“Party” Jesus!

John 2:1–11, preached by Rev. Jane McBride on January 19, 2025

At Bible study this week, Mercedes reflected that she had never really heard this morning’s Gospel story in full. All she knew was that Jesus had turned water into wine. She said she always imagined it happened in some “holy” way removed from regular life. And she was delighted to hear it was at a wedding feast, in the context of a family’s ordinary celebration. She said, “I like that it is the party Jesus who doesn’t want the people to run out of wine!”

The Gospel of John contains no birth story for Jesus, no shepherds or wise ones or stars. Instead, in the first chapter, we get a poem about how the Word of God became flesh and lived among us. And now, after Jesus has been baptized and called his disciples, the first act of his ministry is not to heal someone or cast out a demon or preach in the temple (as in the other Gospels). Jesus’ inaugural event is to provide wine for a wedding feast.

In those times, weddings were large, multi-day events. Clean drinking water was scarce and so the provision of adequate wine to one’s guests was a key marker of being a good host. Running out of wine was bad, shameful. The fact that this couple ran short of wine suggests they were poor and lacked social support—since guests often brought contributions of food and wine to share. So Jesus’ intervention supported a couple struggling with scarce resources, ensuring their celebration was abundant and generating social capital for their future.

In those days, it was not customary for everyone to drink the same wine at a party. Depending on their social status, some guests would receive the good wine, while others had to drink the cheap stuff mixed with vinegar and water.[1] The amount of wine Jesus makes is astonishing—somewhere between 120 and 150 gallons. The steward comments on the fact that it’s good quality wine. The best wine has been saved for last, and there’s plenty for everyone and anyone. In this act that defies all social norms, the Party Jesus is revealed to us. This event, positioned at the outset of John’s Gospel, is meant to signal to the reader that abundant, equitable hospitality will be a central concern of Jesus’ ministry.

As we honor the legacy of Dr. King this weekend, I find myself reflecting on a speech he gave titled Where Do We Go from Here?” We heard a brief excerpt as one of our readings this morning, a passage about the necessity of binding together love and power in the work of justice. The speech is essentially a progress report to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, delivered in the last year of his life. In it, he sums up the fruits of ten years of painstaking organizing that followed the watershed moment of the Montgomery Bus Boycott—the multitudes of campaigns aimed at ending segregation and creating better economic conditions for African Americans. He describes dozens of occasions in which ordinary people exerted non-violent pressure on corporations and political leaders, and got what they asked for. 

Power properly understood, is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. Walter Reuther defined power one day. He said, “Power is the ability of a labor union like UAW to make the most powerful corporation in the world, General Motors, say, ‘Yes’ when it wants to say ‘No.’ That’s power.”[2]

I hear that a flood of executive orders will fly from the pen of our new president tomorrow—on such topics as the border and immigration, school gender policies, vaccine mandates, and the environment. The aim of this power ploy is to provoke fear and pit people against each other. We may be tempted to react with rage, or rush around in a panic, or collapse in apathy. It strikes me that instead, we are being called in this moment to practice hospitality. This story of the wedding at Cana suggests that hospitality is about rearranging material and spiritual conditions in order to make space for all to thrive. And what I hear in Dr. King’s speech is the incredible impact that organizing makes when it is strategic about building and using power at the same time as it is deeply grounded in love, in concern for the well-being of everyone, even those whose politics we disagree with, those we are being led to believe are our enemies and those who are holding power unjustly. What if instead growing enraged and despairing, we use our energy to create something? What if, in this season of harshness and meanness and bullying we dedicate ourselves to holding space for welcome, safety and inclusion?   

Despite all the incredibly impressive successes Dr. King enumerates in his speech, he also reminds his audience how far the nation has yet to go.

Now, in order to answer the question, “Where do we go from here?” which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one-half those of whites.  Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites.[3]

Dr. King goes on to argue that the work ahead includes organizing for a universal basic income, and for the dismantling of capitalism itself. He ends by drawing from another story in the Gospel of John, declaring that America must be born again, that our “whole structure must be changed.”  

There’s a widespread perception that the Old Testament portrays a God of wrath, while the New Testament offers a God of love. That’s a false and dangerous idea, as we can see in the rich interplay between our Gospel story and the visions of Hebrew scripture. The truth is that Jesus was the embodiment of his ancestors’ best material. Weddings and wine are central in the Jewish imagination, in the prophets’ consistent depiction of a time of restoration when God’s people will be made whole. For example, in the book of Amos (9:11–15) God says, “on that day I will raise up the booth of David that is fallen, and repair its breaches and raise up its ruins. . . . The mountains shall drip sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.” The prophet Joel (3:13, 18) uses very similar imagery, evoking a landscape flowing with abundant wine, milk and water. This vision of hospitality is not only for Israel, however. God’s chosen people are meant to be conduits of God’s blessing to the whole world. The book of Isaiah declares the inauguration of a new global economy rooted in gift-giving and sharing: “Ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come buy and eat! Come buy wine and milk without money and without price!” 

Miriame Kaba, an activist and educator whose work focuses on ending the prison industrial complex, urges us to take a long view in their book, We Do This ‘Til We Free Us:

How much hubris must we have to think that we, as individuals, will have all the answers for generations’ worth of harm built by millions and millions of people? It’s like I’m on a five-hundred-year clock right now. I’m right here knowing that we’ve got a hell of a long time before we’re going to see the end. Right now, all we’re doing as organizers is creating the conditions that will allow our collective vision to take hold and grow.

I find this perspective both humbling and reassuring.

Did you notice that Jesus’ act of providing wine for the wedding is not presented as a miracle that provokes widespread amazement? It’s almost a secret. Only the servants and Jesus’ disciples know who provided the wine. The steward doesn’t know. The couple doesn’t know. The guests don’t know. What Jesus did at the wedding was only the beginning of the party, only the first delicious taste of the divine banquet of love and justice that is being spread among us. It is a sign that points beyond itself, points toward a future time when society will be born again, born anew, through the gift of divine hospitality. Amen.


[1] https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/second-sunday-after-epiphany-3/commentary-on-john-21-11-5

[2] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here

[3] https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/where-do-we-go-here