Let us pray: O God, may the words which I speak and the thoughts and actions that these words inspire be faithful to you and may they be to your glory. Amen.

    Whenever I read or hear the story of the wedding at Cana I wonder how my tea totalling ancestors reacted to the story. I know that for the ones I knew, they would very much ascribe to the idea of the abundance of God - that would never be in doubt, but I wonder how they explained the fact that in John’s gospel, the very first public act of Jesus was to make a wedding party quite a bit less dry!

    It’s not that I don’t share some of their concerns. There is no doubt that the consumption of alcohol can be a big problem, as attested by story upon story of the way it has ruined and taken lives. I’m sure these are not limited to modern day happenings. A very quick bible search revealed about sixty references to being drunk or a drunkard. And so, like my temperance leaning forebears, I wonder why Jesus couldn’t have picked another way to give a sign of things to come. But he didn’t.

    A possible solution, one that I turn to a lot, would be to say “everything in moderation”. That’s my own solution to the alcohol question, and in a lot of ways it makes sense. Prohibition creates its own problems, including its own economy. Allowing limits on acceptable use provides an opportunity to have just enough of a good thing.

    That would all be fine if that’s the way the story goes. You know, the wine was running out so Jesus created just enough extra to make sure that all the guests had enough for the toasts that follow the meal. But that’s not the way the story goes. Jesus didn’t practice in moderation. The wine was overflowing. Gallons and gallons of the stuff. And it wasn’t just the cheap stuff either.  The chief steward claimed that the best wine had been kept to the end.

    One might almost be tempted to wonder if Jesus was showing off. Except that I don’t see anything in the story to indicate that he wanted to take credit for the abundance of good wine. It was simply a behind the scenes solution to the current problem - a sign to those in the know, but a mystery to the rest.

    Let’s take that principle and apply it to the reading from Corinthians. Here Paul explains to the Christian community in Corinth that we are all gifted by God - one spirit, different gifts. What is your gift - the one which excites you, the one you enjoy doing, the one which can be a contribution to this community or other communities of which you are a part? Do you see it as a gift from God - and if not, then why not, and if so then what is preventing you from using that gift in abundance? Why would you want to limit the power and presence of God - as invested in you as a gift of the spirit? It’s not about bringing glory to yourself. It’s about using your gifts to bring glory to God - perhaps as a behind the scenes solution to a current problem.

    This week the news media - and not just the sports pages - was abuzz with the news that David Beckham was on his way to LA. Much of the reporting focussed on the astronomical amount of money he is being paid to make the move. Who needs $50 million a year over a five year period? I agree, but there is another side to this story. David Beckham, while perhaps not the best footballer (as they say in the “old country” of my ancestry) is certainly among the top five best known footballers in the world. It is a big thing to learn that he’s coming to North America, a place where the popularity of soccer has never quite reached the same level of support as it has in most other places on the earth. In one signature, the profile of soccer in North America has increased hugely. Soccer is an easy and inexpensive game to play. How many kids will be turned on to soccer because of this signing? How many steps will be taken in the prevention of childhood obesity will take place because a lot more kids are prompted to play soccer because they heard about David Beckham. We will never know the answer for sure, but I’m sure it will happen. Is it worth $250 million? Who knows, and admittedly the optics are pretty bad, in a world of starving children. I’ve never been one to speak out in favour of large salaries for men (because that is pretty much who it is) contracted to play games for a living in front of people required to pay way too much to watch them. That goes for sports commentators as well - I remember the outcry when a certain hockey analyst renewed his contract a few years ago.

    I guess what I would hope is that David Beckham and others like him would recognise that their particular talent is a gift from God. I don’t know what Beckham intends to do with the money. I’ll admit that I am often very skeptical of the very rich. I’ve also recently seen statistics about the philanthropic activities of people like Joan Kroc - of the MacDonald’s empire and Bill and Melinda Gates of the Gates foundation. These are people who really have put their money - in amounts we can’t even imagine - to use in making the world a better place. I recently read about Kroc’s anonymous support for flood victims in the American Midwest a few years ago. It was intended to be anonymous, but some enterprising reporters put some clues together and figured out who the mysterious and generous benefactor was.

    I am not so naive to think that everything and everyone is like this. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer in a general sense all around the world. But I need to be reminded that the quest for justice in this world is not something that I can simply pass off as a responsibility of the very rich to deal with. I also believe that the way our society is structured tends to nurture the idea of the self-made person - that we get to where we are by a combination of hard work, and intellect along with a certain measure of luck, and that by so doing we over emphasise the personal contribution to this so called success. When we over emphasise the personal, we underestimate the gift that underlies it all. We are who we are because we have been first of all gifted by God. It’s not to build up ourselves that we have been given talent and ability. It’s not to bring honour on ourselves that we have been given perseverance and dedication. It’s not to earn riches beyond our dreams that we have been born with minds to think and bodies to work.

    It is to bring honour to God and justice to God’s people that we have been given all of this. Like the wine at the wedding party it is overflowing. It is here among us. It is wrong to hide the talent and ability. It is not right to abandon the gifts of perseverance and dedication. It is false to play down our intellectual endeavours and abandon opportunities to work because we are too shy to get involved or too humble to flaunt what we’ve been given. It’s not about us. It’s about what God has given us to do.

    In the passage from Isaiah this morning we are told that we will never again be called Desolate. Instead we will be called “God’s delight”. Sometimes it is as simple as that. It’s not about us and what we can do. It’s about what God is doing in us. It’s about what we delight in as gift from God and to give glory to God. And I’m willing to bet that it is among us and in us in vast quantities and it’s not the cheap stuff. Amen.