In our gospel reading for this first Sunday after Epiphany, Jesus performs the first of what John calls his signs - the miracles which in the eyes of the people, confirm Jesus as the Messiah. And this first recorded sign in the gospel of John is surprising in many ways. We might have expected Jesus to perform some dramatic healing or exorcism as his rookie miracle. But instead, Jesus goes off-script at a wedding he's invited to. He turns a scarcity of wine into a huge abundance, at the urging of his mom, and with the help of some servants who were willing to listen to him....
I used to see the commercials frequently in my youth, especially during Saturday morning cartoons and on Sundays – ads for relief agencies showing starving people in other countries. “The situation is dire”, they said, “there is not enough food to go around, and people are dying.” And this type of message was repeated by my father, each time my sister or I didn't finish our supper vegetables and they were destined to be thrown in the garbage - “there are children starving in China.” They were welcome to have my beets in Harvard sauce and sauerkraut, if it were possible to get it to them! Growing up with these messages, and with the stories of those who made it through the Great Depression, and with the Energy Crisis of the 1970's, it was easy to come to the conclusion that we live in a world of scarcity – that there will always be a limit on what we can produce – that there will NEVER be ENOUGH for everyone.
“They have no wine,” said Mary to her son Jesus in our gospel reading, “the wedding reception is set to continue, but the wine has run out.....” Try as I may, I just can't seem to find the crisis here! OF COURSE, the guests have already had SOME wine, because the chief steward has already poured out all of the cheap schlock that the bridegroom provided. And I know that running out of booze at a wedding is a major faux pas, and you're likely to receive evil Instagram posts if it happens to you today. But it's no humanitarian disaster for Jesus to solve with a miracle. So there's a scarcity of wine....[shrug]. Jesus himself seems hesitant to intervene, “Mom, what concern is that to you and me?”
And rightly so, we think. If anyone has problems with scarcity, it's not the drunks in the village of Cana, it's us. Depending on whom you listen to for news these days, we are running out of many or most of the good things in our lives. We are running out of good jobs, the kind that AI and robots will soon be taking over, where one person working hard can make enough to feed, clothe, and house an entire family. We are running out of good people – the true neighbours you can count on to help out when something bad happens, who ooze respect for others, and would never even think of harming someone. We are running out of good news, and all you get from the media is politically correct ranting and whining, and big government propaganda. And if you look around in the pews beside you, it seems we are running out of good church folk. Everywhere we turn these days, we are confronted with stories of scarcity. But that's because our enemy, Satan, wants us to believe that scarcity is not only real, but normal. And that's because the scarcity Satan wants to CREATE in our life is a scarcity of hope.