Is Anything too Trivial for Christ?

2 Epiphany C January 16, 2022

Isaiah 62:1-5 Psalm 36:5-10
1 Cor. 12:1-11 John 2:1-11
Lectionary Link

The Gospel of John includes parables of the signs of Christ.  These teaching parables were rhetorical ways of teaching how the Risen Christ was both a supplement and a complement to life experience.

Why do we need supplements and complements to life?  Because life can sometimes be really difficult and challenging, or it can include things so repetitive that we can find ourselves living in boring drudgery, thinking why isn't my life more exciting?

The members of the early church including those of the community of the Gospel of John, lived as a minority religious group who would have to worship under the radar to avoid those who might overtly oppose them.

Where might we as people need the signs of another kind of supplementing and complementing life?

How about natural disasters?  Like fires, hurricanes, landslides, tornadoes, and storms on the sea.  Is there a divine presence which can include these human experience?

What about having a disease which makes one such a victim and whose recovery gets one excommunicated from society?  Like being healed of blindness and ostracized for it.

What about the sickness of one's child?  Is anything worse than that?  How does one maintain with such situations?

What about the hunger of large number of people?  Can those with enough be inspired to share with those who don't have enough?  What would be a sign of God in such a situation?

What about feeling inferior about one's spiritual experience and the need to demand proof of Jesus, like seen in the doubting Thomas story?

And how does one live knowing that even if one recovers from deathly sickness, like Lazarus, one would still have to die again?

And what if one loses all mobility and is unable to walk and seems to be stuck in one place?  What can one do?

Now matters of life and death, hunger and thirst, and natural disasters, and doubts about Jesus, seem to be some rather serious situation.  And in the Gospel of John, we can find parables about Jesus indicating that in our faith lives, we can know the presence of the Risen Christ to complement and supplement all of these difficult situations.

And we really want God and Christ to be a supplementing and complementing presence in the big problems of life, but what about the more trivial problems in life.  Should we expect the concern of God and Christ there?

I think most of us might have a bit of scorn about some of the more seemingly trivial, even selfish things in life, like shouldn't God be concerned about who wins the football game (obviously God has seldom helped my teams) or whether Jesus should help all of those pageant contestants who want world peace on their way of wanting to become Miss America?

And that bring us to the rather seemingly trivial concern of Blessed Mary, from our Gospel reading.  In the parable she obviously is a friend of the wedding party and has some catering responsibility at the wedding feast.   And the caterer did not plan for the right amount of wine, especially to last until end when perhaps the important toast is made.

Mary came to Jesus and said, "We've run out of wine."  And Jesus had a rather dismissive response: "What concern is that of mine.  Really mom is this really a big important issue for life?"  And Mary, said to the servers, "My son will take care of it so do whatever he says."

Can we appreciate what the writer of John's Gospel is doing?  An entire range of human experience is presented within which one can have faith in the complementing and supplementing presence of the Risen Christ, such that one embraces the situation in the very best and faithful way.

Most people treat the "miracle" stories like Jesus is really a Superman who does fly, rather than understand the teaching of the complete adequacy of the experience of the Risen Christ to all human situations from the agony of death itself, to the trivial experience of being embarrassed about running out of wine at the wedding.

What is the Gospel?  God is willing to be involved through the presence of the Risen Christ in all of the events of our lives.

So, what do we do in our faith lives and in our prayer lives?  We say nothing is too great or too small for invoking  and finding the presence of the Risen Christ to be involved with us as the complementing and supplementing essence of life.

Faith is learning to tap the charisma of the spiritual so that one is never condemned to the drudgery of ordinary water; one is always tasting the intoxicating goodness of God in all.

You and I are invited by this Gospel story of Jesus to be intoxicated with the presence of Christ, even in the seeming trivial events which make up most of our lives.   Amen.