In On The Secret

"In On The Secret"
John 2:1-11


In his book about praying, titled With Open Hands, Henri Nouwen wrote about an experience he had with a patient while working as a chaplain in a psychiatric hospital.
She was wild, swinging at everything in sight, and scaring everyone so much that the doctors had to take everything away from her.  But there was one small coin which she gripped in her fist and would not give up.  In fact, it took two men to pry open that squeezed hand.  It was as though she would lose her very self along with the coin.  If they deprived her of that last possession, she would have nothing more, and be nothing more.  That was her fear.  (page 12)

It’s a fear for many of us, as well.  Of being emptied.  Of having everything stripped away.  Possessions.  Our mind.  Our memories.  Our physical health.  Our loved ones.  There is always that last coin.  That thing we will clutch that represents something of what we had or who we are.  Something that represents the fact that we are not totally empty.  We still have something.  A penny’s worth of our self.  That’s all we need, and we won’t let that go.

The mystery is, only that which is empty can be filled.  You can’t fill something that’s already full.  Even if you have half a cup of dirty water and you fill it the rest of the way with pure water, you still end up with a cup of dirty water.  The paradox for the woman in the psychiatric hospital was that maybe the only way she would find herself again would be by first letting go of that coin--letting go of the last shred of yourself so you can be filled.  Of risking being totally emptied first.

In her book, My Grandfather’s Blessings, by Rachel Naomi Remen, she wrote that “...a blessing life is about filling yourself up so that your blessings overflow onto others.”  But again, you can’t be filled up, you can’t be given blessings unless you stop clutching on to that which doesn’t work anymore--that which has nothing to do with blessing.

This series of sermons that I’m going to take us through Lent with, have to do with “Being Emptied and Being Filled.”  I will be using stories from the Gospel of John, stories of people who crossed paths with Jesus.  I want us to understand how Jesus takes fullness and asks that it be emptied; and takes emptiness and fills it with his unique blessing so that we might turn around and overflow those blessings upon others.  This filling up blessing will take us right up to the Cross, which is the ultimate filling of the world’s emptiness.

So let’s start with the first story in the series:  the wedding at Cana in Galilee.

The most significant words in this passage are in the mouth of the steward to the bridegroom (who has no idea what’s happened):  “Everyone serves the good wine first…”  The bridegroom is honored and esteemed for nothing he had to do with.  He was just being busy being the bridegroom, enjoying the celebration.

Maybe, in terms of the wine, he had planned what the steward described as normal--serving good wine, then bad.  No one would know.  They’d be too “loose” to realize the difference.

But then he suddenly finds himself being honored for reversing wedding drinking custom.

Is that part of what grace--of what being filled--is?  Being esteemed for something you didn’t deserve, nor knew anything about?  God comes to us with amazing forgiveness and honor, pouring it into us when we don’t deserve it.  And even slaps us on the back about it.

And where was Jesus when the steward publicly congratulated the groom?  Standing in the shadows?  Smiling broadly about the grooms uncomfortableness with grace?

And what about the servants who knew the whole story?  Nodding to each other.  Did they eventually tell what they knew?

John says this first sign revealed Jesus’ glory.  But that revelation must have been only to the disciples (and servants).  But no one else.  (Except maybe Jesus’ mother.)  The sole purpose of the miracle seems to be for the benefit and beginning of faith for the disciples--who had just been called (1:35-51).  Early on, the disciple’s belief would have to be established.  A foundation would have to be laid.

In that light, notice what’s missing.  There’s no preaching here by Jesus.  There’s no mention of God, of repentance, of forgiveness.  There is just this “sign” of turning water into wine because of the need at the time and the request of Jesus’ mother.  The sign is done in secret (excluding the mother of Jesus, the servants, and the disciples).  Nothing in the telling of this story points back to Jesus and the wide-scale awe that accompanies most miracles.

Part of the sign may have been pointing to the secretiveness in which kingdom work is done.  Jesus didn’t flamboyantly have the jars carried out in the middle of the celebration, have them filled with water in the sight of all, then with a flourish say, “Ta da!” have some of the water drawn, pour it in a goblet, showing all it is now wine.  Not only wine--great wine.  What a wowser that could have been!

Even though this sign revealed Jesus’ glory, it wasn’t a circus-show kind of glory.  It wasn’t brilliant and radiant, but a glory more in blending earth tones.  Sometimes that earth tone kind of glory is only visible to those who really look for it--or aren’t looking for it at all.

On my way back from my trip to the Holy Land, we flew from Cairo, Egypt to Paris, France, and then to Atlanta, Georgia.  When we got to Atlanta, I ended up sitting in the airport for most of the day.  I was sitting just outside the baggage claim area waiting for my luggage.  (That’s a great term, isn’t it: luggage.  So descriptive of what we lug around not only on trips, but in life.)  I was tired and slept some, while a river of people flowed past.  Most of the time I watched as the carousel went round and round with luggage.  Then would stop when it was empty.  Start up again when another flight came in.

I had done something really stupid.  So while I was waiting I was kicking myself for my stupidity.  Because it was an international flight, and I’d have to get my bags in the international terminal, have them checked by customs, and then recheck them for my domestic flight to Wichita, I put my domestic flight tickets in my luggage.  I figured I wouldn’t need them till I got to the States anyway.  Good plan.

My luggage was mistakenly sent to LA rather than Atlanta.  I was angry at the idiots somewhere who got all that messed up.  And once my bags were on their way back, they got held up in St. Louis by a snow storm.  If I had just held on to my tickets I could have flown on to Wichita and had my bags sent up to Colby.  But no.  My stupidity canceled that from happening.

At some point, in my self-flagellation I looked up and saw something I had missed the whole time I was in the baggage claim area.  Bright yellow mums on the carousel.  There must have been seven or eight planters full of bright yellow mums.  I couldn’t believe I missed them.  But there they were:  shining beacons of my tunnel vision and preoccupation with my own emptying feelings of stupidity.  I had missed seeing those flowers in all their glory.

I wrote in my journal about how I wondered how much more am I missing?  When I’m feeling emptied by the anxiety in my life about my own stupidity, or anything else, how much does that blind me to the glory that’s shinning above it all?

How caught up am I in my own dizzying dis-ease that I am missing the extraordinary little signs of grace that are happening all around me?  They aren’t preachy signs.  They may not even be very religious in nature.  Changing water into wine at a wedding so the guests can just keep on drinking themselves into a stupor doesn’t rank up there with anything you or I might call highly religious.  But it was.  It was a sign.  A sign that revealed Jesus’ glory.  A sign that made John write, “And his disciples believed in him.”

Yes, I missed the flowers, for a while.  Then I saw, and I was stunned.  But they were just flowers.  And after all, Jesus was just another guest at a wedding.  We know who Jesus is.  We are reading this story, and looking at Jesus from this side of the Crucifixion and the Resurrection.  But they, the guests at the wedding didn’t know.  Most everyone else in this little drama is oblivious to who Jesus was.

The disciples saw, and belief was born.  Emptiness began to be filled by Jesus.  Maybe that’s all that’s important at that point.  Maybe the flowers, the water to wine, the glory are just the beginnings of how Jesus fills and transforms emptiness into belief.

So each day brings the possibility that you might see.  Each day could be the day you are let in on the secret.  This day, or tomorrow, or the next something of the glory of Jesus could be revealed and poured into your emptiness, as it were.  If you are receptive.

Once you see, you’ll never be the same again.  Once you see what’s revealed, you will begin to believe.  Once you believe, once you’ve been filled, well, who knows what could happen?

John wrote at the end of his gospel:
Jesus worked many other signs for his disciples, and not all of them are written in this book.  But these are written so that you will put your faith in Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of God.  If you keep on having faith in him, you will have true life.  (John 20:30-31, CEV)

In other words, Jesus, and your ongoing faith in him will have an ongoing effect on your emptiness.  Emptiness will be filled with life by the Lord.

Be on the watch, then.  John said the water-into-wine was the first sign and there were many others.  All around us, signs are being given--everyday, ordinary signs, behind the scenes, performed by Jesus.  Just so you would see, and be filled with life.