Believe in Him
Believe. Americans want to believe. You see it all the time in movies and on television. Books and songs preach it. Even, did I hear this right?, a black supermodel with a talk show says her purpose is to make people like themselves and believe in themselves. Just believe. Rely on yourself. Trust you can do what you want to do. Believe in me. Believe in you.
So you would think I’d have an easy job preaching today. But, no, that crazy Pastor Pieper is always out of step with this world, humming when everyone else is whistling, trying to get people to look to God for the answers when all they really want is to look to God for excuses, because they want to look to themselves for the answers. I’m not going to preach against believing. But I do want us all to believe in the right one. That completely trusting in yourself stuff can only go so far. It doesn’t necessarily make you a good person. Successful bank robbers believe in themselves. I can believe I can fly, but if I jump off the Grand Canyon flapping my arms, no matter how totally I have trusted in myself, it isn’t going to matter. No, there’s someone better to put our complete confidence in.
Believe in Him.
1.The powerful Son of God.
2.The caring Son of God.
It was early in Jesus’ ministry. Really early. He was just coming up from the south where he had been baptized by John. He had spent that forty days in the wilderness successfully defeating all the devil’s temptations. He had spent a little more time among John the Baptist’s disciples, calling his own disciples, and then he was on the road back up to Galilee, “the third day” coming to a wedding in Cana.
Now people have surmised that either the bride or groom were related to Jesus, and I think that’s a good supposition, because when Jesus arrives in town, they know him well enough to give him a quick invitation to the wedding, with his twelve disciples! Even in wealthy America, if you’ve got a guy crashing a wedding with his twelve buddies, they are not going to be well received! But they knew Jesus well enough to invite him and his disciples. Mary, Jesus’ mother, is busy behind the scenes in the kitchen, which is sort of a shirt-tail relative job, especially if the couple is poor, and from what we’ve seen of Jesus’ humble birth, the humblest of sacrifices (two young pigeons) if you looked up poor in a dictionary, there Jesus’ family and his relatives would be. And they are poor. Scarcely has the festivities got started, hardly has the opening toast been made (and drunk) than they were out of wine.
Mary comes to Jesus. “They have no wine.” Jesus replies, “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come.” It isn’t time for Jesus to do his public miracles yet. He hasn’t even preached a sermon or taught a lesson yet! But that Mary we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in those nativity scenes, Mary so meek, oh, Mary so mild, this woman has acquired a backbone of steel! She turns to the two helpers she has with her and tells them, “Whatever he tells you to do, you do it!”
Jesus looks around. There were standing around these big jars, just a little smaller than those Mexican pots we are accustomed to seeing in mansions. You know the kind, the people’s house is so big they get a kick out of showing how much space they can waste and still have plenty to spare, so as soon as you get into their home you see this big pot with an awful, dead ocotillo in it—those jars. There were six of them in the kitchen. Held about thirty gallons of water apiece. “Fill them up,” he tells the servants. They do, though for the life of them they don’t know why. Everybody has washed their hands already when they came into the wedding banquet. The dirty dishes were a long way off. “Now draw some out and take it to the master of ceremonies.”
Oh, my. What fools they were going to look like. Pouring out water into the wine cups. But Mary had told them to do whatever Jesus had told them to do, and maybe they didn’t want to find out whether her bite was worse than her bark. Out they went. They filled his glass while he’s chewing the fat with the bridegroom. Without a second look he puts the glass to his lips, takes a sip.
And he looks at the groom. “What gives? Everybody else, when the guests have had enough to drink, that’s when they bring out the rot-gut Mad Dog 20-20. But you have saved the best till now!”
And it wasn’t water any more. It was wine. Good wine. Great wine. And there was about 150 gallons of it still back in the kitchen. Far from being an excuse for sinful over-indulgence, everything went well and probably, the next day, later in the day out of respect for the privacy of the newlyweds, more than a few guests came by and asked, “About that wine yesterday, um, do you have any left over? We’d like to buy a gallon or so of it.” And when Jesus left town the young couple was getting a little bit of a nest egg together to start their new life.
And nobody knew where that wine had come from, except Jesus, Mary, the two servants, and his disciples. They knew a miracle had taken place.
Now, people do not understand miracles. They think miracles can convert unbelievers. My mother did not understand miracles. The bunch I hung around with when I was young—she’d say, “God’s going to have to strike Jamie Morley with lightning before he gets religion!” But I knew my friend Jamie wouldn’t get religion even if he were struck by lightning. If he got struck by lightning and lived, he’d say, “This is my lucky day! Let’s go downtown tonight and celebrate!”
No, miracles are designed to strengthen the faith of the believers and I can prove it. John concludes our text with these words. “This, the first of his signs, Jesus did at Cana in Galilee, and manifested his glory. And his disciples believed in him.”
The twelve already believed in Jesus, but now they believed in him even more. Their faith was strengthened. Their trust in Jesus was deepened. Can’t you see big Peter elbowing John in the ribs and telling him, “Didn’t I tell you Jesus was the Son of God? I knew it all along!”
And so it was. And that’s why the Holy Spirit has put these miracle accounts in the Bible for you and me to read and hear. We are believers. But it reminds us once again to believe in him, because Jesus is the powerful Son of God. Believe in him because Jesus is the caring Son of God.
Certainly we need no further proof to see Jesus’ power. For you and me to turn water into wine, we need a good spot of ground, grape vines, good weather, a good harvest and good luck with the yeast and the sugars in changing that grape juice we’ll squeeze out into wine. It will take about two years. If we’re lucky. It took Jesus a second. Bullies can push people around and get results. How long would you have to scream at the water cooler before it pumped out champagne?
Jesus can do what no one else can. So believe in him for the impossible, like sins forgiven, the resurrection of the body unto life eternal, a spot in heaven waiting for you. Believe in him for the impossible, like us leading a holy and decent life day after day on this earth, fighting against the sinful human nature, the Earl within us.
But the miracles also teach another lesson. Jesus is the caring Son of God. You know, if it was just a matter of tapping into the guy with the deepest pockets to help me with my financial woes, I’d go to Bill Gates. He could pay all my bills with about 90 seconds’ worth of the income he gets. But I’m not booking a plane for Seattle. Bill Gates doesn’t know me. Bill Gates doesn’t care about me. Bill Gates won’t help me.
But Jesus will, because Jesus cares.
He cared for this poor couple so much that he performed a miracle for them that their poverty would not cause them shame and embarrassment on what should be the happiest day of their lives. He cared for them so much that he made a lot of extra wine so they could make a few bucks off selling it to others and have a little financial foundation for the day after the wedding, when the realities of marriage start to sink in. He cared enough for his mother to do what she told him. He cared enough for his disciples to let them see what was going on behind the scenes.
The same Jesus who cared for that young couple cares for you. And he cares for me. He cared so much he hung from the cross to die for our sins and take upon himself the eternal punishment we had earned. If he can care that much, if he can do that much for us, can’t he find a way to get daily bread onto our kitchen tables? Can’t he, who broke open death’s tomb on Easter Sunday, find a way to reunite us with our loved ones in the life to come? Can’t he who healed the sick heal you and me, through the doctors and nurses, drugs and therapies he has provided? Can’t he who calmed the seas, keep natural and man-made disasters far from us?
You and I know the answer, because we have seen Jesus changing water into wine. He can help because he is the powerful Son of God. He will help because he is the caring Son of God. Believe in him.
About the Author
Rev. Don Pieper is a minister in the Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod. He has devoted his life to sharing the Gospel of Christ to all of Gods people. For more information about the Green Valley Evangelical Lutheran Church visit us at
www.gvelc.com or call 702-454-8979 .
Ask for Pastor Don or Pastor Matt.
