the gift.

Jesus also gives us the gift of his power. The reason anyone today knows that there was a wedding in Cana is that Jesus used his almighty power to display a miraculous sign while he was at the wedding there. And it happened to be the first of the miraculous signs which he performed.

Jesus gave the gift of his power by turning over 100 gallons of water into first-rate wine. He didn’t need to, of course. It was his gift to the anonymous bride and groom (and their families) to save them from the embarrassment of running out of wine in mid—reception. He gave freely, out of love for the couple.

Think now of the other signs and wonders which Jesus did while he walked this earth. He always used his power in the same spirit of freely given love. When Jesus fed 5,000 and 4,000 people with the contents of brown bag lunches, he did it because he was concerned for their health and safety. When he raised Lazarus and the only son of the widow of Nain from the dead, he did it after feeling particular sorrow at the plight of the survivors. This was the way Jesus could make known the depth of His love and caring for people around him. So he used his power as a gift.

Jesus gives his power in our lives, too. Look at today’s Epistle [I Cor. 12:1-11], if you will. There, Paul explains something of the gifts God gives us through the Spirit. The point I’d like to emphasize is that Paul says that there’s something for everyone. God determines who receives which gift. He determines for what purpose the gifts are given. The gifts are different. But in all of them, the power of God shines forth in some way in everyone who receives the gifts.

The most important gift which Jesus gives is this: Jesus gives the gift of faith and forgiveness. At Cana Jesus gave his presence among the people. He then gave the gift of his power in performing the first of his miraculous signs. Then, at the very end of the reading, St. John includes the marvelous words that after Jesus had so acted, the disciples put their faith in him.

It’s an occasion for us to rejoice when someone comes to believe in Jesus. We join the angels in heaven when one person comes to faith. At this point in time, we can still rejoice at the faith of the disciples. Their faith brings us comfort when we see the pattern it displays. It’s a pattern of first God acting, and then his children believing.

This pattern is the pattern of our own lives, too. Our faith and forgiveness are the gifts of Jesus. We did not buy them. We did not win them. We did not earn them.

Rather, Jesus our Savior suffered and died under sentence of Pontius Pilate in order to gain these things for us. Now that the Spirit brings us to faith, we can and do believe that we have forgiveness of sins. We have the certainty that God’s actions in Jesus so many years ago count for each of us.

The pattern set so many years ago at the wedding in Cana holds true today: God acts; then we believe.

We believe that Jesus gives us the gift of being present with us both on our happy days and on our sad days. He is present with us when we achieve and when we fail. Jesus is present with us at all times, to comfort, to strengthen, to affirm, to help, to stand by our sides.

We believe that Jesus gives us the gift of his power in ways that are both quiet and majestic. His power is with us through the gifts of the Spirit. His power works in our lives whether we are aware of it or not to create and preserve what we need.

We believe that Jesus gives us the gift of faith and forgiveness, too. He won forgiveness on the cross. He freely and gladly gives it to all who believe.

While we don’t know the names of the bride and groom at Cana, we do know some of the gifts they received. They received the same gifts we receive from Jesus today. In the midst of a dreary winter without even snow, we can be glad that Jesus gives us his gifts. Amen.

May the peace of God that passes all human understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord. AMEN

S.D.G.