A priest loaded up the minivan with his kids, buckets and spades, rugs, towels and a picnic and began the fifty mile drive to the seaside for a family day out.  One thing the absent-minded priest had forgotten to do, however, was check the fuel gauge.  Half an hour into the trip the van spluttered and coughed and the engine cut out.  It was then that the priest looked at the fuel gauge and realized what had happened.  Now thankfully there was a gas station about two hundred yards down the street.  But he had no container to collect any gas and bring it back to the car.  All they had in the car was the potty belonging to the youngest child.  So, the only thing he could do was take the potty to the gas station, fill it with gas, then pour it into the tank which was enough to the get the engine started again and he could drive the 200 yards to the gas station.  And so he got the potty, got the gas, was pouring it into the fuel tank of the van when one of his parishioners walked by and seeing this extraordinary vision called out, “Oh father, I wish I had your faith”.

Have you ever wondered what it must be like to perform a miracle?  Something so amazing that everyone stops and says ‘Wow”.  Like Jesus turning water into wine.  There’s a popular party piece.  I bet after this Jesus’ name was top of every guest list.  Now, you can’t get a more common and ordinary liquid than water.  It’s everywhere.  It’s essential for life and health, but one thing it isn’t is special or unusual.  You don’t celebrate with a glass of water, you celebrate with something has some flavor to it.  But, in the hands of the Master the ordinary becomes extraordinary.  The mundane becomes special.  Water becomes wine; and not just any old wine but, in this wedding reception in that we read about in the Gospel reading, the very best wine.

And it’s not just the water which started out John chapter 2 as ordinary and finished it special.  The village where it happened made the same change.  The place where this miracle occurred was Cana.  It was small and insignificant, stuck in the middle of nowhere.  It was ten miles from the Sea of Galilee and sixty miles from Jerusalem.  No one famous ever came from there and no one famous ever visited.  In fact Cana is never even mentioned in the Old Testament.   Yet, Jesus chooses this place to perform his first miracle.

Michelangelo was one of the world’s greatest ever sculptors.  He used to spend days at a quarry near Florence looking at the marble, examining it and imagining its possibilities.  Artists can see things that the rest of us don’t see.  And Michelangelo saw in those blocks of marble something else, another life form trying to get out.  When he purchased a block of marble and started his work of chipping away he saw himself as not so much creating something but freeing something.  The work of art was in there it just needed to be liberated from the surrounding pieces of marble.  And so he would chip away to produce the most amazing and life-like sculptures.   Someone once asked him how he could sculpt such a magnificent work of art as his famous Statue of David, he replied that you start with a block of marble then chip away everything that doesn't look like David.  That is the artist at work.  And that is the artist that God is.  He takes the hard, dead, unpromising, lifeless object and creates life in it.  He takes broken lives, people whom the rest of the world wouldn’t look twice at, but have dismissed as worthless and hopeless, and he turns those lives into something magnificent.

Now interestingly, this miracle of turning water into wine wasn’t the one and only amazing thing Jesus did in Cana.  Jesus didn’t just appear, perform the miracle and then disappear.  Cana gets another mention two chapters later, and again Jesus performs a miracle.  This time he heals the son of a royal official.  And it wasn’t just miracles.  Of all things, a disciple came from Cana – Nathanael.  So within the space of a few days Jesus had not only visited this insignificant place, he had performed two miracles, shown the villagers his power and glory, and called one of its inhabitants to follow him as one of his closest friends.  So, the people of this village, who could have been forgiven for thinking that God had forgotten them, discovered the wonderful truth that he had not.  He loved them, was concerned for them, and had a special place in his heart for this small, unimportant, ordinary village.  No more would they be in the shadows, feeling sorry for themselves.  From now on they knew they weren’t alone.  They had met God.

So, an ordinary substance (water) in an ordinary village (Cana) is transformed into something amazing that refreshes the spirits of all who receive it.

And the question I want to ask is this.  If God can show up in Cana, the why can’t he show up in Fremont?  And if he can turn up at the wedding of people whose names we don’t even know, then why can’t he turn up at St John’s Church?  We sometimes use that phrase ‘God-forsaken’.  This town or that country, or that state is a ‘God-forsaken place’.  Well, this story is the proof that there is nowhere that God has forsaken.  There is no place on this earth that he has rejected.  If Christ can come to Cana, then why can’t he come here?  If it’s true that God can and does show up in unspectacular places then it is also true that he can and does meet with individual men and women who don’t feel they can be touched by God.  And perhaps that describes you or me.  Do you feel insignificant?  Do you feel that God can’t or won’t choose you for his child?  Do you think that there is nothing special about you and God can’t use you?  Are you that block of marble that looks so unpromising and useless?  Well, again, if God can turn up in Cana then why can’t he turn up in your life?

Now as I prepared for this morning I felt it was important somehow to mention the appalling earthquake in Haiti.  And I prayerfully wondered whether this event in Cana has anything to say to those in such terrible suffering in that Caribbean nation.  And my first thought was, no, not really.  Cana was famous for nothing.  Haiti, however, is famous or rather infamous for its history of pain.  500 years ago the Spanish exploited the island of Hispaniola for its gold, killing or selling into slavery people who refused to work in the mines.  Europeans brought with them chronic infectious diseases such as smallpox that were new to the Caribbean, to which the indigenous population lacked immunity . The native Taíno people were essentially wiped out.  Under the French the country became a slave colony.  In the last 200 years Haiti has experienced 32 coups and endured a couple of the most murderous dictators of the 20^th Century.  It is one of the poorest nations in the Western hemisphere.  And so I wondered is it better to be known for nothing like Cana, or for suffering like Haiti.  A history of nothingness or a history of horror.  And now this unimaginable tragedy.  The mundane and the ordinary seem very attractive to compared with this catalogue of disaster.

Last Wednesday I was privileged to be present at a deeply moving event.  In the aftermath of the earthquake the Dean of Virginia Theological Seminary called the community to prayer and a Communion service.  Studying at VTS are three Haitian deacons in the Anglican Church.  These three young men took part in the service.  One read the Gospel reading in French from John 11 about the death and raising of Lazarus.  And one served me the chalice during the communion.  A few hours earlier one of those deacons lost three family members; another had lost two; and the third has not yet been able to discover the whereabouts of his parents. 

So would you rather be Cana or Haiti?  I’d rather be Cana.  And yet, the message to Cana and Haiti is the same.  The Jesus who turned water to wine is the same Christ who is the resurrection and the life.  He transformed plain, ordinary water into vintage wine.  Can he also change the unimaginable pain of Haiti into new life?  Can he turn mourning into dancing?  Can he truly wipe every tear from their eyes and turn their sorrow into joy?  Well, I don’t want to give simplistic answers and nice religious-sounding platitudes, but yes he can.  We know deep down that he can because many of us have gone through terrible bereavements and times of emotional and physical pain and we found that that same Christ was there, sitting beside us in our desolation and comforting us in our misery.  He gave many of us hope to go on when it would have been easier to curl up and die.  And we know it too because Jesus himself has experienced the worst that could be thrown at a human being.  He too has suffered deep, deep pain in body mind and spirit.  He wept at the graveside of his friend Lazarus.  And he went the way of the cross.  He knows what it’s like to survey the rubble and devastation, he has done it himself.  And let me say he doesn’t give smart answers about why bad things happen.  He doesn’t pronounce on the causes of natural disasters and he doesn’t declare human suffering to be God’s judgment upon people’s sins.  We have proof that he doesn’t.  One day when Jesus was living in Israel a tower in the village of Siloam fell down and killed eighteen people, and it was a big talking point.  And people were saying ‘it’s God’s judgment - those eighteen people were guilty of some terrible sins and God is punishing them for it’.  And Jesus talks about that belief.  He says in Luke 13, “Those eighteen who died when the Tower of Siloam fell on them, do you think they were more guilty than anyone else living in Jerusalem?  And those people from Galilee that Herod murdered, do you think that they were worse sinners than other Galileans?  No.”  He says.  That’s not the way God does things.  When it comes to guilt – think about your own not that of other people.

So where does that leave us?  Well, it’s been a sermon of two halves, but the same message.  Whatever need you have this morning Christ, who transformed water into wine is able to draw close to us.  Maybe, like those wedding guests in Cana life is bumping along OK.  You’re muddling through, no great issues, no problems to speak of.  But there’s something missing.  There’s a joy that’s just not there right now.  Something you can’t quite put your finger on, but life just seems to be a bit flat, a mediocre.  Well, like the guests at the wedding in Cana we too can experience a quality of celebration that comes only from God.  Or maybe your life is more akin to Haiti, torn apart by grief and pain.  And for you that same Christ can be our strength and keep our heads above water if we just let him draw close to us.  Let me finish with a wonderful snippet by Max Lucado, “So the thirsty come.  A ragged lot we are, bound together by broken dreams and collapsed promises.  Fortunes that were never made.  Families that were never built.  Promises that were never kept.  Wide-eyed children trapped in the basement of our own failures.  And we are very thirsty.  Not thirsty for fame, possessions, romance or passion.  We’ve drunk from these pools.  They are salt water in the desert.  They don’t quench, they kill.  Usually we get what we thirst for.  Thirst for righteousness.”