In October, 2000 a good friend called and asked if I would lead a men’s retreat at his Presbyterian church - in San Francisco.  It took me all of five or six seconds to say yes and then figure out how to make it work on the calendar.  Nancy was able to make the trip with me and we took an extra day to tour the wine country, specifically the Sonoma valley.  Northern California was like no other place I’d ever seen; in the fall it was simply spectacular. 

Of course, as you tour the wine country, you can stop at the vineyards along the way and, if you’re a Baptist, you get to enjoy . . . watching the grapes grow.  Then again, if you haven’t told anyone you’re a Baptist, there are other options.  They actually let you taste the grapes, after they’ve mashed them and let them sit around for a while.  When we went into our first mashed grapes tasting room, I was surprised to discover that there was a little room off to the side with a sign over the door that read, “Baptists Only.”  I figured that was where they served the warm milk but curiosity got the better of me and I said to the proprietor, “I happen to be a Baptist.  I’m just curious, what’s that room for Baptists only about.”  He said, “It’s for our Baptist friends who happen to stop by.  They can go in there and taste the wine and, in case any other Baptists happen to stop by at the same time, they won’t have to speak to each other.”

It’s actually a rather remarkable process, wine making.  Aside from the time it takes to grow the grapes, depending on the particular vintage, several weeks and even months are consumed fermenting and producing the final product.  That is, unless you are Jesus.  Then, all it takes is the time to fill a jar with water and serve it back again as your own personal vintage, the Jesus vintage.  It was at a party, a wedding party to be specific, that the disciples got their first taste, if you will, of what Jesus could do.  The Jesus vintage changed their lives forever.  It also set the stage for all that Jesus would spend the next three years of his life doing, having a transforming affect on whoever and whatever he touched.  If we are going to take a walk with Jesus, our next step will take us to a wedding reception, and not to the Baptist room off to the side, either. 

If you haven’t noticed, we never have spent much time at this party.  Why is that?  Why are we in such a rush?

Maybe for some of us it’s because turning water into wine is no big deal; it’s not hard to believe.  We’d rather get on to the stories about Jesus walking on water or making dead men walk again.  Frankly, once you’ve stood at the foot of the Grand Tetons or you’ve heard your firstborn’s first cry or you’ve stood in awe of a West Texas sunset, turning water into wine is no big deal.  For God to grow a mountain out of the prairie, weave a baby together in her mother’s womb or make the sun rise and set with split-second precision for millennia, well, turning water into wine is all in a day’s work. 

In fact, water is being turned into wine all the time.  In the Sonoma and Napa Valleys of northern California and the historic vineyards of Italy and France, it’s been happening for generations.  What makes this wedding party wine in Galilee a miracle is the timing.  A miracle, by definition, happens any time God suspends the routine laws of nature in order to accomplish something that would otherwise not happen.  Like, walking on water or making a dead man walk, or turning water into wine in seconds instead of months. 

Getting a better parking place at a busy mall on Saturday is not a miracle.  Getting a new job after being unemployed for months or passing a final exam when you didn’t deserve it or getting accepted to your college of first choice aren’t truly miracles.  Rain finally coming after months of drought or the temperatures finally falling below eighty in January or having more money at the end of the month instead of the other way around aren’t truly miracles.  Those certainly are gifts of God.  But, only when God suspends the laws of nature in order to reveal his divine nature to mortal man is whatever happens truly a miracle.  As the scripture says, by turning the water into wine, Jesus “revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

He “revealed his glory,” scripture says, his character, his nature, what he was capable of and willing to do.  It’d be worth it to spend some time at this party, don’t you think?  It’s hard for some to do that, to spend time at this party.  Why is that?  Back then, it was so hard for some that it laid the groundwork for justifying putting him to death.  Jesus made one of his first stops at a party and his accusers said, “‘Here is a glutton and drunkard (Matthew 11:18-19, NIV).’”  Why would Jesus risk being accused like that?  Maybe it’s partly because it’s not possible to lead someone to change unless you’ve climbed inside their world for a while.  Jesus must have believed that people’s worlds are changed from the inside out, like water turning to wine, it’s a process of transformation in which the very character of something becomes something it wouldn’t have naturally been on its own.  So, he took the risk and went to the party.  We’ve never been the same since.  But, just exactly what was Jesus trying to prove anyway?  What was he trying to reveal?

Let’s fast-forward for just a moment.  Before this wedding couple would celebrate their third anniversary, Jesus would be murdered.  By now, at this point in his life, he knew it was coming.  He knew why it was necessary.  God had created man.  Man had sinned.  Man’s sin had brought death.  God intended life, not death.  So, he sent his son to bear the moral consequences of all sin for all men for all time.  In one moment, in one man, the spiritual debt of all people for all time would be paid when Jesus died.  Talk about a miracle!

Jesus would invite those who wanted that life to follow him, not just to believe in what he did, but to follow him, to live it out with their lives, too, right here and now.  Not to just get a pass on hell after they died, but to live out the ways of heaven on this earth while they were here.  He would call them to forgive others who sinned against them, to look at others as more than just objects of sexual lust, to make marriage commitments and then keep them for life, to go the extra mile when the law said we only had to go one, to give the person who asked for our coat the shirt off our back, too, to spend the resources of our lives feeding those who are hungry now instead of just insuring our own future financial security, to care for the orphan and the widow, to seek justice for those who have no access to the powers that be, to not seek revenge when wronged but to turn the other cheek and to never, ever pay back evil for evil, to never judge others in their moral failures but to first and foremost accept responsibility for our own, to not spend our energies worrying about accumulating wealth but to invest our wealth empowering others who never will have a chance just to survive otherwise. 

Like Billy Graham once said, it’s not the parts of the Bible I don’t understand that trouble me most.  There are plenty of those.  It’s the very few parts of the Bible I do understand that trouble me most.  How can I be that kind of person, the kind of person Jesus called me to be?  There is nothing, absolutely nothing, in our culture that reinforces living the Jesus life.  There is nothing in my nature that awakens in the morning begging for the opportunity to die to self.  Where does the power come from, the will, the drive, the intention, to live like Jesus called us to live, and die?

Since we last worshipped, Serghei Basarab, a Baptist pastor in Tajikistan, was martyred for his faithfulness to Jesus (“Baptist pastor martyred in Tajikistan, BWA says,” The Associated Baptist Press, January 15, 2004, Volume 04-04).”  While we were trying to figure out what a tithe would cost us this week before filling our pledge cards, Serghei signed his pledge with his very life’s blood.  Where does the power to move from counting what serving Jesus will cost in nickels and dimes to paying the price Serghei paid? 

Back to the wedding in Cana, to the first miraculous thing Jesus did to demonstrate who he was, what he was capable of and, in fact, what would be the hallmark of his earthly ministry.  He changed the ordinary into the extraordinary; he transformed one thing into something else in a way like no other could.  This is at least part of the meaning of that miracle, as I see it.  Jesus didn’t just come to insure our life after death, but to transform the way we live now, to change us from the inside out, to create in us and through us something that never would have naturally been otherwise.  Water to wine, the Jesus vintage.  We, those of us who take seriously the call of Christ, we are the Jesus vintage in this world, evidence of his eternal glory in this earthly moment.

At Becky’s funeral in Abilene yesterday I ran into an older pastor friend, H.B. Terry.  He’s 76 now, probably done more funerals in Taylor County than any other man alive.  I guess I learned as much about how to do funerals from H.B. Terry than anyone else, a skill I never knew I’d need as much as I do.  At the graveside he was asking about how it was going at Cliff Temple.  After I told him how glad I was to be here, H.B. said, “Things have sure changed since I was a pastor.  I’m glad I’m not a pastor anymore.  I don’t have what it takes to be a successful pastor in this day and time.”  And, in a moment of clarity that surprised even me, I said, “neither do I.”  By that confession I didn’t mean that I don’t have some knowledge and some skill.  It’s just that the further I go down this road with Jesus, I’ve discovered that knowledge and skill are one thing, power is another.  Knowledge and skill are his gifts to do his work.  Spiritual power, transforming, life-changing power, well, that’s a miracle.  Here’s the sobering truth.  Unless Jesus keeps doing in me every day something like changing water into wine, unless he keeps transforming me from the inside out by empowering my thoughts, my attitudes, my passions and my dreams to become his, I may discover what is like to go down in the books as a good pastor but miss altogether what it means to be the Jesus vintage in this world.

Do you hate your boss?  Do you wish your wife would leave, or you’d courage to leave your husband?  Are you sick and tired of being used like a piece of machinery by others whose only interest in you is how they can use you to get more for themselves?  Do you find yourself at the end of eighty-hour work weeks wondering how, if this is all life is about, you’ll make it to retirement with any measure of sanity?  Are you worried that yelling at your children has given way to more than just yelling and has finally become physical?  Is your life dominated by a sexual drive that drives you to unhealthy lifestyles that put you and those you love at risk?  Do you feel like you’re being sucked under in the quicksand of immorality, you know better, you just can’t do better?  Where does the power come from, not just the skill and knowledge, but the power, to finally find another way?

A good friend of mine just got back from taking a small group of college students on a mission trip to Haiti.  On the last day, they toured an orphanage in the poorest city in the Western hemisphere.  Room after room of orphans in cribs dying of AIDS, tuberculosis and malnutrition.  He said that, as you walk by the cribs, the children would grab onto you with adult-like strength, begging to be held.  His students were in tears as they went back to the hotel, got their gear and then went on to the airport to fly back to their hot showers and middle class world.  What troubled him most, he said, was that, when he got back to the States, he learned that our government is going to spend half a trillion dollars flying to Mars, when orphans ninety minutes from Miami are dying to be hugged.  “I don’t get it,” he said.  Some may mock his idealism.  But, he’s held orphans in Haiti, I haven’t. 

And, it’s easy to blame the government for its moral failings.  It’s easy to get angry, and I do, when I learn that the State of Texas, with all of its wealth, ranks 45^th in the United States, five from the bottom, in immunizing children from diseases we’ve already conquered.  It’s easy to get angry when I learn that our state government, with more resources at its disposal than most third world countries put together, dumped another 100,000 poverty level children out of the state sponsored health insurance program just this week.  It’s easy to get angry, and I do.  I’m like my friend, I don’t get it. 

But, then I remember the words of Jesus from the most troubling sermon I’ve ever heard, “‘Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?  How can you say to you brother, ‘Let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye?  You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will be able to see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye (Matthew 7:3-5, NIV).’”

Beyond the fact that we should never get angry at the government for not doing the job that really belongs, first, to the church, not to mention that we should never attempt to transform the government into an extension of the church, how can I judge in others what I give myself a pass for?  If I can walk by one homeless, hungry, cold person and excuse myself for passing by on the other side of the road because I’ve got a church to run, then what kind of church do I want?  Thanks for asking.

All I want is a church that keeps challenging me every day to be a disciple of Jesus, that keeps reminding me every day that I am the Jesus vintage in this world, evidence of his glory and his power to change lives.  All I want is a church that is always more interested in how it measures up against Jesus’ words than how it measures up against the size and stature of someone else’s idea of church.  I want a church that keeps asking the tough questions so we’ll find the Good answers.  I want a church that is more interested in literally living out Jesus’ way in this world than proving to others how much more we literally believe the Bible than anyone else.  I want a church where, whoever gathers here, no matter how many, their lives are changed and transformed from within by the power of God through Christ.  I want a church whose imagination is set on fire by these words, “‘No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him (1 Corinthians 2:9, NIV).’”  I want a church where God is changing water into wine, in us, and where we keep asking ourselves over and over again what it means to be the Jesus vintage in this world. 

Frankly, I think I’ve found that church, right here. 

How about you?