The story of Jesus is not the first story of a baby born from a mortal mother and an immortal father. His is not the only miraculous birth. The story of Jesus is not the first story of a god who dies and then resurrects. His is not the first story to contain miraculous healings, nor is his story the only story of a god being the ground of all being from which all that exists comes to exist. There are even stories of gods being crucified much in the same manner as Jesus was. Jesus’s story isn’t the first where a people fail to recognize him as god because he dons mortal clothing and is, therefore, persecuted by the ruling elites. He’s not the only one who claims to be a source of ever-flowing water. And he’s not the only one to be depicted carrying a lamb on his shoulders. He is not the only one referred to as “the son of god,” nor is he the only one who brings peace on earth. He isn’t even the only one to sacrifice himself out of love for the people. And to get really down to brass tacks, Jesus isn’t the only deity who turned water into wine or referred to himself as “The True Vine.”
But this isn’t going to be a sermon about how Jesus is so much better than all the other faith traditions and myths and folklores that have helped articulate and find meaning in the human experience over the ages. Life is really hard. And if someone finds hope in Zeus or Buddha or Krishna or Confucius, then they should dig that well and dig it deep until they find water.
This sermon is about how Christ is in everything in this incarnated world, and about how, as Richard Rohr says, Christ is “someone happening between two people.” A person who is a verb. A relationship. A transformation.
Sometimes when we compare and contrast two things, it’s not so that we can name one as better than the other, one as the victor and the other as the loser, I mean, lots of times we do that, but comparing and contrasting doesn’t have to be that. Putting two things up side by side can help us not only define basic differences without putting values upon those differences, but they can also help us better understand ourselves. Asking myself why I like cheeseburgers more than hot dogs or brown ales more than IPAs doesn’t really tell me very much that’s interesting about the hamburgers or the hot dogs or the beers themselves; more importantly, they tell me something about me. If you’re firing up the grill and you ask me “hey Jenn, hot dog or hamburger?” I’m going to crack open my ice-cold can of Fat Tire Amber Ale and shout out, “ooh! Cheeseburger please!” I mean, maybe a less mundane, less ridiculous example might help; after all, this is God we’re talking about, not ballpark concessions. But if we’re looking to compare, and we’re looking to “prove” which God is better, or argue for one over the other using the textual and historical evidence that is laid out before us, we might be just as split over that as we are over hot dogs and hamburgers. Other gods are born of virgins. Other gods perform miracles. Other gods have risen from the dead. I mean, honestly, because of what I believe about Jesus, about the incarnation, it really does all feel the same. We all get it a little bit wrong. And, if we’re lucky, we get it a little bit right, too. Hot dogs and cheeseburgers are both decent sources of protein containing too much fat, but they both taste pretty good when slathered in ketchup, and the beers are both going to be equally overpriced when you slosh them back to your seat at the ballpark. Jesus can redeem them both. And…Jesus would probably condemn them both. Jesus is in and around and among it all. But for me, there’s something about that first bite into a juicy hamburger, and the ketchup seeps out the sides and the cheese is all melty, ah.
But because of what we as Christians believe about the incarnation, it’s not the physical presentation of the thing that really matters, it’s not the label that we put on the box, it’s the encounter that makes the difference. The specificity absolutely matters, but it matters to us because of how it relates to us, because we are specific, embodied, unique people, because of our unique relationship to it, not because my Jesus has a beard and yours has blue eyes.
The greek god Dionysus turns water in to wine. Dionysus is said to have been the true vine. Grapes and wine were thought to be the incarnated expression of Dionysus on earth. He is said to have died and risen again. He was born of a virgin mother and God his father.
And here, in our story today, we have Jesus, who turns water into wine, who will later refer to himself as the true vine, who will say that wine is now his blood, a true presence to us here on earth. He was born of a virgin through the will of the Holy Spirit. He will die and rise again.
But if we look deeply into this story, this story that has so many parallels with the stories of the Greek gods, if we really engage it, we will learn about ourselves, we will hear how we can be more ourselves, and we can find healing for our souls. All the little particularities and hiccups and ridiculosities that make us who we are reveal God’s love for us, they’re incarnations for us, if we enter in to these stores. And maybe you can find all that, too, if you look at the Dionysian stories, but these Jesus stories are ours, simply because that is where we’ve found ourselves. Simply because I’ve had encounter after encounter with something real and true and alive that came in the stories titled “Jesus.”
My wedding was, in a lot of ways, a total disaster. It rained all day. My bridesmaid burned her dress with the iron. One of Dan’s groomsmen drove over another groomsman’s foot with his car. I’m pretty sure my siblings had a food fight at the reception. My mistress of ceremonies got drunk on white zinfandel even before Dan and I arrived. The chicken was so dry. And it was an amazing day. One of the best days of my life. We were surrounded by family and friends who were just happy for us. And neither Dan nor I ever had dreams of the “perfect wedding day” carved into our brains since we were little, so we just had fun. A DJ was too expensive, so we put our favorite songs on cd’s. Our pastor who married us took the microphone from the previously mentioned drunk mistress of ceremonies and sang Neil Young’s “Down by the River.” All the fellas ran out onto the beach and skinny dipped in Lake Michigan, leaving their cheap rental tuxes in piles on the sand. We smashed boxed white wedding cake into each other’s faces.
And still, I wonder, while I was wiping icing off my cheeks and reapplying mascara, while Dan was dancing the electric slide, while pictures were taken and jokes were shared and the Bud Light was being poured, I wonder, who was there, behind the scenes, who kept the party going? Who was the one who turned burnt dresses and broken feet and white zinfandel into a truly joyous occasion? Who was it that took the dry chicken and the tree sapling party favors that would all die and the bickering siblings and turned it in to one of the best days of my life?
That’s where I find myself in this story, in the stuff, in the humanity, in the relationships. Does Jesus really defy the Law of Conservation of Mass and turn water into wine? Did Dionysus? I don’t know. But I do know that Mary makes the suggestion. The servants do all the work. Jesus reluctantly provides the power. And the steward is amazed by this highest of quality wine left for last. And a bridegroom, whose amazing day isn’t ruined after all, is given all the credit, and gets to keep going on with his life as if no miracle had happened right in front of his nose. That feels really real to me. Maybe because I think I’ve seen it.
I know that it was through the generosity of my parents and Dan’s parents that we had a place to celebrate, that we had dry chicken to eat, a lake front view, and unending bottles of white zin. It was through the generosity of my friends who came from hours away to iron their wrinkled dresses, bring the flowers in precarious buckets of water in their back seats, walk it off when the tire left tread marks on his shoe. And it was this feeling of just joy, and gratitude, and hope, that made everyone so generous, that made everything that went wrong just not a big deal, we’d deal with it in the morning, or shake it off, or find it hilarious, and I know that that feeling, at least for me, came from that amazing collision of the incarnation, where Jesus produces the wine and becomes the wine, where God lifts all the ridiculously concrete and embodied things that went wrong with our wedding and just made it so so joyful. Lots of people worked so hard that day. And I believe it’s because they love us. And that love, I’m going to say, comes from Christ.
We can argue all day over hamburgers or hot dogs. Dionysus makes wine. Jesus makes wine. We can fight wars over them. We can draw lines in the sand and argue over semantics and practice apologetics until we feel like we’ve got it all figured out, until we feel like we’ve made the right choice, until we have this sense of assurance that if only people saw and named the world the way we do, then everything would be perfect. But that’s not where the power is. The power is in the encounter. The power is when you dig and dig and dig and you finally get some water. The power is when you can see all the things that have gone wrong and somehow still see the joy and the beauty in the mess of it. The power is when you’re blessed by the dry chicken, even if you didn’t know it or couldn’t name it at the time.
And the beauty of our Christian faith is that, through the incarnation, we can see it all as Jesus. Jesus is in the Buddha and in Zeus. Jesus is present in the trees and the mountains and the ice cold brown ale. Jesus is even in the bickering siblings and the rental tuxes full of sand. Jesus is in Mary’s gentle observation, and in his own reticence, and in the servants to carry hundreds of liters of water, pail by pail, from the well to the purification jars. Jesus is the wine that keeps the party going. And even when the guests and the wedding coordinator and the bride and the groom are totally oblivious to the miracle that has just happened in front of them, Jesus is still there, still inviting them to partake in the miracle, even though they have no idea where it came from, or how it happened, or even that there was a need for it to happen. They all drank. They were all intoxicated by the love of God, whether they knew it or could name it or had the “right” name for it or not.
Hamburgers. Hot Dogs. Bring yourself to either. You’re full, whole, embodied self. Dig in. Christ will be there.
Thanks be to God.
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