Human Relations Sunday January 17, 2010 "Stories of Fermentation" Reverend Michael D. Powell John 2:1-11

We always celebrate Human Relations Day on the Sunday before Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, and our scripture this morning is the story of Jesus’ turning water to wine at the wedding of Cana. I love the challenge of drawing together seemingly disparate themes!

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail that I read at the opening of worship underscores the necessity for a radical transformation that begins with the agitation of the Holy Spirit, and carries over into every aspect of how we relate to one another as individuals and as a society. Wine is a symbol of the Holy Spirit, and it is made by a process of fermentation, which involves living yeast cells. Fermentation is a synonym for that agitation Martin Luther King, Jr. was talking about. The struggle for Civil and Human Rights involves great ferment and agitation but, ultimately, the goal is a spiritual relationship of love and respect, a wedding, if you will.

There are three symbols of Epiphany, the manifestation of the power of God as it appeared in Jesus Christ. First we talked about the epiphany to the magi. Last week we talked about the epiphany that occurred at Jesus’ baptism. This morning’s epiphany is of his first miracle of turning water into wine.

There are six stone jars, and they’re empty. Seven was considered to be the number of perfection, and six was a symbol of inadequacy. The stone jars were used for the old ritual of purification, but that ritual has come up empty. The message here is about the inadequacy of the old law to bring about true and lasting spiritual transformation. Laws are a beginning, but the letter of the law is limited. It takes the power of the Holy Spirit to bring about the transforming union of lives and hearts. The new wine that Jesus provides is a symbol of life and fermentation, of the expanding and ever overflowing abundance of God’s grace. The wedding is an obvious symbol of loving union with the divine, celebrated with the familiar image of a heavenly banquet.

The wedding at Cana, and the transforming power of Jesus to work miracles, is simply a prototype, a model of what God is continually doing in your life, in mine, and in the life of all humanity. It’s about agitation and fermentation. It’s about hope and promise. It’s about the miracle of transformation in Human Relationships.

We all have our stories - stories of those times when the ordinary water of our daily lives has been miraculously transformed into the rich new wine of loving relationships. These are the stories that give us hope and make life worth living. They are stories that are stronger than death.

One of my most treasured stories begins in a Lincoln City Laundromat in the summer of 1975. I’d graduated from seminary several years before and at this point in my life I was deeply in the closet, religiously avoiding telling anyone about my past. Anni and I were both doing glass art to nourish our souls, and working at Salishan Lodge to pay the rent.

I was doing the laundry one night when I noticed a girl, probably 17 or 18 years old, sitting cross legged on a dryer, rolling a cigarette from her box of Bugler Boy tobacco. We started talking and she told me she was a saint. I said, “I’ve never met a saint before.” She said, “I live with a whole house full of saints!” I was hooked, so I followed her down the road, past Mo’s Chowder House in Taft, to a house at the end of the road, right on the banks of the bay. The house was full of musicians. It turns out they were a commune of self-described Jesus Freaks who spent their time playing music and doing Bible studies. I became friends with them and starting hanging out a bit.

A friend from seminary came to visit that summer and we were talking about Jesus. A woman named Deb, who had no idea I’d gone to seminary, overheard our conversation and asked, “What are you guys talking about?” We told her we were just taking about school stuff, and she said, “Well, what kind of a school did you go to, anyway?” She was the first one I “came out” to on the Oregon Coast. She asked if I could perform a wedding for her sister, Kathy. So I went to the courthouse, registered my credentials, and began meeting with Kathy and her fiancé, John, planning my first wedding ever.

“I think I know where I can get a band,” I told them. It was time. I went to the Jesus freaks and confessed, “I’m a seminary graduate, ordained in the United Methodist Church, and I’ve been asked to marry a couple. What would you charge for playing a wedding?” “Praise God,” they said. “We’ll do it for the love of Jesus.” The word started spreading around Salishan and one day a woman in the office asked me, “How can you do a wedding? What are you, the captain of a ship?”

On the day of the wedding we loaded an old upright piano into the back of a pickup truck and one of the buys sat there playing it as a caravan of cars wound its way up ten miles of rocky road to the wedding site on the banks of the Siletz River. John wore a black tux and looked sophisticated with his big handlebar mustache and a pony tail down to the middle of his back. Kathy was beautiful in white, and the band played perfectly. I used the traditional prayer book liturgy, asking Christ to bless their marriage, “as he did at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.” John’s father was a full blooded Italian from Sicily and it took me awhile to understand his broken English when he made a joke about turning the water into wine.

That was 35 years ago. John and Kathy went on to become respected members of the business community in Lincoln City. Ten years after their wedding we returned to do a blessing of their new print shop, and we gathered together in a park with family and friends to do a renewal of their vows.

In August of ’99 we traveled again to Lincoln city, this time to perform their son, Noah’s wedding on the beach. A few years later I did another wedding on the beach, this time for their daughter, Shae. All of these celebrations, of course, are recorded in pictures.

We also have a treasured photo of Kathy and Anni together. They’re both smiling broadly, and their heads are shaved, each of them in the midst of chemotherapy treatments. In July of 2004 we travelled to Lincoln City once again, where I did Kathy’s memorial service after she died of ovarian cancer.

Our special relationship with the LoBello family is a story of ever changing, fermenting life and death. It’s also a story of transformation and of hope. Last August I had the honor of performing yet another wedding, this time for their youngest daughter, Golda. One of these days, I’m hoping to do a baptism or two, and maybe even another wedding! And, God only knows, there may very well be another funeral someday. But, if so, that won’t be the end. Life goes on. God is continually turning our water into wine, fermenting, transforming, and making all things news. Thanks be to God. Amen.