Sunday, January 17, 2010
John 2:1-11
Last
Fall, out of our work on becoming a healthier church, we invited you to
participate in a new movement of self-organized small groups as a way to integrate
our spiritual lives more into our everyday lives. We called them Life Teams.
We asked you to organize yourselves and we offered to provide a question
a week to spark the discussion. Some
remarkable sharing has gone on in these first few groups that have been
meeting. We are just starting our
second semester of Life Team questions.
The first question this semester was: When during the holidays did you feel closest to God? The question for this week is: How have you expressed your love for God lately? They make for interesting discussion with friends. If you haven’t organized or joined a group yet, you can still get one started with some of your friends. There are flyers at the Welcome Desk on this.
The
very first question we used when we started these last semester was this: What stokes the fires of your faith? People
shared a wide range of experiences in response to that question. Different
things fire up different people. We
are not all inspired or motivated to faith by the same experiences.
In
our story today from John he tells us that the disciples following Jesus at the
time of this wedding miracle or sign believed in him because of what
happened. Now they are already
followers or disciples. They already
saw Jesus as a worthy Rabbi or teacher.
In fact some of them have already declared that they believe him to be
the Messiah, the Son of God and the King of Israel.
Now
there are only five disciples, according to John, at this point in the
story. But John is pointing out
something changed for these five after this event. John records: Jesus
did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory;
and his disciples believed in him. (v. 11)
John
is the most symbolic of all the four Gospels.
I want to point out a few of the symbols he uses to give us a deeper
meaning here. The very first thing we
might notice is that he begins this story by saying, On the third day. What else happens to Jesus on the third
day? His resurrection, right? It’s a clue; it’s foreshadowing that
something significant is happening.
On
the third day there was a wedding…(v. 1) As we
learned last week, much of the Christian Scripture is a reflection of the
Hebrew Scripture and in that literature the prophets use the setting of a
wedding feast as an image of the kingdom of God. A time where there is joy and abundance of food and wine and a
great outpouring of love. It is a
symbol of God’s provision for his people.
Then the fact that Jesus uses the purification jars signals that Jesus is
the one that is bringing abundant life and purity and connection with God in a
new way now. (see Wesley Study Bible,
p. 1288)
So
the sign that John is writing about is more than just the turning of water into
wine. This whole story is a sign that
Jesus is the one God is using to bring new life to his people and this revealed
his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
How
does that happen for you? How do you
experience God and believe? Or as
Susan worded it for the Facebook folks:
How does God come alive for you?
Learning that about yourself is a key for our time today. Susan shared some responses from the
Facebook group and maybe some of those spoke to you and maybe not.
You
may remember that through our Natural Church Development work here at the
church, we were helped to discover our strengths and weaknesses as a church
family. We discovered that our weakest
area was in this area of spirituality.
Christian Schwarz found that this was true for a majority of churches
and now he has released a book about his findings. It is called The Three Colors of Your Spirituality.
The
Three Colors of Your Spirituality describes, on a color wheel, nine distinct styles
of spirituality. He uses the image of antennas to God. He says we don’t all connect with God with
the same antenna. He suggests that
there are nine different ones, but most people are only tuned in to one or two
channels. I have listed his nine
categories in your outline, and I want to run through them with you briefly
this morning to give you a better chance of seeing God’s glory and believing in
him, as John says. Here is the one of
the graphics from the book. (Pop up
image from p. 41)
Sensory:
the channel
is
seeing beauty & enjoying the works of God
Rational:
the channel
is logic
& science & understanding God
Scripture-driven:
the channel
is Bible
Study & strictly following the Word
Enthusiastic:
the channel
is experiencing
and celebrating the power of God
Mystical:
the channel
is the
mystery of God and inner connection with God
Sacramental:
the channel
is liturgy
and expressing the incarnation of God
I
find it very instructive when he points out that too often we think that our
way of experiencing God is the only one or at least the only proper one, and we
therefore discount or ignore the others.
But I think it would be really helpful if, as a congregation, we became
aware of the variety of ways people engage and encounter God. It would enrich us as individuals and as a
church family if we understood and appreciated the many different ways God
reaches people.
I
recall the first time I traveled out of the country to go to New Zealand. We had some family members living there and
we went to visit. While there our host
family offered us some sushi. I had
heard of sushi but had never tried it.
I heard it was raw fish and that just didn’t sound right to me.
You
know why? I grew up eating fish, but
you know what we had most of the time – fried catfish, breaded and fried
catfish. Uncooked, pickled looking fish
just didn’t seem right to me. But
trying to be a good guest and giving way to the persistence of the host, I said
I would try one. Before I tasted it I
thought I might throw up right there, just the thought of it was repugnant to
me. But you know what, it actually had
a pleasing taste, it was much better than I had imagined.
If
I hadn’t listened to another viewpoint, I would have never tried sushi. Now I eat it regularly and like it quite a
lot. If I hadn’t listened to another’s
experience, I might never know the great taste sensation I enjoy now. I might still be prejudiced against the raw
fish eaters.
Experiencing
God in different ways than what we first encountered in Christianity may seem
foreign and distasteful to us. Yet, if
we want to encounter the fullness of God, we must recognize that God is
broadcasting on multiple channels.
Which
antenna are you using?
Do
you know what your favorite is and how to develop it to the fullest?
John
says when these first five disciples experienced Jesus turning water into wine,
they saw the glory of the Lord and they believed in him. The author of John’s gospel was presumably
one of those five and was fired up by this first sign, so much so that he
recorded six more signs in the first half of his gospel. These signs obviously fueled his faith and
so he honed in on them.
I am going to be offering some courses where we can spend more time exploring these nine spiritual styles. If you are interested, there is an interest sheet to sign at the Welcome Desk; when we get ready to launch those classes, we will contact you.
But
let me go back to the question with which we started: Where does God come alive for you? Let me encourage you to hone in on that, to
practice that, to learn more and develop that aspect of your spiritual life
because it is the most likely way you will see the glory of the Lord and come
to resolute belief.
John
ends his gospel by saying in chapter 20:
Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which
are not written in this book. But these
are written so that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son
of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name.
Amen
and thanks be to God.
What
stokes the fires of your ________?
We
are not all inspired or motivated to faith by the
______
experiences.
v.
____
How
do you experience _____ and believe?
Learning
that about yourself is a _____ for our time…
The
Three _________ of Your Spirituality.
Scripture-driven: Bible Study & strictly
following
the ______ of
God
Enthusiastic: experiencing and
celebrating the
________ of God
Mystical: the mystery of God and
inner connection
with God
Where
does God come alive for _____?
Kid’s Question: What do you like best about First Church?