"THROWING CAUTION TO THE WINE"

Isaiah 62:1-5; John 2:1-11

According to Dr. J.E. Littlewood,

a famous mathematician fromCambridge University,

if you haven't had a miracle happen to you yet in 2007,

you very likely will by the end of the month.

Littlewood's Law of Miracles

says that miracles are literally one in a million,

that they occur about once

in every million event.

He figures

that most of us are alert

for about eight hours a day.

He also figures

that something happens to us every second,

which is about the amount of time it takes

to notice a bird fly by

or hear an ambulance on its way down the street,

or check your e-mail

or remember where you were supposed to be an hour ago.

So if you do the math,

that means that each of us

has about 30,000 waking experiences every day.

Multiply that out by 30 or 31 days,

and you have roughly one million experiences

of one kind or another

every month.

Doesn't that wear you out ?

And so,

if we experience a million events every month,

and miracles are one in a million,

we should be experiencing miracles

on a monthly basis.

Hmmm!

It's not that we can't believe in miracles.

Some of you have told me

about miracles you have seen,

or even miracles that you yourself have experienced.

If you think about it long enough,

even the fact that our hearts beat

anywhere from fifty to a hundred or so times a minute

is a miracle all by itself.

But I don't think that many, if any, or us

would claim to see monthly miracles.

If that's the case,

Littlewood would say

it's not because they aren't happening.

They are.

Maybe we're not seeing miracles on a regular basis

because we're just too careful.

It's practically embedded in us

to hold back:

to save our money, save time,

save calories, save vacation days,

save for a rainy day.

You can just hear one of your parents saying it:

"You never know when you might need it,

so don't blow it all right now.

Better to have it and not need it

than to need it and not have it!"

If we're not able to see more miracles,

it's not because we're too modern to believe in them.

It may be because we are thinking too small.

If we know too well

how not to make big moves,

it could be

that we also know too well

how not to ask big things of God.  

We know our limits, don't we?

We know them //

because we give in to our fears.

What happens if we ask God for the big thing,

and God doesn't come through?

Maybe we'd lose our faith.

When we go through tough times

and try to hold on to our faith,

we wonder,

how can we hold on?

But that may be asking the wrong question.

What if our faith,

our love for God,

our ability to believe,

was one of those miracles,

a pure gift from God

and not something we can achieve?

What if God is there,

wanting to give us more faith,

more love,

more energy,

more than we know how to ask?

We fear that we can't ask God for the moon,

in case God isn't able or willing to come through.

But what if it were the case

that God actually wants to give us

even more than we can imagine asking for?

The story of Jesus' first miracle

is not a story of caution or practicality.

It's not a story about how to throw a good party

or be a good host,

or even whether it's okay to drink wine.

This is a story about flagrant excess

and frivolous abundance.

God IS willing - and able - 

to not only give us the moon if we ask for it,

but the stars too,

and the galaxies beyond that.

This is not a "Prayer of Jabez"

kind of situation

where we fool ourselves into thinking

that if we can pray the right prayer,

and pray it hard enough,

God will give us what we deserve.

Actually,

the good news of the gospel

is that we do NOT get what we deserve!

This story

is about seeing everything that we have,

even our faith,

as pure gift -

and then serving abundantly

the one who gives us miraculous abundance

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Jesus made an abundance of wine

in this his first miracle.

There was a wedding going on

in the little town of Cana,

a town we probably never would have heard of otherwise,

to a couple whose names we are never told.

Maybe that's a good thing,

because then

their families would  be remembered forever

as being the ones who were the cinchy hosts!

Intentionally or not,

they had way underestimated the amount of wine

to serve their guests at the wedding reception.

Maybe they planned on their friends

only having "so much" celebration,

not too much.

But their actions were overly cautious.

And in a civilization where hospitality was everything,

they erred on the side of cinchy.

Now, books have been written

on why Jesus' mother asked him to do this,

and on why Jesus talked back to his mother.

Those things, we may never know.

But what we do know

is that there happened to be six empty water containers there.

Those containers

could each hold fifteen or twenty gallons of water.

If Jesus had just blessed one of them,

the guests would have had more than enough to drink.

But the servants filled all six of the jugs with water,

and by the time Jesus was finished,

they were filled with something even better

than what they make at Homestead Winery!

When I was preparing this sermon,

I came across the work of one person

who decided to figure out how much wine Jesus had made,

and concluded that it was exactly 2,176 cups.

Isn't that just like us,

to try and calculate how much wine?

What would have happened, I wonder,

if person #2,177 had showed up at the reception,

or person #1,348 had wanted a second or third cup?

There's no way to measure abundance.

Abundance defies calculation.

Jesus didn't stop to calculate

how many servings per partygoer he would need to make.

He made more wine than they could probably drink in a year.

And even though they were expecting Strawberry Hill,

that's not what he gave them.

As usual,

Jesus gave them the last thing they expected:

drink that was more satisfying

and more abundant

than anything they could have provided on their own.

As Jesus would say later in John's gospel,

he "came that they might have life,

and have it abundantly."

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Which brings us back to our problem.

We don't expect much.

Like the hosts of the wedding,

we tend to err on the side of cinchy too, don't we?

We only want to give God "so much" of our lives -

we can't get too emotional in worship,

we can't pray before our meals in restaurants

because it's too public.

We also only want to give God "so much" of our money,

enough that we can still take a vacation

and buy what we think will make us happy.

When we only give God "so much,"

we too are being overly cautious.

And in the presence

of a God who has given us everything?  //

where our faith is concerned,

we err on the side of cinchy.

The good news, friends,

is that God knows that you and I are short on wine.

In fact,

God knows that we are even short on water.

But with or without someone to do the math for us,

we can think big,

we can ask big,

we can hope and expect big,

because God is ready to keep the party going.

In last week's sermon,

I said that God is up to something in this place.

What did you think when I said that?

Were you thinking

that God might bring us a few more members?

Or that God might help us paint the outside of the building?

God's got a lot more in mind than that.

God has great things in mind for this church,

but God also has great things in mind for you.

Remember,

if we're into trying to calculate abundance,

we can expect probably at least one miracle a month.

But the God of abundance defies calculation.

Every moment can be a miracle.

So what are we doing with them?

God is able to do abundantly more

than we could ever ask or think.

Even now,

God is filling our empty vessels to overflowing

with only the finest.

But the purpose of our vessels being filled

is not so that we can have lovely full vessels.

The purpose //

is so that we can pour ourselves out

for the service of others.

Pray.

Invite your neighbor

or your coworker or your classmate to church.

Get active with Habitat

or Fannin County Community Ministries.

Get involved in a Bible Study.

Help someone out who needs it.

Pray.

Make sure you're in Sunday School.

Find a place to serve around the church.

Forgive someone seventy times seven.

And if I haven't said so before, pray.

It's miracle enough

that God has filled our vessels to overflowing.

So pour them out.

Make a splash.

Make a wave!

And be ready to get drenched.

Let's stop thinking small 

and start living in God's abundance.

Amen.

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Information on "Littlewood's Law of Miracles" can be found on the Internet in many places.  This reference was taken from Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Littlewood's_law

I am also indebted to Fleming Rutledge and her sermon on this passage, found in her book The Bible and the New York Times.