St Mary's

Today Talk from Rev'd Laura

19th January 2025

Rev’d Laura Brinicombe - Talk – 2^nd Sunday of Epiphany, Isaiah 62. 1-5 and John 2. 1-11.

A wedding party:

Our readings today both focus on weddings, so I’ve brought along an image of a wedding for us to explore. This is a picture from my wedding day and I chose it because I think it’s a great example of a very human occasion.

In this picture you can see Matthew and I having a great time but if you look behind us, you might notice that a few things are less than perfect! Many of my friends and family are desperately trying to figure out the words to the songs and they’re not sure what to do with their hands. Next to them, we’ve got guests who were really at home in church and they’re making as much noise as possible. Mixed in amongst all this, we’ve got people that I had to ensure didn’t sit next to each other, people who were deeply disappointed because the building we got married in wasn’t pretty enough and people who wanted the opportunity to show-off in front of friends and relations that they hadn’t seen in a long time.

My big day was touched by heaven when Matthew and I took our vows before God and He united us as ‘one flesh,’ but lots of other aspects of the celebration were entirely earth-bound! I’m sure anyone who has ever attended or helped to plan a party will know that this sort of tension is commonly felt whenever a community comes together to celebrate.

The people gathered at the wedding in Cana find themselves surrounded by this kind of pressure. Social expectations abound – a wedding was an opportunity to bless others but also a chance to signal ones wealth and status. As such, we can understand the anxiety about running out of wine and the fear of embarrassment and shame that such a misstep would cause for the brides’ family.

The awesome, super, fantastic, forever party:

It’s within the  midst of this very earthly celebration that Jesus gives us a glimpse of another party. Jesus performs His first miracle in Cana, turning water into wine – the ordinary into the extraordinary.

This ‘sign’ is Jesus’ first hint about the kind of wedding party God invites us to – a party that Jesus’ presence will make possible.

At Cana, Jesus signals that this other wedding party is big and its host is outrageously generous! In our reading, the amount of water Jesus transforms is around six hundred litres– more than even the most determined party-goer could hope to consume. And Jesus doesn’t fill them with any old, cheap plonk – He produces the ‘best wine’ and He provides it in abundance.

We heard more about this other ‘heavenly wedding party’ in our Isaiah reading. At this point in Isaiah the Israelites have returned from exile but instead of celebrating their freedom, they’ve run out of energy. In the midst of their apathy, the prophet shouts out – he’s incredibly excited – he can’t keep the wedding announcement to himself! God is going to marry His people! The creator, sustainer and redeemer of the universe is going to form an everlasting union with those He has chosen –He will enter into a renewed covenant of faithfulness and commitment that will ensure his people are loved forever.

This same imagery of faithful, loving and eternal relationship with God is picked up the New Testament when we see the church described as the ‘bride of Christ.’

This ‘heavenly wedding party’ is the one we are all invited to. There’s a children’s book that I think has the best name for this other celebration. It’s called the ‘Awesome, Super, Fantastic, Forever Party!’ I love that description!

Through Jesus, we get to experience a whole new relationship with God. As God’s people, we are invited to the awesome, super, fantastic, forever party – not merely as a guests – but as the bride! God longs to be united with his church, so that we can enjoy a relationship in which we are counted as precious, treasured and (as we heard in Isaiah) delighted in and rejoiced over by the one who loves us more than we can imagine.

Celebrate:

We’ve received our invitation but how can we go about responding to God’s amazing proposal?

Firstly, we can learn how to celebrate! Weddings can go by in a bit of blur can’t they? Usually, newly married couples are advised to make sure they take a moment to stop and breathe it all in.

I think this advice applies to us too.

Life, especially church-life, can be very busy. It can be easy to forget to enjoy the relationship that God is offering to us. If you haven’t already this year, do take some time to sit and accept the love of God. Perhaps ask God to teach you how to celebrate the way He sees you – as the one who is no-longer forsaken but beloved and beautiful.

This attitude of celebration shouldn’t be something we only practice alone. The imagery in Isaiah captures the joy of a whole community, as they delight in their relationship with God. We have a chance to do that together every week, as we gather to sing songs and dance and thank God for His unending love. This joining together to celebrate is important – it’s one of the ways we invite the Spirit to show us more of Jesus’ kinship in our lives and the lives of those around us, so that we can help each other to stand secure in His love.

Make Room in Our Heart for Others:

Secondly, when we stand secure in God’s love, the Spirit helps us to see ourselves and other people differently.

I mentioned at the beginning, that one of the trickiest parts of a wedding can be dealing with the other guests. However,  scripture tells us that ‘we’ are the bride of Christ, the whole of God’s people – not just those we know or those who are similar to us or those we agree with. During this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, we have an opportunity to really challenge ourselves when it comes to relationships with other believers in our immediate church family, the wider Rossendale Team and beyond.

Opening our hearts to others is not an easy task. As we saw at Cana, Jesus is not oblivious to the complexities that come with being part of a community, He’s aware that relationships can be difficult to navigate. However, despite these difficulties, Jesus calls each of us to recognise the truth - that we are only at the wedding banquet because He secured our place. We are not asked to organise the seating plan for the awesome, super, fantastic forever party – we are called to welcome and love all those whom God has invited into relationship. 

It’s easy to be the guest at the wedding who, when others are celebrating, spends their time criticizing the dance moves or the bad table manners or the colour of the outfits. Christianity has a shameful history of disunity and broken relationship, but this year, lets seek a better way together. When we are struggling with our brothers and sisters in Christ, there are some practical things we can do. Whatever the state of our relationship with somebody, we can still pray for them – I recommend specifically praying for at least one person we consider to be an ‘enemy’ or somebody we feel we have failed to understand or somebody who has hurt us. If we feel able, we can bring all our pain, our grievances and our anger to Jesus and pray to Him for comfort and healing but also for help to teach our hearts how to forgive and trust that God is righteous. During our communion services, we can use the Peace as a real opportunity for reconciliation – not just a quick shake of the hand or a wave. We can be really intentional about seeking unity - there is nothing wrong with asking God to reveal our hearts and then delaying receiving communion if He prompts us to tackle a relationship issue first.  

 Be Mary to each other:

Lastly, we can all be Mary to each other. Mary supports her son throughout his life and at the wedding in Cana she encourages Him to exercise His gifts – demonstrating great faith in Him. The Spirit gives a variety of gifts to God’s people – I like to think of them as wedding presents or wedding favours! We each receive different gifts but we are all called to use them to build each other up and support each other, as we seek to live as Christ’s witnesses in the world. When we see each other hesitating or feeling inadequate, we can comfort each other, we can stand back to make room for others to come forward and we can pray for each other – asking the Holy Spirit to come and transform our very ordinary offerings into something of heavenly worth and power.

We are the bride, the beloved, the one God wants to be with for eternity. This means every single one of us is of value, is wanted and is loved.

My earthly wedding was one of the best days of my life but it was nothing compared to God’s wedding feast- the awesome, super, fantastic, forever party that we’re invited to enjoy fully when Jesus returns and heaven and earth become one. In the meantime, doing life together is going to be messy – we will celebrate but we’ll also have disagreements, we may have to risk offering forgiveness or being vulnerable before others and having honest conversations. Loving is hard work but as we saw in Cana, the presence of Jesus means that we can catch a glimpse of heaven now and the more we seek to work together - with each other and with God - the more we will experience and be able to witness to God’s overflowing, overwhelming, unending love for the world.

We live in a deeply divided society that is hyper-focused on the individual. All-to-often the church reflects these wordly values and descriptions of Jesus at the wedding party often picture Him as the bouncer and not the bridegroom! Jesus is overjoyed to be united with His people – with those He died to save. As a church family, every time we try and fail and forgive and try again…we testify to God’s faithfulness and challenge a world that tells so many people that they are not worthy of love. This year, let’s ask God to help us to follow His example and live in love, as servants of each other and the gospel. Amen.