Years ago a theologian
from University of Chicago said this:
“Christians ought to be celebrating constantly. We ought to be preoccupied with parties, banquets, feasts, and merriment. We ought to give ourselves over to joy because we have been liberated from the fear of life and the fear of death. We ought to attract people to the church quite literally by the fun there is in being a Christian.”
Though Christians often
Don’t live up to this,
I agree with him.
Years ago, soon after
joining All Saints
as a parishioner,
I said to Bonnie,
“I love how much
joy there is here.
You get that the news
we Christians have is GOOD.”
That was evident in many ways,
but perhaps one of the clearest
is the popping of champagne corks
on our days of celebration.
Still, I confess the first time
I saw that even I
got a little nervous:
Is that allowed?
At the altar!?!
But I got over my fears,
delighting in the joy
expressed in the offering
of great wine for the Eucharist.
Then, in 2016
after Tracey’s mother died,
and we were long gone
from All Saints,
we knew that
we wanted to have
her funeral at All Saints.
We met with Bonnie
to plan the service:
we picked out readings,
chose the hymns,
talked about the sermon,
and, then, at the end of our meeting,
Bonnie said,
“Don’t forget to bring a bottle of champagne,
and get the good stuff!”
Dutifully, Tracey and I
went to the liquor store
and sprang for the
$50 bottle of Veuve Clicquot.
We both adored Elizabeth;
having champagne worthy of her
felt exactly right,
and we sort of loved
thinking about friends and family—
most NOT Episcopalian—
having a delicious sip of Champagne
at Communion.
We arrived early
for the viewing before the funeral,
handed over the champagne,
which Bonnie handed over
to a seminarian to keep cold;
later, we learned, he did so
by plunging it into a snowbank
out back,
forgetting perhaps
that we were in Chicago.
I suppose I shouldn’t
have been surprised then,
when, Bonnie sidled up to me
and whispered, “The champagne is missing.”
Well, shoot.
But what could we do?
We were greeting people one after another,
Bonnie was doing all the work
of getting ready for the funeral.
Regular wine would have to do.
Still, it niggled at us.
We’d bought that champagne
because Elizabeth loved bubbles;
we bought it to share
our faith in the goodness of God,
the Good News of Resurrection
in the face of death.
The service began,
readings read,
hymns sung,
I preached the sermon,
and then, somewhere in the midst of the prayers,
I saw Bonnie give a slight nod,
and I turned and saw Eileen Krause
walking softly down the side aisle,
a bottle-shaped bag in her hand.
At the Eucharist,
Bonnie popped a new bottle of Veuve Clicquot,
and consecrated a loaf of bread and sparkling wine,
and we each had
a taste of the best wine,
a sign of joy in the resurrection,
even in the midst of our sadness,
and that delicious, sparkling wine
at the funeral of my beloved mother-in-law
captured the joy we are meant to feel,
the joy and celebration that we see and hear
At the wedding of Cana.
*****
There is a LOT we could talk
about in this story of the wedding from Cana,
but what I see so clearly
is overflowing abundance,
radical grace,
the lavishness of,
the joy and laughter behind,
Jesus’ actions.
This is Jesus’ first act in ministry
In the Gospel of John.
At 30, he’s attending
a small-town wedding
With his mom and disciples.
In the midst of the festivities,
the wine runs out—
A disaster.
For in those days
The bride and groom and their families
Were expected to host a
Seven-day party.
This was essential
in a culture of hospitality:
It represented the goodness and blessing of God;
it represented the family’s role in the community.
To run out of wine
wouldn’t just
have been inconvenient or embarrassing:
It would have been shaming,
A catastrophe,
The kind of thing
you don’t live down
and is never forgotten
in a small town.
And, so, Mary steps in:
“They have no wine.”
Jesus, being a bit of a brat, responds:
“What concern is that
To you and to me?
My hour has not yet come.”
And here I swear the Gospel writer
Is laughing as he wrote this,
Because Mary ignores Jesus—
You know, Savior, King of Kings—
And says to the servants,
“Do whatever he tells you,”
making clear that he WILL take care of it,
Despite what he says.
*****
Jesus looks at the jars
used by guests
to wash up before eating
and asks the servants
to fill them with water.
There are six jars,
each able to hold up to 25 gallons.
He tells the servants
to draw off some of the water
and take it to the chief steward,
which they do.
The steward is amazed and perplexed;
here is wine,
and not just any wine,
but delicious wine, the best wine,
and there are gallons and gallons and gallons of it,
enough to supply the wedding feast
not just for a few more days,
but for weeks to come!
The steward is agog, delighted, confused,
saying to the bridegroom,
“Everyone serves the good wine first,
And then the inferior wine
After the guests have become drunk.
But you have kept the good wine until now.”
This is like serving the
Chateauneuf de Pape, the Dom Perignon,
AFTER having already served
folks the boxed wine or
the two-buck Chuck from Traders Joe’s.
In other words,
It’s profligate, ridiculous,
A reversal of how things
Are supposed to be done!
The steward understands
That this is GOOD wine,
He can taste it,
But he doesn’t know
Where it’s come from,
Or why.
So, a pushy mom.
An exasperated Messiah.
A delightful miracle
to keep the party going.
A clueless steward.
All in the service
Of Jesus’ first sign,
In the backwater of Cana,
Where Jesus first reveals his glory,
Leading his disciples to believe in him.
[BIG PAUSE]
The point, here, of course,
Is not the miracle itself
But what it tells us about Jesus,
About God,
So that we might believe
As the disciples believed.
And what do we learn?
We learn that God wants JOY for us,
God wants love and laughter.
God’s grace overflows,
Even when we don’t understand it
or know where it comes from.
God will reverse
the way things are supposed to be
In order to share the good.
And if we hope to be aware,
Hope to be open to this grace,
Rather than allowing
All that is good and loveable,
Beautiful and holy
To pass us by,
Then we might have to get comfortable
With being corrected,
Or with asking God
a second time to do what’s right.
We might get used to
looking a little foolish,
being lavish with our love,
over the top with our laughter,
ridiculous in our generosity,
too enthusiastic with our hugs
Because that’s the kind of God we worship:
One who gives us good wine
When we’re too drunk or stupid to know any better,
One who gives us more wine
Than we can use or deserve,
One who can use whatever is at hand to bless us.
*****
This might make us a little uncomfortable.
We humans like to follow the rules,
Worship in a particular way—
Is popping champagne at the altar ok!?!—
Give money to folks
We think deserve it,
Hang out with folks like ourselves,
Throw out the old when it’s not working.
Well, at least I know that’s how I am.
But I hold on to the memory of
a bottle generously appearing at a funeral,
Champagne in the chalice.
That was a sign to me
off god’s grace and abundance,
the lavish love God has for us.
When I get stingy—
You know,
Every few minutes or so—
It helps me to remember
How the good wine
Has shown up in my life,
Over and over again,
Even when I didn’t know where it came from.
It helps to remember that
the good wine in my life,
all the good in my life,
Is only and always of God.
And I see, I feel, I know
the goodness,
The grace, the abundance,
The joy, the laughter, of God
Here at All Saints:
In outrageous, laugh-out-loud Christmas pageants
written anew each year,
hours spent by volunteers and parents and children
to share the stunning news
of Christmas—God loves us so much
that he had to join us.
I see God’s abundance
in lavish parties and sparkling Sundays and disco balls
and the ways you care for one another.
I see God’s joy in our joy and openness
to whoever walks through the door,
in your generosity
in pledge campaigns and rectory campaigns
and Greenlining campaigns and bake auctions
where cakes go for $1000!
**********
Beloved, we continue
to live in a time
when life feels harder than
we think we can bear:
a cold Chicago winter with
Omicron spreading so fast
that we’re once again
stuck at home most of the time,
our only joy each day
the new Wordle;
parents and healthcare workers,
teachers and students
facing an ugly sense
of déjà vu as they keep doing
what they were hoping
was, finally, coming to an end;
the weekend when we remember and honor
the Rev’d Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
and all who have fought
for social justice and equality
while living in a country
hell bent on white supremacy.
Even now, even NOW,
even in the midst of this mess,
God is acting.
In the midst of a funeral,
with its sorrow and grief
and weird family dynamics:
Champagne. Corks popping.
In the midst of
all the sorrows of life,
we are not meant merely
to “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
No, even now,
when disaster looms,
we know we have a God
who promises that we are heading
to a future where there is
good wine and lots of it,
where crying and weeping are no more.
Even now, as we do
what we know God calls us to do—
the hard work of justice,
the painful work of dismantling racist structures,
The dailiness of doing our jobs with care
and loving family and friends,
the vulnerable work of caring for the ill—
even now, we are to celebrate
because we’ve been liberated from fear
of life and fear of death
and we know our God
is One who delights in us.
So we do not merely grit our teeth
and carry on.
No, Beloved, we pop champagne.