A sermon preached by Bill Countryman at Good Shepherd, Berkeley

Second Sunday After Epiphany, 1/20/2019

Readings (Year C): Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10; 1 Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11.

Each year, on the Sundays after Epiphany, we hear gospel readings that tell of occasions when God shone with particular brightness through the life and ministry of Jesus. The marriage at Cana is a great example. It’s as if God’s creative power and imagination, the power and imagination that made this universe in the first place, suddenly blazed up again. Gallons and gallons of water becomes wine—and not just any wine, but the very best of wine! That’s an epiphany, for sure.

But there’s something else surprising here, too. In other miracle stories, the onlookers are all amazed, and there’s lots of talk and excitement. But in this story, almost nobody knows what happened. Mary knows. The servants who hauled the water in the first place and then ladled out the wine—they know. But the only thing anyone else knows knows is that the wine has suddenly gotten a whole lot better. 

It’s a wonderful story and a puzzling one, and we’ll come back to it later on. But first I want to turn our attention to the reading we heard from 1 Corinthians, where Paul tells us about gifts of the Spirit. It’s about epiphanies, too.

We’re familiar with the basic idea here.The Spirit lavishes all sorts of gifts on us when we’re gathered together as church—gifts that the church needs and, beyond just the church, gifts the world needs. And they all come from God’s Spirit, who is a generous—we could even say “profligate”—gift-giver. 

It’s easy to notice the people with the big, public gifts. This weekend commemorates Martin Luther King, Jr., who was certainly a great example. He had exceptional gifts of speech, of political savvy, of organization, of persistence, of bravery in a dangerous situation. And he placed them all at the service of the church and of the world, even at the price of his own death. 

Now, it may be easier to recognize the gifts of the Spirit in someone like Martin Luther King, Jr., but the same sort of thing happens, on a less dramatic stage, all around us. I’m very much aware how often I find myself blessed by the gifts of other people. People at Good Shepherd have been sharing the Spirit’s gifts with me for more than thirty years. It’s made my own life richer and more loving and hopeful, for which I’m deeply grateful. 

Everyone here has gifts to share. Maybe you’re quite conscious of what they are, maybe not. Maybe you’re even too modest to admit that you have any. Maybe you’re so impressed by other people’s gifts that you don’t properly esteem your own. Maybe circumstances just haven’t been quite right yet to let you see what your gifts are. But you can take it for granted that you have them because, as Paul says, that’s how the Spirit operates. And experience proves him right again and again. Remember that Martin Luther King didn’t change the world single-handed. It took the combined gifts of thousands of faithful people.

And these gifts of the Spirit are also gifts to us from Jesus—a way for Jesus to continue his ministry here and now. When we share our gifts with those around us, we become an epiphany of Jesus. Our gifts may seem a little humdrum compared to gallons and gallons and gallons of first-class wine. But they’re not. They, too, show the love of God being woven right into daily life and creating something wonderful in our very midst. 

Paul emphasized that the gifts of the Spirit are very closely tied to Jesus. Any prophetic spirit that couldn’t who say “Jesus is Lord” was automatically not the real article. Now, of course, it’s not really simple as having the right formula. Paul—Mr. “It’s the Spirit and not the letter”—certainly knew that. He was just responding to one form in which problems were arising in the church at Corinth.

The words can be used to cover something quite different from Jesus’ message of love. I’ve known people who shouted “Jesus is Lord” in loud voices and plastered it on the bumpers of their cars—not in order to share God’s love with the world but as a sign that they belonged to a religious in-group that was also burgeoning with political power and that they were confident that they were on the right side of everything—up to and including the Last Judgement. I think they’d forgotten Jesus’ Parable of the Sheep and the Goats, with its message about how surprised everybody is going to be at that day. 

What they missed was what is truly important in Jesus’ message: the love of God for everyone—a love that God hopes will inspire love in us, love for God and love for our neighbors. When we share our gifts with love, we become an epiphany. We give to others a glimpse of Jesus that is, at the same time, a glimpse of God. 

And just like the wedding at Cana, it won’t be visible to everybody. This isn’t a big, splashy epiphany. Jesus did that kind of thing, too. On the Last Sunday after the Epiphany, we’ll hear once again the story of the Transfiguration. Big, flashy epiphany, right? And, you know, it didn’t turn out all that well; the disciples couldn’t figure it out. 

What worked best for Jesus, as he brought the love of God to people, was the daily generosity of teaching and healing and feeding multitudes in the desert and dining with outcasts—even if, just for a nice change, he could also supply wine to a wedding feast that was running short. And most people never knew about it, but there were those servants who knew–knew that the house had been visited by God’s grace—and there was Mary, still coming to a deeper understanding of what God was doing in this child of hers. And that’s how the gift spreads. The blessing of being together in the church is that we get to see, in one another, Jesus’ epiphany still at work. 

The Jesus who revealed God’s power at Cana is present here today. This Holy Table is the wedding feast. And the Holy Spirit makes Jesus present here—both in the sacrament of bread and wine and also in the gifts she gives each of us to share with one another and with the world around us. Yes, we, when we are living in love, are an epiphany of God in our world.