Enjoy This Life

Sermon for Oct. 10, 2021

Video is available at the YouTube channel of the Central Presbyterian Church of Fort Smith, AR (after the Sunday service). Look for the Tradtional Services playlist. There are other playlists there too that might interest you.

Audio is here.

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. 9 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 10 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.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

God wants us to enjoy this life.  We have come to the final line in the banner that calls us to “Be the Church.”  If the church is truly being the church, its people are enjoying life to the fullest.  

John’s gospel has a scene in which Jesus says he came so that people could have abundant life.  So we will explore this theme together today.  

Our focus will be on another scene from John’s gospel, the Wedding at Cana in which Jesus turns water into wine.  We will see that there can be no doubt that God wants us to enjoy this life.  

People are Carrying Burdens

But before we begin, I want to say a pastoral word Many of us are in grief right now because we have lost people we loved.  Others of us are in emotional pain because we suffer from depression and other conditions.  Some of us are struggling with physical pain that makes everything difficult.  Some of us are in financial hardship.  There are a host of reasons to think that a statement like “enjoy this life” is facile; even insulting.

A college student I know recently said that his professor asked his class, after hearing that students were experiencing stress, “Have you ever tried not being stressed?”  That is the most unhelpful question you could ask, as if someone could simply choose to feel better.  

So, if you are experiencing pain and sadness, I am sorry.  You have significant reasons, and I hope you are able to find resources to help you. I hope this community is a help to you.  But I recognize that your suffering is not going to be alleviated by being told to “enjoy this life.”  So our reflections will not be about those times of sadness, but more for normal times.  

Thankfully, for most of us, most of our lives are made up of perfectly ordinary days.  These reflections are about those days.  

If you were to ask the question, “What does God want my life to be for me?”  The answer has to be that God wants us to find pleasure in our lives.  God wants us to enjoy life.

The Wedding Story

So to get us started on this reflection, let us look together at John’s gospel story of the Wedding at Cana.  This story, as all of John’s stories of Jesus, has a surface layer; a literal story about a wedding and about wine.  

Beneath that surface, there is always a deeper, spiritual level.  That’s how John has written his version of the story of Jesus.  So we will look at both levels today.  

The first thing to notice is that Jesus attended weddings.  This was not just a forty-minute service followed by a reception, this was a multi-day festivity.  The whole village would have been there — most of them were related to each other by blood or marriage.  There would have been feasting and merry-making.  

The food was peasant fare, but I have been in rural peasant villages in places like Romania and Croatia; they know how to cook the food they have raised and grown, and it is delicious!  Jesus showed up at a happy, festive time to enjoy life with his family and friends.  

Where the church got the idea that what God valued most was to hole-up in a monastery, eat bread and soup, feel miserable, and be cut off from the life of the community, is a long sad story.  Let’s call it, “Adventures in Missing the Point,” (borrowing Brian McLaren’s book title). Jesus enjoyed and celebrated life.  

Creation is Enjoyable

Of course he did, he was Jewish.  His Jewish bible told him that God created a physical world and called it “good.”  The plants and animals are good.  The flowers, fruit-bearing trees, the nuts and berries are “good.”  They are both a pleasure to the eyes and good for food.  

And the God who made this good physical world made us in God’s image and likeness.  God filled our bodies with taste receptors that love all kinds of flavors.  We have sensitive noses that can enjoy flowers, aromatic spices, and the smell of food cooking.  

We have the capacity to experience all kinds of physical pleasures and delights.  All of this is from God who made us to enjoy life.  

Jesus clearly enjoyed life.  Remember, this may have been the first feast he attended, but it wasn’t the last.  In fact, he got a reputation for attending feasts and even got in trouble for it.  

But that did not dissuade him.  He taught us to come together around tables as the church, making sure that everyone had a seat and no one was excluded for any reason.  

Originally the Lord’s Supper included a full meal.  It was called a “sharing meal” like our pot luck suppers in which everyone brought what they could.  

Scholars tell us that the evidence suggests that the Lord’s Supper began by breaking the bread before the meal, then eating a shared meal, and concluded with sharing the cup of wine.  

It was constitutive of the community, which is why it is so important to us still, even if we have stripped it down to its minimal components.  At least symbolically now, the Lord’s Supper is a feast of thanksgiving and of memory.

Rescuing the Party

Getting back to the story, at the wedding, the wine has run out.  That is both a menu problem and a source of shame for the host. So Jesus’ mother suggests he do something about it.  

His reaction seems odd.  He tells her that his “hour” has not yet come.  Much later in John’s gospel, when the Greeks come looking for Jesus, he will finally announce that his hour has come, and will shortly afterward he will be arrested and killed.  

In John’s gospel, the hour of Jesus’ greatest glory is when he lays down his life for his friends.  That is when John tells us, Jesus is “glorified.”

So it is interesting that though his hour for revealing his purpose is not yet here, he responds to the needs of his people by providing wine.  Again, Jesus does not let the party end in disaster. He keeps the joy going by keeping the wine flowing.  

And it is good wine; remarkable wine.  Jesus did not make “two-buck Chuck” wine.  He made the best wine they had ever had.  Does that not tell us that God wants us to enjoy life?

We live in much different times.  For us, alcohol is available in limitless quantities. For many of us, drinking has become a problem.  Thank God there are recovery programs that work, and some of us here have worked those programs successfully.  We have great respect for those who have committed themselves to the daily journey sobriety.  You are heroes.  May you find plenty of ways to enjoy life without alcohol or other addictive substances in it!  God wants you too, to enjoy life.  

The Deeper Level

John always tells his stories with a deeper spiritual level, so let us look at that.  We will see that the deeper level is also about how God wants us to enjoy this life.  

Jesus did not just turn some random water into fantastic wine.  The jars that held the water were for Jewish purification rites.  That detail opens up a whole new level of meaning.  

In the Law of Moses, there were two kinds of concerns that God had that needed religious remedy.  One was sin. If you lied, killed, or stole something, for example, if you sinned, you were guilty and needed the remedy of sacrifice. 

But according to Moses, God was also concerned with purity, and if you became impure, that too needed a religious remedy.  So if you touched blood, or an animal carcass or a dead body, or had a skin disease, for example, you became impure.  

Impurity was not sin, but it was a problem that required a spiritual solution.  Some kinds of impurity required making sacrifices, and some also included periods of quarantine and ritual bathing.  

Out in the desert at Qumran where the Essenes had a community, you can still see many of the shallow bathtubs they had for ritual washings.  Purity was a huge concern.

Jesus, however, had a vision of what God wanted from people that eliminated those purity concerns.  What a liberation!  

So, Jesus could reach out and touch a leper, and be unconcerned about whether it offended God.  Jesus could be touched by hemorrhaging women, without purity concerns.  Jesus and his disciples could eat without ceremonially washing their hands.  

Remember this purity washing and bathing was not about disease prevention.  There was no soap; it was simply religiously symbolic.   

But Jesus taught us that purity was not God’s concern.  So he could eat with “impure” people.  He could tell us that the way to live was to help the injured man on the side of the road as the Good Samaritan did, without worrying, as the priest and Levite did, about becoming impure.   

This was tremendously freeing, especially among rural peasants who raised and herded animals, whose daily life on the farm would make them perpetually impure.  All the sacrifices and obligations to the temple would have made them both perpetually estranged from God and perpetually in debt.  How could anyone enjoy life under those circumstances?

If you have seen films like “The Crucible” or others about the Puritans, you have a glimpse of the opposite of the life of enjoyment.  For them, it seemed that nearly all pleasure was problematic to God.  That is odd, considering how many pleasurable sensations we are made with, and doubly odd considering how much Jesus enjoyed life.  They were hung up on purity.

But Jesus eliminated that concern.  The water in the jars for purification became wine.   Isaiah the prophet pictures a coming day in which Messiah would host a banquet. It would be spread with rich food for everyone, and well-aged wine.  Jesus was providing the wine of the kingdom, the banquet of Messiah, at which all were invited to feast, enjoying life without purity concerns.

Be the Church

So, we are called to be the church by enjoying the good life that God has given.  We are to take pleasure in the gifts of family and friends, and moments of celebration.  We are to delight in God’s good gifts that come from the pleasure of the senses and from healthy relationships.  

Today we will also take pleasure in the joy of a community in which people are willing to serve as elders, deacons, and trustees.  We will better be able to enjoy life in this community because it is well organized and led by dedicated servants.  So, as we come to the liturgy of ordination and installation, let this also be a source of the enjoyment of life.  

So let us be the joyful church. Let us celebrate the gift of life on this good earth, and do all we can to pass on this planet to the next generation in a condition that will enable them to enjoy it too.  Let us love the God who set us free from purity concerns to focus on what is truly important; loving God, and loving our neighbor, enjoying this life.