Connect the Dots

January 14, 2007

            We start this morning with the dots that you find printed in your worship folder.  This is a puzzle for you to work on while you listen to the message.  One person in our midst requested that in the future I use a sudoku as an illustration so you can have something else to do during the message!  The nine dots are a part of a puzzle.  All you have to do is join all nine dots with four straight lines without taking your pen from the paper.  Got that?  Join all nine dots with four straight lines without taking your pen from the paper. 

            While you work on the puzzle, I’m going to talk a little about this passage from John’s Gospel.  Most of us have heard the basics of this miracle story before.  In fact, turning water into wine is one of Jesus’ miracles, along with walking on water, that everyone – inside and outside the church – seems to know about.  When I was in high school youth group we used to sing “Five foot nine from Palestine, he can turn your water to wine.  Has anybody seen my Lord?  He is neat. He is cool.  He can walk across your pool.  Has anybody seen my Lord?!”  My apologies to those of you who don’t appreciate the humor we found amusing and more than a bit sacrilegious when we were teenagers!

            Back to John’s Gospel.  It may help us to know that John’s Gospel was one of the last pieces of the New Testament to be written down.  I think that sometimes we have a hard time with this, because we think of books being written from beginning to end… from the first page to the last page.  But this is not the case with the Bible.  In the New Testament, the letters of Paul represent the earliest writings, followed by the Gospel of Mark and then the Gospels of Matthew and Luke and the Book of Acts.  The Gospel of John and the Revelation of John – different authors – come last, probably written sometime at the end of the first century.  It may also help us to know who was the audience.  The Gospel of Luke was written for believers in the Gentile community.  The Gospel of Matthew was written for believers in the Jewish community.  The Gospel of John was written for the early Christian community, possibly in Ephesus, where Jewish heritage was not important but belief in Jesus was.

            Anyone figured out the puzzle yet?  Don’t show it to your neighbor.  Let them keep working and I’ll continue.

            Let’s turn our attention specifically to the miracle of the water turning into wine.  Coming right at the beginning of John’s Gospel, it sets the tone for everything to come.  At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus promises great things!  As the story of the miracle begins, the details are not important.  We may want to ask why a wedding?… why his mother?… and why wine?… but none of these things really matter.   What’s really important is the extravagance of the miracle.  Jesus doesn’t miraculously produce a few bottles of good wine to keep a few wedding guests happy.  No, according to the story, he provides somewhere between 120 and 180 gallons of the best wine – way more than enough to keep a thousand wedding guests happy!  The author of John’s Gospel wants everyone to know, from the very beginning, that Jesus is doing something big!

            For most of us hearing the story today, the meaning is lost because we are not listening with first century ears.  We don’t get it.  We don’t practice Jewish purification rites so we don’t keep huge stone water jars on hand so several hundred of our closest friends can clean-up when necessary.  Unless we are really up on our study of the Bible, we might miss the fact that in the Old Testament an abundance of good wine was a symbol of “the joyous arrival of God’s new age!”  And, if we aren’t completely familiar with Greek folklore, we might miss that “a miraculous supply of wine” was a sign of the presence of a god.  But those hearing John’s Gospel for the first time… Jews, Gentiles, and Christians alike… would have understood this first miracle as a way of announcing to all that with Jesus, God was doing something new, promising even greater things to come.  Unless we listen with first century ears, we might miss the proclamation that the old religious customs have been replaced and Jesus is now the one ushering in God’s new age. God is present in Jesus.

            Okay, how are we doing with the puzzle?  Any more of you figured it out?  I know that some of you probably want to keep working on it but I am going to show you the solution so that I can then somehow try to connect the miracle of Jesus turning water into wine with a puzzle involving nine dots and four straight lines. 

            When we try to figure out the puzzle, most of us make a box with the outside dots and leave one dot in the middle.  When we hear the instructions, “Connect the dots with four straight lines without taking the pen from the paper,” our own sense of logic seems to add in “within the square formed by the outer dots.”  (Show this image on the screen.) Thinking of it in this way, there is no solution.  But if we set aside our conventional reasoning, new possibilities suddenly appear.  What happens if I say to you, “Feel free to use the whole sheet of paper?”  It opens up a whole new way of thinking about the puzzle!  (Show the solution on the screen.)

            The miracles of Jesus give us a whole new way of thinking about things… of believing about things.  In the Gospel of John, miracles cannot be explained away by conventional reasoning.  We have to set it aside. When Jesus changed the water into wine he shattered the boundaries of the conventional world.  It is as if he let his mind go and used the whole sheet of paper instead of being bound by the usual, normal, accepted ways of thinking and believing.  And, according to John’s Gospel, those who chose to believe in Jesus, were willing to do the same thing.  They were willingly to entertain the possibility that this boundary breaking marked the in-breaking of God.   In Jesus, God was doing something brand new.  In Jesus, God is still doing something brand new.

            The first 12 chapters of the Gospel of John are full of miracle stories… Jesus changing water into wine, Jesus walking on water, Jesus healing on the Sabbath, Jesus feeding the five thousand, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  No one knows how or even if these miracles really happened exactly as they are recorded in the New Testament.  Some of us believe that they are factual while others believe they are metaphors.  Maybe the author of the Gospel was skilled at the art of exaggeration or was taking poetic license to prove a point.  Your guess is as good as mine.   We simply don’t know.

But, for me at least, the facts of these miracles are not as important as the faith of these miracles.  Like those who first witnessed them, we must ask ourselves “will these signs be seen as the work of another Jewish miracle worker or will we see and believe that God is at work?”

 I don’t know about you, but I want to see and believe that God is at work breaking through the boundaries of our conventional thought and wisdom and reality in big, brand new ways.  I want to see and believe, in the midst of my ordinary everyday life, that God is doing miraculous things.  I want to live expecting miracles.

            So this morning I am thinking of Estelle Oozevesuk, a friend from Alaska.  A number of years ago, her son was beaten to death in a drunken fight.  Conventional wisdom would hold that she should never be able to forgive the man who committed the horrific act and yet, because of her faith, Estelle chooses not only to forgive him, but to become actively involved in his life, visiting him in prison and helping him see and believe that God’s transforming love is at work in his life.  When most of us would say, “lock him up and throw away the key,” Estelle says, “Let us open the door and let the light of Christ shine in.”  She helps me see and believe that God is doing miraculous things.  She helps me expect miracles.

            This morning I think of Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.  Believing that lasting peace in the world cannot and will not be achieved unless people can find ways to break out of poverty, Muhammad Yunus has developed the concept of micro-credit.  Through his bank, in Bangladesh, the Grameen Bank, extremely small loans are given to entrepreneurs who are too poor to qualify for conventional bank loans.  Small informal groups of people apply together for loans and then act as co-guarantors of re-payment and support one another’s efforts in self-advancement.  Putting aside conventional wisdom that bases loans on collateral, Yunus bases these loans on trust.  Through his witness we can see and believe that God is doing miraculous things.  Old ways are giving way to new possibilities.  We can begin to expect miracles.

            This morning, I am thinking about Martin Luther King, Jr. who challenged the conventional wisdom of his day and refused to believe that the color of a person’s skin defined the character of a person’s soul.  In his life and through his boundary breaking ministry, he answered God’s call… he claimed Christ’s promise… he dared to dream… and miracles happened.

            Do we have faith enough to set aside conventional wisdom and believe in miracles?  Do we believe enough to look around us and discover that, in the midst of our ordinary everyday lives God is doing miraculous things.  Can we connect the dots and see and believe that God is at work?  Are we expecting miracles?

The “Connect the Dots” puzzle comes from The Art of Possibility by Rosamund and Ben Zander