Second Sunday after
the Epiphany
Isaiah 62:1-5; I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11
The Isaiah lesson speaks of vindication and reconciliation (as in a separated couple being reconciled). Isaiah is about to returned home from Exile forgiven. They are offered a second chance at the relationship with God that had been destroyed by their sin. God is looking to reconcile the broken relationship.
Paul’s letter the Corinthian church recognizes the church as the community of God’s people that has been vindicated from their sin and established as the “bride of Christ”. The Church is that community married to Christ as God planned and spoke through the prophet Isaiah many years prior. Paul depicts the church as driven by the Spirit of God. Unlike the Israelite community that was held together by Laws, this community is not constituted in laws but by the Spirit. No one without the spirit can call Jesus Lord, and not only with the spirit can curse Jesus. The church is powered by the spirit’s gifts and therefore enabled to do the work that God has set out. The spirit powers God’s community of those reconciled vindicated, and the spirit directs them to Jesus who is the Lord and center of the community.
John’s gospel seems out of place among these lessons. Yet, the evangelist finds the way to portray the presence of the Lord in the midst of the community. Jesus is involved with the everyday life of the community in which he lives. Jesus, his disciples, and his mother are invited to a wedding in the community Mary becomes involved in the wings worried about the supply of wine. The events of that day are about the validation of the presence of God in the community. Water and wine are the mere vehicles by which God makes his presence manifest in the ordinary affairs of daily life. God provided wine for the wedding as God provided manna in the wilderness, and daily bread for all those who seek the life from the Lord’s hands.
The sign of water in wine was the sign of God present in the humanity of Jesus the Christ. God wants his people to know that he is concerned about the ordinary parts of life as he is also involved with the more extraordinary parts of life: the things that go bump in the night, the cancers that threaten us, the floods that over whelm us and the tiny specs of life that fall between these extremes.
The only thing God has every wanted is to be in relationship with us. The relationship becomes fractured easily and God’s message is not and always has been one of return, vindication, and renewal.
©Copy right Rev. Dr. Kipp W. Zimmermann,