Ps 36 & Jn 2:1-11
18 January 2004
“What Inspires You?”
This month, I’ve been primarily focusing on the psalm readings. They don’t always seem to go along with the theme of the day—or with the theme I want to use. But the ones in January have. And that’s true of today’s psalm reading.
Last week, Banu said that today is the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. What she didn’t say is that this week was chosen because on the church calendar, today, the 18th, is the Confession of St. Peter. The 25th is the Conversion of St. Paul. (I realize that all of us have both of those circled on our calendars!) Those dates were considered appropriate when they were proposed back in 1908.[1] These days, the observance of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday provides an important marker. His life’s ministry certainly testifies to a desire for Christian unity.
Still, I’m using the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity as more of a sub-plot today. As you can see from my sermon title, my major focus is on a somewhat different, and rather open-ended, question.
In Psalm 36, we begin with a deliberate meditation on evil. Verse 1 says, “Transgression speaks to the wicked deep in their hearts.” It serves as the very inspiration of the corrupt. The New Jerusalem Bible highlights this idea even more with its translation, “Sin is the oracle of the wicked in the depths of his heart.” We get the picture of rebellion against God as replacing the word of God. Evil becomes the oracle, the prophet, that gives the directions. It poses as God’s messenger.
You’ve seen those cartoons in which the character has on one shoulder a tiny angel, and on the other, a tiny demon? Well, this guy (or gal) has decided to dust off the angel and listen only to the whisperings of the little demon parked on the other shoulder.
I’m reminded of the introduction to the story of the great flood. Genesis 6:5 reads, “The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually.” Wow! Now there’s some single-minded focus for you!
To be fair, some people understand the Hebrew of verse 1 differently. They say it’s not the evil that’s doing the talking, instead, it’s the evil person uttering the words. The Revised English Bible says, “A wicked person’s talk is prompted by sin in his heart.” Whatever the case, our psalmist wants us to know that transgression, that iniquity, comes from deep within.
The power of evil to deceive and control is vividly pictured. Verse 2 says that “they flatter themselves in their own eyes that their iniquity cannot be found out and hated.” You know, it’s a dangerous thing when folks start believing their own publicity—or the praises that other people heap on them.
This being an election year, we’re about to get a heavy dose of that. I’ll find it truly refreshing if I ever see a politician in a campaign commercial who actually acknowledges the ambiguity of most issues, instead of reducing them to simplistic slogans. Apparently, Americans only respond to the “I have all the answers and the other guy is an idiot” approach—or so we’re led to believe! By the way, I’m not saying that verse 2, with its picture of iniquity, is best illustrated by politicians. It’s the…principle of the thing I’m talking about!
Then there’s verse 4, which sadly observes, “They plot mischief while on their beds; they are set on a way that is not good; they do not reject evil.” Once we start down a certain path, it can be much harder than we imagine to change our course. No one actually plans to become addicted, or enslaved, or obsessed. There are elements of that in all of us.
With verse 5, we start a new section of the psalm. We move from meditation on evil to meditation on God. This is the God whose unfailing love “extends to the heavens,” whose “righteousness is like the mighty mountains” (vv. 5, 6). If the first four verses talk about those who are zeroed in doing evil, then the rest of the psalm speaks of those who “turn from the ways of sin and renounce evil and its power in the world.” (That’s borrowing a phrase from last week’s renunciations, when we reaffirmed our baptismal covenant.)
The joy of the psalmist is seen in verse 7: “How precious is your steadfast love, O God! All people may take refuge in the shadow of your wings.” But it’s verse 8 that seems, to me, to be the countermeasure to the inspiration of evil earlier in the poem. “They feast on the abundance of your house, and you give them drink from the river of your delights.”
We need not try to draw strength from the stale, stagnant, mosquito-infested pond of our sin and the sin of the world. Instead, we have available to us sustenance from the free-flowing, refreshing waters of God’s “delicious streams,” as the New Jerusalem Bible puts it.
That brings me to the question I spoke of earlier, my sermon title: what inspires you? And so that there’s no confusion, I’m not speaking of the inspiration that leads to writing scripture. I’m not looking for anyone among us to add books to the Bible!
This is what I’m asking: what is it that energizes you—that makes life worth living? That can be a hard question to answer. Some folks live their entire lives without ever really thinking about what inspires them. Some people just put their heads down and push forward—muddle through life the best way they know how. Then one day, they look up, and ten years have gone by. Or fifty years have gone by.
I haven’t always had an easy answer to that question, “What inspires you?” Or maybe I should say, my problem is that I’ve often only had an easy answer. It’s easy to say that I’m inspired by God or Jesus and leave it at that. Some people might say that their inspiration comes from love of family or country or a cause. The more difficult part is in saying what that looks like. How does that inspiration affect our lives? How does it affect our behavior?
I’ll leave you with that thought for a moment, as we take a quick look at our gospel reading. John tells the story of Jesus and his disciples at a wedding, where he does “the first of his signs” (v. 11). This revelation of Jesus to the people is one of the alternate themes of Epiphany, along with the visit of the Magi.
It’s sometimes asked: what’s the point of turning water into wine? (Other than just keeping the party going!) I’ve heard explanations such as…the desire of Jesus to save the family from the social shame of running out of wine at a wedding, which might be likely if they were poor. (Apparently, having plenty of wine was a very big deal in those days!) Some have pointed to similarities with pagan deities. The Greek god Dionysus, for example, was said to have turned water into wine.
Keeping in mind, though, my question about what inspires us, there’s another way to look at the miracle, or “the sign,” as John calls it. A sign is more than a miracle; a sign points beyond itself to something else. For example, as you’re heading east on Interstate 90 from Erie, you’ll see a sign for Interstate 86 that says “Jamestown.” That’s not where Jamestown is located, but the sign does point the way.
In this case, the turning of water into wine points to the nature of Jesus himself. He takes what is ordinary—the water in the large jars for Jewish purification rites—and transforms it into something extraordinary—the wine at the wedding reception. And this isn’t wine in a box; this is the really good stuff! And the quality is matched by the quantity. According to John, there are at least 120 gallons of water in those stone jars that Jesus orders to be filled. That’s a whole lot of “the good wine,” as the steward says to the bridegroom (v. 10).
Maybe you see where I’m going with this. Jesus transforms; Jesus creates; Jesus pours out blessing in ridiculously large measure. Jesus inspires. We, creatures of dust, offer ourselves and our paltry possessions, which come from the earth—and something extraordinary is the result.
But there’s something about inspiration that can’t be controlled. Remember our gospel reading. When Mary, the mother of Jesus, tells her son, "They have no wine," he responds that his “hour has not yet come" (vv. 3-4). This doesn’t seem like the right time to make his big splash, so to speak. Still, his mother’s prompting—who he includes with him in asking why either of them should be concerned—that, and the situation itself, move Jesus to action.
In a similar way, inspiration may not come when we think it should. We can’t coerce it. What we can do is to be open to it. We can take as our model for living the second, and not the first, part of Psalm 36. However, in order to be transformed, to be re-created—to be truly inspired—we need to recognize the sin that’s in our lives and in the world. We need to recognize its power, and recognize God’s resolve to make all things new.
In Every Day Disciple this week, there is an article that deals with that very thing: “I Make All Things New.” Please read it; read it and meditate on it as you consider the question, “What inspires you?” Jesus makes all things new. So don’t drink from the stale, stagnant, mosquito-infested pond I spoke of earlier. Instead, let’s feast on the abundance of God’s house, and drink from the river of God’s delights.
So…what inspires you?