Showstopper

Ladies and gents, this is the moment you've waited for (woah) / Been searching in the dark, your sweat soaking through the floor (woah) / And buried in your bones there's an ache that you can't ignore / Taking your breath, stealing your mind / And all that was real is left behind

Don't fight it, it's coming for you, running at ya / It's only this moment, don't care what comes after / Your fever dream, can't you see it getting closer /Just surrender 'cause you feel the feeling taking over / It's fire, it's freedom, it's flooding open / It's a preacher in the pulpit and you'll find devotion / There's something breaking at the brick of every wall, it's holding / All that you know / So tell me do you wanna go?

Well, do ya?  Of course we do. With an intro like that, who could say no?  Who could turn away?  Not me.  Buried in your bones there’s an ache you can’t ignore.   For what?  What are we longing for these days?  What draws us, what excites us?  What drives us to reach for, hope for more?  Not more stuff, surely.  But more out of life.  More life!  

We live in an excitement seeking world.  And we have to engage in increasingly dangerous and strenuous activities to keep the adrenaline flowing.  Extreme sports, extreme anything really.  That’s what we want, the thrill a minute, edge of the seat kind of excitement that keeps us feeling alive.  And why not?  Why not grab hold of life with both hands?  Why not drink deep of the waters of life?  Why not run with the wind of joy and celebration?  Why not rejoice at the good things that surround us daily?  Why not love with abandon?  Why not?

I’ll tell you why not.  Because it isn’t real.  Right?  There is so much broken in the world.  There is so much that drags us down, so much that weighs on us. Because life is hard, because no one is on your side.  Because the enemy is at the border, ready to swoop in and steal our livelihood, if not our very lives.  Right?  Because there is too much to fear.  That’s why not.  That’s why we ignore the ache in our bones for something more, something real. Because we don’t know what’s real.  Which news is fake, which fear-mongering is more reflective of the reality in which we live.  We believe who we choose to believe, even when they are proved to be wrong.  It’s a harsh world full of disappointment and betrayal, better to protect yourself, guard your heart so you don’t get hurt.  So that when something goes wrong you can say, I didn’t expect anything less.  It just proves my point that the world is a terrible place.

Except.  It's everything you ever want / It's everything you ever need / And it's here right in front of you / This is where you wanna be (this is where you wanna be) Except, there is more.  There must be more.  There must be something of life left to embrace.  Something that we were created for.  Something that fills us like nothing else.  That gives us joy and a reason to celebrate.  Something like a party.  Or a wedding.

John 2:1-11  On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.  2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.  3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, "They have no wine."  4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come."  5 His mother said to the servants, "Do whatever he tells you."  6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.  7 Jesus said to them, "Fill the jars with water." And they filled them up to the brim.  8 He said to them, "Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward." So they took it.  9 When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom  10 and said to him, "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."  11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him. 

Wow!  He revealed His glory. Jesus is a showstopper.  That’s my thesis this worship series.  I called it “Showstoppers” and am using some of my favorite musical numbers to help us understand Jesus the showstopper.  A showstopper is a song that is so powerful it steps outside of the narrative of the show and lets us just dwell in the glory of the lyrics and the music.  I watched the movie “The Greatest Showman” not too long ago and I was struck by the power of many of the songs.  And then when I laid them alongside these stories of Jesus, I was struck by the overlapping themes. 

Jesus launches His whole ministry at a wedding.  A blow out party of the year.  That’s what weddings were in those days.  We thought we invented the lavish wedding to end all weddings.  But no, in Jesus’s day weddings lasted a week.  The whole community was invited, the spread was endless, the celebration lasted around the clock (which, I know, hadn’t even been invented yet). In chapter one of John’s Gospel we have a poetic/theological intro, a quick dispensing of John the Baptist, and then the calling of the first of Jesus disciples.  Now, we’re underway.  At a wedding.  At a week long celebration of life and love, of hope and possibility, of a new beginning, but also the riskiness of living.  Things go wrong at weddings.  We all know that.  It’s often what we talk about afterwards.  There are plenty of YouTube videos of wedding disasters, go look them up. 

So, disaster struck at this one too.  Mary noticed it.  It’s a mom thing.  They pay attention.  They band together to resolve the problem.  Mary knew how to fix this one.  She went to Jesus.  “They’ve run out of wine.”  She has a solution to this wedding disaster, this breach in the firm communal rules of hospitality.  She turns to Jesus.

Now Jesus’s response seems a bit ... harsh. Woman, He says.  Not “aw mom, I’m in disguise, lying low.  It’s not time yet.”  Woman.  What is that to do with me or with you?  It’s not my hour.  Harsh.  In the midst of the party, Jesus is prickly, snapping at His mom, shirking His responsibilities - or at least opportunities.  I can’t explain it away.  Can’t find a loophole to make Him not look so rude.  It’s just there.  Another sign that we can love Him, even when we don’t or can’t understand Him.  

In John’s Gospel, everything has layers of meaning.  It’s not my hour is something that Jesus says frequently.  Again and again He reminds those around Him that it wasn’t His hour.  “His hour” has a specific reference for John.  His hour is the cross.  It is death and it is glory.  In a way we’ll never understand, but live in awe of.  

What it doesn’t mean is that He is opting out of the party.  And His mom knew that.  She passes the word to the servants and they leap to fix the unfixable at His word.  He has them fill six stone jars with water.  And makes 180 gallons of the best wine anyone has ever tasted.  And little bit of glory slips out.  Everyone is amazed, even those who don’t know why, but they grab a glass and toast the groom who had been trying to hide from embarrassment.  And the party goes on.

And His disciples believed in Him.  Wait, what?  His disciples believed in Him?  What, they’d just been along for the ride up to now?  They were kinda “well, I’ll go, but I’m not so sure about this guy!”  What did they believe, John, why don’t you get specific?  They believed Jesus had a future in catering?   They believed that they’d never go thirsty again?  What did they believe?  Who knows?  But they believed.

We’re in John’s Gospel remember.  Everything has layers.  Everything has deeper meanings.  Believe in John’s Gospel means something other than what we usually think.  It’s not an intellectual assent.  It’s not a logical theorem argued convincingly.  When John says they believed in Him what he means is that they were ready to put their lives in His hands.  They were ready to place all their bets on Him.  To affix their futures to His.  To go all out for Him.  Because He was everything they ever want, He was everything they ever need, and He was right there in front of them, this - that’s what they knew with every fibre in their being - this is where they wanna be.  With Him. 

Shalom,

Derek