In our passage today, Jesus performs the well-known miracle of transforming water into wine.  Not one to leave a symbol untouched, there are layers of symbols in this passage.

This miracle takes place at a wedding feast, perhaps paralleling the great feast mentioned in Isaiah atop God’s mountain.  He transforms the water normally used for cleansing in the Jewish purity rituals into something consumed for jubilation; perhaps symbolizing the transformation of traditions?  The miraculous wine is also the best, perhaps symbolizing the goodness of God’s kingdom.  The amount of water that is transformed is also excessive.  While many of us have grown up with the adage “Everything in moderation,”  There are many excesses in this passage, as it is with Jesus, as it may be in God’s kingdom.

This week, we will taste, sip, savour, and mull over this rich and full-bodied vintage shared by Jesus.

This Sunday is our memorial Sunday, Eternity Sunday.  The time of year when we pause and remember all who have passed away in the last year.  It is an important time for us to remember both our mortality and to be reassured of Jesus’ promise of eternal life.

The text chosen for this year is the story of Lazarus’ death and his subsequent resurrection.  Which picks up on those two themes, one we are all mortal and death comes for us at some point.  And, second, Jesus’ miracle of raising the, very, dead Lazarus from the grave, reminds us, and points us towards the promise of God’s Dream, where death is not an enemy, for it has been defeated.

Many have leaned on this passage as a reminder of Jesus’ presence, care and compassion when we endure the sting of death.  Jesus weeps with us. This passage is also highly personal, revealing a side of Jesus we often don’t see in scripture.  Jesus has a close relationship with Lazarus, so much so that, upon facing the reality of Lazarus’ death, Jesus weeps with grief.  This reflects the depth of Jesus’ care and compassion.  

We are reminded this week that death is a part of life, that in God’s Dream, death has been defanged, and that we do not face death alone, that in facing and revisiting death, Jesus is present and with us.

With all the injustice around us, one would be forgiven for wishing that God would do something in some grand show of power.  We would be forgiven for sitting with Elijah in a cave of despair, waiting for God’s grand entrance.  And we would be forgiven for presuming God’s silence in the face of injustice is ambivalence.

We have been trained by culture to expect spectacle.  Grand expressions of power.  And in our desire for spectacle, we’ve chosen entertainment over substance.  Headlines over journalism, show over leadership.  So what then do we make of God’s silence in this passage?

God’s silence in this passage isn’t inattentiveness; rather, it’s the opposite.  It’s in this silence that Elijah’s attention is captured.  Intuitively, Elijah knows, in this moment of silence, God will appear.

Like the freezing and thawing water that cracks boulders, like the steady, slow movement of glaciers which carve out mountains, or the invisible, slow growth of tree roots underground, that over time crack sidewalks, lift foundations, and stabilize entire ecosystems.  God’s silence is not inattentiveness.

God continues to be present and is acting, in quiet ways and in dramatic ways.  Even if we feel that nothing is happening, God is still up to something. Sometimes the most important things happen after a time of silence.

These early scriptures, as challenging as they may be, paint us a picture of how the early Hebrew people perceived God.  And in some cases, it reveals more about the early Hebrews than it does about God.  As we’ve traversed this story, we see how the God of the Hebrews differs from the other gods of the time.

In our creation story, we hear a story of a God who created.  In the story of the Binding of Isaac, we hear a story of how God does not desire child sacrifice.  In the story of Jacob and Esau, we hear a story of God who makes (and keeps) promises.

This week, our God gets a name, YHWH, the great ‘I am.’  And we hear more about what God has in mind for the Hebrews.  God has heard their cry, and God plans to liberate and deliver them to a place just for them.

Admittedly, reading this last part through 21st-century ears, it’s hard not to feel a bit uncomfortable, especially with the foreshadowing of the Hebrew occupation and colonization of unseeded lands.  And I suppose, that’s part of the challenge with reading the Old Testament, recognizing that 21st Century norms weren’t the norms then, and every story has a bias, with the Old Testament written with a bias which favours the Hebrew people, God’s people.

This said, I believe the story is more about God and who God is than the Hebrew people or their experience of God.  In this story, God provides an identity, something for the people to latch on to.  God also demonstrates the lengths God will go to see those people free.

This is a tough passage.  As a parent of a young child, I can barely conceive of God asking this of me.  So what are we to do with this passage?  I take a certain degree of comfort in knowing that we are not the first people to be troubled by this passage.  We are not the first people to wrestle with the meaning of this story and why it’s included in our scripture. 

From the beginning, we, the readers, are let into a little secret, that this is all a test.  But why is God testing Abraham?  And why is God testing Abraham in this way? For most of the narrative surrounding Abraham up to this point, was first that God will lead him to be the patriarch of many peoples, and second that Abraham, even in his aged state, will father a son.  So why is God so interested in taking this promised child away?

Perhaps this story isn't the story of a child sacrifice, perhaps it's about something else...

While we often attribute Genesis as our primary story of creation, the Bible contains multiple stories of creation.  So what sets these stories apart?  Why do we tell these stories?  We tell the story of creation because it tells us about who God is, what God longs for and it speaks to God’s relationship with humankind.  

We can easily get ‘caught in the weeds’ trying to figure the ‘how’ out of creation.  But what I believe is more important is the ‘why’ of creation.  God creates because God is a creator.  God delights in creation.  God’s creation story also tells us a bit about God’s longing for creation.  God’s creation is a peaceful creation, it stands out from other creation stories, in that it’s a generative creation, not one as a by product of violence.  It also speaks to God’s goal to return creation to this state of peace.  Finally God’s creation speaks to God’s particular and intimate relationship with God’s created, humankind, placing us ‘just a little lower than the angels’ and made in God’s ‘own image.’  It shows God’s particular affinity for humankind.

We tell the story of creation at the beginning, because it sets the stage for the larger drama of God’s story and our story.

The word Gospel comes from both the Greek and the Anglo-Saxon, in the Greek, it roughly translates to good news, however, in the Anglo-Saxon, godspell, it translates to good story.

Three questions emerged for me as I pondered the word Gospel.  First, what is the good story?  The Sunday School answer would be Jesus, but what is it about Jesus that is the good story?  As followers of Jesus, we do believe that there is a good story in Jesus' life, teachings, death and resurrection.  So what is it?  

Second, how are we living this good story?  How is Jesus’ good story making a difference in our lives and how we live?  As Anabaptist Mennonites we believe that this good story has implications for how we live our lives.  So how are we embodying this good story each and every day?

And lastly, how are we telling or sharing the good story?  This is better known as evangelism.  Yet, another word with baggage.  Evangelism shares the same root word as “good news,” and literally means sharing the good story. So how is this story being shared? 

God’s good story is embodied by Jesus, and makes a difference in our lives, so we can share it with the world.

American Evangelicalism would tell us that we need to be saved.  And many of the late 20th-century revival meetings were focused on doing just that: ‘saving souls for Jesus.’  Something that has always troubled me in this line of thinking was the unanswered question, ‘saved from what?’

The common, assumed answer is that we are to be saved from eternal damnation, from hell.  More philosophically, we could say that we are saved from being separated from God (eternally). But what if salvation means something else, something altogether different?  

What if salvation isn’t about being saved from something? What if, instead, it’s about being healed and restored?  The question then changes, healed to what?  Restored to what?  Redeemed to what?

Jesus' salvific act on the cross, I believe, is more about drawing us in and towards God, rather than preventing us from going to the Bad place.  Rather than moving from, we’re moving towards something.  Rather than escaping, we’re striving for.  It’s a little distinction, but it makes a difference.  It’s about restoring, redeeming and reclaiming humankind as the Good creation that we are. 

“Who do you say that I am?” Is the question that Jesus poses to his followers after hearing what the crowds are saying about him?  This question is as relevant today as it was then.  Who do we say that Jesus is?

For some, Jesus is a teacher, a moral guide, or an ethicist.  For others, Jesus is divine; the Son of God.  As Anabaptist/Mennonites, we confess that Jesus is both fully human and fully divine.  And so we might use words like Saviour, Redeemer, Lord to talk about Jesus.  What do we mean when we talk about Jesus today?  Who is it that we’re imagining?

Like God and like each person, Jesus has many different sides to their personality.  When we focus on one at the expense of another, we lose important pieces of the picture.  This reflection will explore some of the essential facets of Jesus, whom we confess as Lord.