Sermon Notes january 20 is. 62:1-5, Jn. 2:1-11

January 20-John 2:1-11, Is. 62:1-5
Marriage and transformation are themes in today’s readings.In older translations, Beulah was left as a proper name, but we translate it as did the old Puritans, and it means married. or bride. Beulah land, in song was a Promised Land, a utopia, Marriage Land. Now I am not prepared to called mariage land a utopia, but I do love its reality and its promise. To get at the depth of the relationship of god and Israel, the image of marriage was used, and the pain of betrayal was therefore linked to adultery. Jesus too used bridegroom imagery and revelation speaks of the church as a bride. Celebration is bound up with the very image.
   As I was working on this, we were getting ready for a wedding here, with all of the usual last minute checks to try to allay the jitters. At the wedding of Cana the wedding planner miscalculated, or they had awfully thirsty guests, and they run out of wine . As mothers will do, Mary asks Jesus to do something about it. His reply could either mean, it is none of our business, or get off my back.  then like many sons, Jesus has said , no, but then proceeds to do as mother has requested. Jesus creates another 120-180 more gallons of wine for the feast, good stuff, as well. I hear a bit of an echo from passages where in Amos the wine will drip down the mountainsides like water, an image of transformation, celebration and abundance. I am not sure if I discern an echo of Communion here, but some do, and I will not accept the point, at least for this morning.

Not long ago, I used  some popular song lyrics of some years back at a wedding.One that comes to mind is Marc Cohn’s True Companion.(need lyric sheet) .He also has a song, saving the best for last. No one gets married with the intention of betrayal or looking toward unforgiven hurts and disappointments. I’ve mentioned before that I admire the careful work of John Gottman in analyzing tapes of couples. usually we put his work in negative terms, but let’s turn them in the light a bit this morning. The fundamental martial virtue is respect for the other. the fundamental church virtue is respect as well. We get caught in old habits. You know that people are being accepted as part of a church when they are being treated as we treat family. the problem is of course that we treat them like family.
   Sometimes, i wish that we could work more successfully of adding more notes of celebration in Communion services. Part of me craves for them to feel like wedding receptions. Have you noticed how people drink as if they are in a desert and eat as if they were on some arduous diet at wedding receptions? I know we cannot force a desire or feeling, but what if we craved the sacrament in just a hint of our craving for the hors d'oeuvres before the wedding feast? Look at people’s face fall when they realize their table isn’t next at the buffet line, and wonder why we don’t react that way in getting the communion elements. In communion we hear in the ritual God saying I delight in you. Don’t be desolate. Don;t feel forsaken, for I am with you always even to the close of the age.
   Rilke called marriage a place where two solitudes meet and greet and kiss one another. At its best, marriage  opens  up a safe place to be ourselves and to be accepted, respected, and loved. In that light, it opens up a model of church life in a visionary framework. when slaves and freed slaves  learned this passagem, they transformed it into Beulah land,  sometimes heaven but also the heaven on earth that they saw as a time of freedom and a better life. (Hear the words of a spiritual,, Beulah land).