Blog Archives
Revealed His Glory: A sermon and worship service based on John 2
Revealed His Glory
John 2:1-11
† In Jesus Name†
May the grace of God help you realize the glory of God that is revealed to you as experience His glory, may you grow to do what He asks, and depend
Who saw the glory revealed?
As I studied the gospel reading this week, one phrase kept grabbing my
attention.
This miraculous sign at Cana in Galilee was the first time Jesus revealed his glory
This thought, that Jesus revealed His glory for the first time, just needed to be looked into, it needed to be meditated upon, and I think it is a key for us today.
There is a question that accompanies it though, something else we need to think through.
Here it is, “who was this glory revealed to?”
We are going to look at three different groups, those who experienced it, the servants who had done what He said, and the disciples who would grow in their faith and dependence upon Jesus, as they saw His glory revealed.
As we see and experience His glory, I pray we are changed even more dramatically that the wine was changed!
Experiencing it without seeing it
The first group is the “master of ceremonies” and the bridegroom, and probably most of the guests. They certainly experienced the miracle, yet they didn’t know where the wine had come from, they simply enjoyed the wine, and the fellowship it caused.
The master of ceremonies didn’t understand
it either, as he asks the logic of
serving the best, when people are drunk .
Yet that is part of the glory of God,
Even when we have been consuming the cheap stuff of the world, when we are tired and worn out, and even broken by
The world will do that, as it tempts us to believe we enjoy the cheap things it offers. Fame, pleasure, the things money can buy, or the security of having a solid financial portfolio, or our political party ascend in government.
These things are illusions, and like cheap wine, they will seem to satisfy for a moment. Compared to the glorious mercy and love of Jesus, they simply begin to fade away.
People encounter God’s glory all the time. But will they recognize it?
Will they see it in the hand of someone who comes to their aid, or their neighbor who tries to tell them about Jesus? Will they see God’s hand guiding them?
Will we recognize His presence, when we hear His word, will we realize His presence when we kneel here, when we
Or will we not discern His presence, and as Paul warns, and eat and drink judgment upon ourselves?
The servants
The second group to experience the glory of God, revealed in Christ, was the servants. They knew where the wine had come from, they played a role in the miracle’s occurrence.
Told by Mary to do what Jesus said, they did. I can’t imagine why they did, but they did!
Grabbing some huge stone pitchers, filling them with water, and then taking a ladle of it over to the master of ceremonies.
Seriously? Taking a ladle of water over, and …. A miracle happened…
I mean if that could happen, if water could
be turned to wine, what else could happen?
Could wine also be the blood of Christ?
Could a little round piece of bread also be His body?
Could we be transformed into the image of Christ?
The disciples depended on him
The glory of Jesus revealed in that miracle had the greatest effect on the last group.
They had only recently started hanging out
with the odd rabbi, scripture tells us just a day or so, just after Jesus
baptism. I am not sure they knew all
that much about him, but they were invited to the party with Jesus.
So they went.
They would have seen the interaction of Jesus with his mother, and with the
servants.
They surely would have sampled the wine and been amazed.
And scripture says they believed in Him.
Not believed in him like a mathematical fact, because the miracle defied all form of logic.
Miracles always do.
Believed in him, had faith in Him in a way that changed everything else in their lives.
That’s what truly seeing the glory of God revealed to us does,
It helps us see that we can and should depend on God.
We can toss aside every other thing that we would depend upon for joy, or the illusion of it, for we have found real joy! We have found real peace, knowing that God will provide what we need in life!
The disciples would do that, these men that would watch Jesus die, and then see Him, risen from the dead. They would experience the Holy Spirit, they would baptize thousands, and share every day in the body and blood Christ, as they prayed and fellowshipped with all that would be united to Jesus.
They believed in Jesus, for they had seen His glory revealed!
His glory revealed?
I need to make one thing clear. We need to define what it was that Jesus did
that revealed His glory.
Some may think it is transformation of water to wine, and that is, I have to
admit, a pretty cool miracle.
I think it is more than that though, it is the response of Jesus to those in
need, the response to a plea from His mother to come to their aid. To make sure the celebration of two becoming
one was not diminished.
Remember, a way for us to understand the love of Jesus for the church is the
true love between a husband and wife.
Ephesians 5 describes that so well, especially the mercy of Christ,
which sees us as holy and perfect and glorious.
We understand this miracle in view of that,
and we realize that He loves us in the same exact way. That Jesus will transform us, just as He
transformed the water.
Even as His glory is revealed through scripture now, and when someone was
baptized, and as we take and eat His body and drink His blood, in an under the bread
and wine.
Jesus loves you, and the glory you see I that love, and know in that mercy is
eternal.
And each day, the Spirit readies us for the final wedding feast, described
in Revelation
6 Then
I heard again what sounded like the shout of a vast crowd or the roar of mighty
ocean waves or the crash of loud thunder: “Praise the LORD! For the Lord our God, the Almighty, reigns. 7 Let us be glad and rejoice, and let us
give honor to him. For the time has come for the wedding feast of the Lamb, and
his bride has prepared herself. 8 She
has been given the finest of pure white linen to wear.” For the fine linen
represents the good deeds of God’s holy people. 9
And the angel said to me, “Write this: Blessed are those who
are invited to the wedding feast of the Lamb.” And he added, “These are true
words that come from God.”
Revelation 19:6-9 (NLT2)
And as those disciples were invited to the wedding feast in Cana, so you are invited to this wedding feast. For you, church, are His beloved.
And until that day, you dwell, your hearts and minds guarded by Jesus, in that inexpressible peace of God. AMEN!
Dealing With the 2 Steps Forward, Three Steps Back Life.
Devotional Thought of the Day:
6 I am confident of this, that the one who began a good work in you will continue to complete it until the day of Christ Jesus. Philippians 1:6 (NAB)
78 You don’t feel like doing anything and there is nothing you look forward to. It is like a dark cloud. Showers of sadness fell, and you experienced a strong sensation of being hemmed in. And, to crown it all, a despondency set in, which grew out of a more or less objective fact: you have been struggling for so many years…, and you are still so far behind, so far. All this is necessary, and God has things in hand. To attain gaudium cum pace—true peace and joy—we have to add to the conviction of our divine filiation, which fills us with optimism, the acknowledgement of our own personal weakness.
There are days like yesterday when I feel like my faith, which took two steps forward the day before, takes three or four steps back.
Sometimes this is caused by my own sin, sometimes by the sins I have to help people find redemption from, sometimes from sin I see or hear about, but am not in the position to help people with, (and sometimes I do not want to) and sometimes it is something that just challenges my faith, like my 46 year battle with my health. Some days are a perfect storm of all of the above, and I struggle to see God,
Sometimes, I do not want to.
My bet is that I am not alone
I think we all have those dark nights of the soul, those moments where we aren’t certain about God helping us, caring about us. We are so overwhelmed, so broken that we doubt his existence, if we bother to think about Him at all.
These are difficult days, it takes an enormous effort to think of God, to not run to something else to console or comfort or distract from the despair.
St. Josemaria talks of adding to the conviction of divine filiation, to put it in our terms, our dependence on God’s love for us, and loving Him in return. I am not going to say this is easy, for it requires us to look away from what is troubling us, and hear His voice, hear his promises, to know they are true. It’s not about our personal strength growing, but our dependence and awareness of His strength, His faithfulness. To see them as a measure of His love, His care, His work. The way we add to our conviction of His love is to hear it, and experience it through His word, through prayer, through the Sacraments. For all point to that day Paul tells the church in Ephesus is coming, the day when all is finished, all is complete.
A work that will be completed, a work that will be finished, a work that draws us into Him, into His eternity. This is our hope, this is our faith, in a God that comes to us, that we might come to Him. AMEN
Escriva, Josemaria. Furrow (Kindle Locations 547-552). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Will We Treat God Then, the Way We Do Now?
Devotional Thought of the Day:
17 Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. 18 And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should, how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. 19 May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God. Ephesians 3:17-19 (NLT)
16 Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the LORD is in this place, and I wasn’t even aware of it!” 17 But he was also afraid and said, “What an awesome place this is! It is none other than the house of God, the very gateway to heaven!” Genesis 28:16-17 (NLT)
2 Just as the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the LORD surrounds his people, both now and forever. Psalm 125:2 (NLT)
470 Our Lord sent out his disciples to preach, and when they came back he gathered them together and invited them to go with him to a desert place where they could rest… What marvellous things Jesus would ask them and tell them! Well, the Gospel is always relevant to the present day. (1)
Last night, as we studied the passage we are preaching on this week I began thinking of the question that is the title of this post. I meet with several guys and we work together on the Bible passage for this week, which was talking about the struggles in this life are nothing compared to the glory that is awaiting us. It also talks about the presence of the Holy Spirit being the foretaste of that glory. This morning, my devotional readings included all three passages above, further fueling the thoughts and the need to meditate on this – and share it here.
We have the Spirit of God dwelling in us, therefore the places we stand and sit, as plain and simple as they are, are holy ground. But do we realize it? Do we realize that God surrounds us, His people – now and forever, Do we realize that as God makes His home in us, as we come to know the measure of His love, may we begin to really live?
Will we rest in Christ, and find the peace our souls depend upon, even as our bodies depend on food? Will we struggle with the concept of an incarnate God in our lives? Will we learn to depend upon His presence the way we depend on oxygen in the air we breathe?
A way to ask that is the title – do we expect to treat God in heaven the way we do now?
Will we forget about His presence, will we do what we want, will we go days without thinking of Him, talking to Him, hearing His voice as we meditate on His word? Will we keep Him at a distance, fighting with others for the furthest row from His presence? Or will will be in awe of the glory He shares with us? Will we run to Him, will we rejoice as He welcomed us, His children, into His presence?
Will our relationship change, and if so, why isn’t it changing already?
Look again at the above readings, what will change about the relationship, except perhaps that what we know, will also be what we see?
I pray that we would enjoy the presence of the Holy Spirit and the Love of God, that we are in awe at the thought of eternity with Him!
Godspeed!
(1) Escriva, Josemaria (2011-01-31). Furrow (Kindle Locations 2066-2069). Scepter Publishers. Kindle Edition.
