Who says miracles are impossible?

Today we remember the first of Jesus’ signs, his first miracle at a wedding in Cana of Galilee, turning water into wine. For many of us, these signs present a problem, because they are a direct challenge to our modern way of thinking, which denies the possibility of miracles. Most people, whether they are aware of it or not, make the assumption that there is no supernatural realm that can or should interfere with the natural realm. The natural realm is all there is. Everything can be explained by explaining nature. And nature obeys laws which cannot be suspended from time to time.

I have just finished reading CS Lewis’ book on miracles. I am grateful to him for helping me understand that those who believe that miracles are impossible are not making that judgment deductively, from the evidence, but rather inductively. They are simply assuming that this is in fact the way things are without in anyway proving it. We’ll be discussing his book as part of larger study of all his books on Wednesday nights, and you are certainly welcome to come and join in.

Lewis reminds us of the fact that God turns water into wine all the time. There’s nothing unnatural about turning water into wine. On the other hand, Jesus rejected the devil’s suggestion in the wilderness to turn stones into bread, in part, because that would have been unnatural. Stones don’t naturally become bread, no matter how long you wait or how convoluted a natural journey they may take. Having said that, however, Lewis argues that some of Jesus’ miracles are, in a sense, unnatural, what he calls miracles of the new creation, miracles that point to that time when nature as we know it is replaced with a new nature by a new act of creation so that, for example, we will be able to walk on water just like Jesus did.

Part of what Jesus is doing in turning water into wine is reminding us of what God can do and does do all the time, just more slowly. In that sense, his miracle is a sign. It is meant to point away from itself to the one who makes it happen, to Jesus, as a way of pointing out to us who we are dealing with, with the very Son of God himself, the one through whom and for whom all things are made and have their being.

John tells us that this is the first of Jesus’ signs. His gospel describes seven signs altogether, the greatest of which is his death and resurrection, which is not just a sign but the doorway into his kingdom. John explains at the end of his gospel that the seven signs he describes in his gospel are just a sample of the signs that Jesus performed and that John has selected and described them to us so that we might come to believe that Jesus is the very Son of God, just as his first disciples believed after they saw what Jesus did at that wedding in Cana of Galilee.

Even though John says this is Jesus’ first sign – and I trust that it is, in fact, his first public sign, the first sign of his divine mission on earth to save us and rescue us, he also hints that there may well have been some prior signs, some more private and intimate signs that preceded this first public one, when he reports that Mary, his mother, came up to him and said, “They have no wine.” It’s as if Jesus’ mother fully expects Jesus to be able to do something about it because she knows he has that sort of potential.

And why should she not have such an expectation? We remember her cousin Elizabeth’s and John the Baptist’s prenatal response to Mary’s pregnancy. We remember the angel’s words to Joseph, not to fear, to flee to Egypt, to return back home. We know about the shepherds and the wise men. We know about Simeon and Anna in the temple. We know what he said when his worried parents went back to Jerusalem to find him in the temple. Mary treasured all of these experiences in her heart. She knew she was dealing with a very special son.

Jesus responds to his mother, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not come.” Because we know the ending of the story, we know that Jesus’ hour is one to three years in the future in Jerusalem when the final sign, his death and resurrection, will not be a demonstration of his power to change water into wine in a matter of seconds but make the whole creation new in a matter of hours and days.

Jesus may well have had the prophecy of Isaiah which we heard today in mind when he told the servants to fill up the six stone jars with water. The time for fulfilling Isaiah’s prophecy of God’s wedding feast for his people had come. God would finally vindicate his people. God would join himself to his creation, the builder to the very clay of the earth, first in the incarnation of his Son and then in his joining himself to you and to me as his holy Bride, the church, a new Eve for himself, the new, the second Adam.

Let the feast begin, Jesus declares in performing his first sign. Of course God has been making real wine and spiritual wine in a more natural and normal manner from the beginning. The Old Testament is the record of how God slowly but surely, by his grace, is transforming his chosen people from their slavery to sin into grateful and obedient children.
And so he continues to do with you and me. I have prepared a slide show for our annual meeting which condenses the over three years of discussion, planning and execution of our church renovation project into six minutes. And all of those small and countless thoughts, words and deeds were preceded by countless other offerings given to the honor and glory of God in our memorial fund as a testimony to what God can and does do all the time, whether we see it sped up in six minutes or more normally over a season or two or three.

As Jesus’ bride, we are the recipients of his grace. Paul tells the Christians in Corinth that his grace can and does work through you and me in wonderful and marvelous ways, through our thoughts and words, in the form of wisdom, knowledge, prophecy and discernment; and through our speech, in the form of tongues and their interpretation; and through our actions, through our special acts of faith and healing and miracle. Sometimes we just don’t see the evidence of God’s grace because we’ve been told by the world that it’s not possible, that grace doesn’t happen, that there is no supernatural realm that can and does affect us and impact the world in which we live.

I believe, for example, that all these gifts of the Spirit have been especially activated by the catastrophe in Haiti, as well as in our own citrus crisis and other more personal crises, giving people the wisdom, the knowledge, the discernment, the speech, and the power to act as God’s fully empowered agents, even if it’s nothing more than sending some money, whether a cup or a thirty gallon stone jar of water to Haiti, trusting that the Lord through his other disciples will make his presence known in the midst of all their suffering and death.

Miracles can and do happen. As Lewis says, they may not happen near us or to us, but like a train station or an airport, that does mean they don’t happen just because we live far from the station or the airport. But we can trust that they do happen where they need to happen, and we can be sure that it is the Lord’s servants, those who follow and obey him, who will be given the grace to accomplish - to think, say and do - whatever God needs to be done as yet another sign of his presence and the eventual completion of his kingdom on earth as in heaven. AMEN.