What to do about a wedding?

Sermon for Epiphany 2, One Year, preached on Thursday, January 16, 2025.

The wedding feast at Cana presents us with something of a conundrum.  Its miracle is confusing and almost shocking.  It is not a grand show of His power but it is a grand display of His mercy.  Jesus shows us how He plans on using His power.  He is not going to dazzle the eye but touch the heart.  The first fact is that they have run out of wine.  Why?  Why did they run out of wine?  Did they plan poorly?  Were they cheap?  Were they poor?  Were the guests gluttons?  Were they so drunk that they had continued to consume the wine long after they were already tipsy?  They have run out of wine is the report of Blessed Mary to Jesus but that is about it.

The second fact is the intention of Blessed Mary.  Was she reporting this to Jesus because His own glass was empty?  Was she giving the signal that it was time to leave and the party is over and time to go home?  Or was she asking Jesus to do something about it – saving the embarrassed couple from their shame.  In any case, Jesus says that this is not His hour of glory.  Of course it is not – Jesus has come for the glory of the cross and not to restore glory to a wedding reception winding down because it has run out of gas.

If we treated this as allegory, we would see larger meanings to this all.  The world has run out of wine.  The things that once brought gladness have been overcome by the things that cause sorrow, shame, fear, and scandal.  The world has run out of gas and the party is almost over.  The world is tilting in the balance of climate change and pollution and dwindling resources.  The world is drunk with its own sense of power and ability thinking that banning straws or building electric cars will make everything better.  Jesus says that this is not His problem.  Of course, it isn’t.  Jesus has not come to repair a broken world so that a sinful people may continue to sin and suffer the effects of that sin.  He has come to end the reign of sin once for all and this comes not by turning water into wine but by turning wine into the blood that cleanses us from all our sin.

If we think this is a miracle of the kingdom that will prompt faith from reluctant hearts, we have this wrong as well.  Faith comes by hearing and miracles do not convince the doubting heart – only the Spirit does.  We still think that a few more miracles would not hurt the cause.  No, healing does not prevent the healed from dying but it sure makes us feel better. A little more of a bad life is better than none. So what is Jesus to do?   Give them wine to prolong their stupor or make them sober up to the reality of what sin has done?  Which would YOU do if you were Jesus?  Would you give into a feel good moment or would you skip the party and head to the cross where the glory of salvation will be revealed for all people to see?

We know what Jesus did.  He did both.  He did it all in spades.  He did not give them a few more gallons of wine but hundreds and hundreds of bottles of wine – far more than a small wedding reception of people could every consume in that one occasion.  What this means is this.  Our Lord does not leave you in your misery because He will give you glory at the end.  No, He is with us always even to the end of the age.  He visits us in our troubles to gladden our hearts but not with alcohol to deaden us to the pain.  No, He gives us the joy of the Kingdom in the midst of our suffering.  Beloved you are God’s children now?  If God be for us, who can be against us?  Your glory is not to come but Christ with you now.

Our Lord comes to us in the midst of our sins and our sinning with forgiveness and with the power of the Holy Spirit to help us leave behind our sinful ways and strive to be the holy, righteous, and godly people baptism says we are.  He does not deaden our feelings but opens our hearts to the joy of the kingdom that can never be taken from us.  He sets His table in the presence of our enemies and we feast upon the cup of the kingdom, the foretaste of the feast to come.

Our Lord does that for us now even while He accomplishes all things for our salvation.  He pays the price for sin we could not pay.  He fights the devil for us because we could not win in his game of wits and temptation.  He empties the grave of its sting and steals from death its victory and raises us up with Him to everlasting life.  That is the miracle of Jesus.  He does not choose between now or forever but is with us now and forever, bestowing upon us grace upon grace that we neither deserve nor merit and bringing to completion in us what He has begun.

Yes, the party is over but that does not mean that life is only drudge and sorrow and pain.  If Christ is there, hope is there and life is there and joy is there.  That is the abundant mercy displayed in this parable.  God sent His Son into the world not to condemn the world but that the world might be saved through Him.  That means we have hope, joy, peace, comfort, and contentment even now through His grace and yet it is not quite what shall be when He comes in His glory to usher in the wedding feast that has no end, will never run out of wine or time, and will overwhelm us with joy!

Really?

It is remarkable how ignorant the news media has become and that ignorance is mirrored across social media as well.  Historic Christian symbols have become markers not of the great Christian past but of their more recent kidnapping by supremacist groups and others on the edge of society.  No where does this show up more than in the strange case of tattoos.  Those who know me know I am not a particular fan of painting up the body but that is not the issue here.  The issue here is how ignorant our society has become of ancient and clearly mainstream Christian symbolism so that as soon as somebody sees a tat that has Latin or a Jerusalem Cross, the flag of racism or bigotry is labelled against the person when it should be left square at the feet of those who just do not know or want to know Christian history.

“Deus vult” is a Latin phrase meaning “God wills it,” and is often used by Christians, and in particular Catholics, to express belief in divine providence. The motto has been in use at least since the First Crusade of the late 11th century.   No less than the once vaunted the Associated Press (AP) published an article attacking then Secretary of Defense nominee and Army National Guard officer Pete Hegseth over his tattoo of that popular Christian motto “Deus vult.”  I have no interest in defending Pete Hegseth.  I do not know the man and had not heard much of him until Trump began speaking his name.  The bone I have to pick is how easily supposedly "normal" mainstream media types raise a red flag for something they simply do not understand or want to understand and therefore got wrong.

It is not about Trump but about how news media have become so ignorant and foolish in their handling of things that have to do with orthodox Christianity.  This is no different than the Justice Department's view of Latin Mass Roman Catholic folk as potential terrorists.  Really?  How did we go from being rather informed about Christianity as a whole to being completely stupid about a faith which has been and remains woven deeply into the fabric of American history and identity?  Those on the traditional side of things are often derided as ignorant and uneducated and easily manipulated by extremists but this is a clear case of how easily those on the liberal or progressive side are themselves caught up in ideology instead of facts.  Any student of history who has spent a moment on the history of the Crusades would have recognized the Jerusalem Cross as a legitimate Christian symbol with a long and storied history of use.  Any student who made it into high school a hundred years ago could have translated the Latin into English and known exactly what that phrase meant.  The fact that we do not know history means we are even more vulnerable to those who abuse history in pursuit of ideology that based not in fact but in fear.  That is a bad day for America.

The burden of our times. . .

In his little book on Temptation, Bonhoeffer addresses the typical problems and then shifts to a discussion of desperation and despair.  These are certainly the cause of much temptation in our age of uncertainty.  We are ever so quick to complain and complain loudly upon social media.  We are also quick to lament the stresses and pressures upon us.  Indeed, as someone rightly has observed, "Everyone I know has PSD!"  Don't we all!  I wonder if many of our stresses are due to the times and not solely due to the problems and troubles of our age.  I wonder if we find ourselves stressed because we have the illusion of control but not its reality.

Hearing my grandparents and parents speak of life in the Great Depression, I did not hear the litany of complaints you would expect of them.  In fact, one of my grandmothers actual recalled not the want of the times but the way people pulled together, pooled their resources, and worked to make a way despite the lack of so many things.  She contrasted that to the modern age so rich in things and so poor in our ability to get along and cooperate for something bigger than ourselves.  I think she was on to something.

Our stress today is not from manual labor but from weary minds.  We are weary because, for all out thinking, we find ourselves less able to control what happens to us or to those whom we love.  Yet despite this we live in an age in which we are told we are in control of our lives -- much more so than the generations who went before us.  Could it be that our stress and the ills of body and mind such stress causes us is due to the fact that we are dizzied by the constant changes and by our inability to do much except catch up to it as it passes us?  I fear that this is in part why we suffer so from stress related psychological and physical ills.  We are literally worrying ourselves into an early death but for all our worries we have nothing much to show for it other than doctor bills.

I grew up in a farming area and, at that time, farmers did not seem as stressed as they are today.  Of course, they lived in dependence upon the Lord (or nature, if you do not believe).  They did not have irrigation then or the herbicides or combines that calculated the moisture content of the crop and, especially important, its value on today's market.  They just did what they could and left the rest until tomorrow.  It is probably true of most occupations today.  Our marvelous technology has left us with the illusion that we control things and therefore it is hard to shake our sense of responsibility over just about everything.  Helicopter parenting is how this works in the home.  Parents seek to control just about everything their children come in contact with (except they have a strange trust over media and screens that I find hard to get).  We work less with our bodies but cannot seem to stop our minds and in those minds fear seems to be the most powerful force.  It has created a pandemic of depression and angst that pills cannot solve.  There is a cost to making yourself the center of things.

Christianity does not offer a fairy tale happy ending but the reality of a God who fights for you and with you.  "You are not alone" is one of the most powerful statements of Scripture.  The most oft repeated phrase of the Bible is "Do not be afraid."  Technology has not solved the loneliness problem nor has it solved the fear problem.  We are prisoners to our screens, to our need for safety, to our quest for security, and to our desire to control just about everything.  It is no wonder we are unhappy.  "Come to Me," says the Lord, "and I will give you rest."  More than any other need in this modern age, we need His rest to end our fears and answer our depression with hope.

Low church liberalism. . .

While the terms low church and high church are not ordinarily categories a Lutheran might deal in, they have become broader than the Anglican usage in which they were initially used.  Low church, historically, refers to those who give little emphasis to ritual, often having an emphasis on preaching, individual salvation and personal conversion. In one sense, it is also a term for the Evangelical wing of Anglicanism although it may not be directly applicable to the Evangelicalism you normally think about in America.  The term has most often been used in a liturgical sense, leaning toward Protestantism, whereas "high church" has leaned toward more ritual and Roman Catholicism.  This is particularly true of the Anglo-Catholic wing of Anglicanism (a sort of ultra high church part of the movement).  Broad church was a term for the muddy middle doctrinally speaking although it probably was also more at home in a more low church setting than with the Anglo-Catholic or Tractarian side of things.

For Anglicanism, the low church and broad church groups have also been those more at home with a liberal or progressive view of Scripture or doctrine.  In an odd sort of way, the Evangelical wing of Anglicanism has sided with the high church or Anglo-Catholic position largely because it was also more concerned with orthodox theology and a high view of Scripture.  For Lutherans, though some would argue, the low church side of things has generally been more at home with the liberal or progressive view of Scripture and of doctrine in general.  The only exception to this would be the so-called "Bronze Age" Missourians who tolerated liturgy but only within bounds and who were and remain as suspicious of those who advocate ceremony as those who hold a low view of Scripture -- but this is a particularly local oddity.  In the same way, among the ELCA the more liturgical are often nowadays the more liberal as well -- an oddity that marks them more than Lutheranism as a whole.  Yet these two unusual groups (bronze agers and the ceremonial liberal folks of the ELCA) cannot prove my point wrong but only offer a nuance to it.

The reality is the low church tends to feel more at home with a more progressive view of Scripture and a more liberal doctrinal stand.  In fact, it might be said that those who do not attach much importance to ceremony do so precisely because they do not attach much importance to the words of Scripture.  The two views go hand in hand.   American Evangelicalism was once allied with a more conservative view of Scripture and of doctrine overall but things have changed here as well.  It would seem that the Evangelicals as a movement is drifting more and more into the circle of relativism, trying to find ways to approach culture's move to the left rather than attack it.  While historically this might not have been the case, it sure is now.

The liberals of the early 20^th century were willing to keep the form and trappings of Christianity all the while they were also stripping it of any doctrinal content and creedal identity.  This was because they found these to conflict with a rationalist view of science and the world. These early liberals desired to maintain a moral authority within the faith but without the dogmatic content of Biblical Christianity.   While there are pockets of this liberalism around, what we encounter today is simply not interested in Scripture as fact and truth nor is it necessarily interested in arguing about such things.  What it is interested in is morality.  Modern liberalism isn’t fighting a theological war but it is waging a war about what is ethical, moral, and the focus of Christian identity.  That view is decidedly on the side of sexual liberation, population control, the freedom to explore gender identity, climate change, and a view of science that requires it to surrender objectivity for ideology.  It is low church or high church or whatever because its values are not attached to liturgy or to a view of Scripture as much as they are to the cultural milieu of the day.  That said, it is certainly more at home in low church ceremonial because it is more concerned with reason and race, justice and equality, and the celebration of diversity than it is any loyalty to the forms and ceremonial of the past.

It would seem to me that the future of orthodox Christianity lies with the so-called high church.  This is true for the Missouri Synod at least and I think it is probably true for Rome as well.  The liberal wing of Rome sees the greater need for a horizontal church over a vertical one and the disdain that progressives have for the Latin Mass is born in part of their desire to be rid of ancient ceremonial constriction to allow more local freedom and inculturation.  In one respect, there is a certain kinship between those on the right of Rome and the conservative and ceremonial folk in Missouri.  Neither one helps the other in any tangible way but we both appreciate the fight each brings to its own locale.  In any case, the low church liberals have stolen most of every other denomination and jurisdiction of Christianity and left it with a hollow shell of its former missionary zeal -- preferring to argue over cultural and climate issues over Scripture, creed, and confession.  

Who is vindictive?

While all the talk of the town in Washington, DC, is about what Donald Trump may do to his enemies, the liberals have proven themselves adept at this game for a very long time.  Now, it seems, the Little Sisters of the Poor were given a Christmas gift that just might that could help them end their near-14-year religious liberty battle with the U.S. government.  Again, this is the insistence of the government that the Little Sisters of the Poor could not claim a religious exemption from the health insurance mandate to cover reproductive costs, IVF, and abortion.  While the Little Sisters of the Poor are, well, little in comparison to the government, their stand is of particular importance for all religious institutions insisting that this is really about freedom and the guarantees of the right to practice religion unimpeded by government interference.  It is a faith issue that directly impacts all of us.  So the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued a notice in the Federal Register stating that it has opted to withdraw rule changes to the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) contraception mandate.  That rule had been proposed by the Biden administration last year and would have effectively barred the nuns and other religious organizations from claiming exemptions to the ACA requirement that employers provide abortion and contraception coverage in their employee health plans.  While the HHS offered some lame excuse, so the government could “focus their time and resources on matters other than finalizing these rules,” this was one area where diverse religious groups had a common interest.  

My point here is that the government and in particular the liberals have a vindictive streak that will not let go of their will and intent to abrogate the rights of religious expression in favor of things they determined to be in the higher public interest.  They have created a giant headache for this little group of Roman Catholic nuns and doggedly pursued this through more than half a generation -- until now.  Was it due to an administration change?  Did even liberal and progressive churches see the handwriting on the wall and raised a concern?  Who knows but the battle is likely not really over, except for now.  The progressive wing of politics and religion have proven to be remarkably vindictive against the enemies of their liberal causes and abortion and contraception rights are the holy grail of their cause.  Once again those in pursuit of tolerance are profoundly intolerant of views that would have been thoroughly normal only a generation or so before.  I would remind all of us to watch how things unfold.  It is highly unlikely that we have heard the end of this.  Like a dog on a bone, this probably a momentary pause in their pursuit of reproductive rights over religious expression.

We are the ornamentation. . .

In a variety of columns I have lamented what church architecture has become.  In America it is the adoption of the warehouse as the form and shape of God's House.  In Europe it is the sterile and empty walls of designs that could be grand.  In both cases, the ornamentation of the House of God has become the people assembled.  The space itself is devoid of art -- even modern!  Instead the walls are blank.  In America the color is black so that the modern industrial look is front and center.  In Europe it is the whitewashed walls that provide the canvas for people to be the art.  In both cases, we have become adornment of God's house.

Some might insist that it is no different to offer God what we make than to offer Him ourselves as the beauty of His house.  That is not quite the same for the beauty formed with hands has always been a representation of His own Word and the focus has been on what He has done.  The art of the centuries which was both fostered by the Church and passed down through the ages within the structures of God's House was in a profound sense the offering back to God of what He has said and done.  While there is glory in the creator's art and craft, the message of the art (paint, stone, wood, and fabric) is not about us but about what He has done in Christ.  The artist is sometimes remembered but the knowledge of the artist is not required to know what is being said on canvas, in sculpture, in carving, and in weaving.  Now, however, the medium is missing so that only the artist remains.  We are God's art -- at least in modern form and meaning.

In Germany some 40 million euros were spent showcasing not art but the people of God.  Replacing a round cathedral dedicated in 1773, the new St. Hedwig Cathedral of Berlin spares no expense except on art.  Its round shape reflects the former structure bombed in World War II and rebuilt in stark and ugly style contrasting with its more classical form on the exterior.  1963 meet 2024.  It is hard to see how the hole in the floor in the 1963 rebuild could be much stranger but now there is a building with literally nothing except the people to adorn its plain walls.  Of course, you could ask why bother to build a new cathedral (it would be hard to call it a renovation) for a declining church body except that where the German churches lack people, they have deep pockets.  Perhaps the decline will catch up with the church tax but until that happens the Berliners could afford a structure which says more about them than it does about God.  Watch the video below to see what I mean.   

By contrast, the Evangelical Cathedral has wisely chosen simply to preserve the structure and its art from the 1700s.  While it is not immune from the rot of decline that has affected most of Europe, somebody decided that the building was a work of art to be faithfully preserved for its cultural heritage and so it escaped much of what the Roman Catholic cathedral now lauds.  That said, preserving a building while abandoning its Gospel is not necessarily something to be praised either.