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Green Blades Preaching Roundtable

2nd Sunday of Epiphany

Year C
January 19, 2025
Pastor John Dietz

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 36:5-10
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

Unlike my children who have been communing ever since they could eat solid food, I grew up like many others, waiting to receive Communion until Confirmation. Times have changed, as have our practices around Communion. When we went up to receive in a continuous line, the pastor would dip the host into the chalice of wine and then put it on our tongue; if we knelt around the Altar, we received the host in hand (or on the tongue if you preferred!) and either dipped it into the chalice ourselves or drank directly from it – but never a big gulp, just enough to pass by the lips.

 

Then I went to Luther Seminary and at the first Wednesday Eucharist, I was handed this rather good size “chunk” of rather good tasting bread. And then wine was poured into a little cup, but far larger than these little plastic or glass cups that fit into the trays we use now. I walked away from that meal having been fed in more ways than one. And I can still recall returning to my seat and wondering if I was supposed to chew on the body of Christ – normally the host would dissolve on my tongue, or stick to the roof of my mouth!  The means of grace have been squandered in some ways. We have used bread that is nearly as unrecognizable as it is tasteless. Our thimble full of Mogan David or our dip into a chalice of grape juice is not the full-bodied experience you might get at, say, a wedding banquet.

 

And yet, in the gospel appointed for today, Jesus is at a wedding banquet making wine, and lots of it: six jars at about twenty or thirty gallons each! Think about that: if the average glass of wine is about five ounces (I looked it up!), or just a little more than half a cup, then that means Jesus turned enough water into wine for another 3,200 glasses to be enjoyed at this reception in Cana!

 

And, as the surprised steward of the banquet remarks, it’s good wine, too! Not the back-up you’d normally bring out at the end of the festivities when guests wouldn’t much notice or care. The mystery of Cana’s miracle is lost on Altar guilds and church supply companies the world over.

 

Perhaps we could convey a truer image of God and allow for a more robust experience of God’s grace, as we encounter them in the Sacrament, were we to follow Jesus’ example at Cana’s wedding: more wine, and good wine. Or on the shores of Galilee: more bread, real bread, baskets full of bread . . . extravagant, wasteful, indulgent grace for a world in desperate need of it. We super-size everything else, from fast food to our floorplans, to judgment and condemnation, so why should we skimp on the very things we need most for sustenance and true life?

 

Beyond making it easier to commune large crowds, using thin white hosts and offering a little sip, or dip, or no wine at all, has certainly differentiated the Eucharistic meal from our regular meat and potato meals, washed down with milk or beer. Perhaps it was intended to underscore the spiritual nature of this eating and drinking, as Luther wrote in the Small Catechism: “Eating and drinking certainly do not do [such a great thing], but rather the words that are recorded: “given for you” and “shed for you for the forgiveness of sin.” Think of how we experience and understand these things differently: we “eat” meals, but we “receive” Communion. Bread we chew and swallow, but Jesus dissolves on your tongue. You don’t dip or sip 3,200 glasses of wine; you invite your friends and family over and have a party.

 

As we face the very real possibility of even greater environmental degradation in the next few years under a new regime of unqualified policy makers promising to enact irresponsible policies, we cannot allow the idea to prevail in the church that spiritual things matter and that the physical world does not. The physical world, creation itself, bread and wine and water, are the instruments of the sacred (sacramentum). In, with, and under them we encounter God, and God reveals God’s real presence to us. The incarnate Word going to weddings, celebrating two becoming one flesh, and turning water into wine to be drunk at a party must certainly be divine benediction of the goodness of creation in which God continues to take delight, and serve as a  reminder that the distinction between sacred and secular is really our creation and not God’s.    

 

In all the mysteries of the church, we taste and see and touch (and transform) the very gifts of creation, wheat and grapes and olives and water, so to better know our Creator’s unmerited and unending love for each of us and all of us. May one of the miracles of Cana be for us a reminder of our deep need to love the Creator for creation’s sake, for the extravagant, wasteful, indulgent grace of it all, and may that love overflow “for all humankind, for the animals with whom we share the earth, and for” the “whole creation.”  

 

A prayer after Communion for this day: ELW Psalm Prayer – Psalm 36

 

Eternal God,

you satisfy our hunger with your abundant feast,

and you quench our thirst from your well of life.

By the gift of baptism bathe us in your light,

that we may act wisely and do what is good

for all humankind,

for the animals with whom we share the earth,

and for your whole creation;

through Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.

Amen.

 

A hymn for the day: As the Grains of Wheat – ELW # 465

 

. . . As this cup of blessing is shared within our midst,

            may we share the presence of your love . . .

. . . Let this be a foretaste of all that is to come

            when all creation shares this feast with you . . .

Pastor John Dietz
Pastor John Dietz
First Lutheran Church
Hibbing, Minnesota

John Dietz is the pastor of First Lutheran Church in Hibbing. First Lutheran is a Pollinator Sanctuary congregation and an EcoFaith Network Partner Congregation.

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