346 Changing Wine Into Water

   (Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Changing Wine Into Water”, originally shared on January 15, 2025. It was the 346^th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)

   Jesus turned water into wine. Are we doing just the opposite? Today, we’re going to find out.

   We aren’t near the fire areas, at least not yet, but we did have some excitement at our home on January 7^th, a week ago yesterday, on the first night of the Palisades fire.

   James was over for dinner and, afterwards, we went outside to get the mail and see if the recycling container had been emptied from the curb.

   The wind was howling east to west, and gusting so much so that I could barely stand up at times, and we joked that we should form a human chain.

   The waste hauler had just passed by, going into our cul-de-sac, and I asked James if that was dust coming off the truck, but it was clearly smoke.

   We walked down to the truck, found the driver, and asked if he thought the truck was on fire. He said yes. I asked him if he’d like me to call 911, and I did. I told him that he was welcome to come to our house if he needed to get indoors and told him where it was located, but I think that he misunderstood and, as James and I were walking back to our house, the driver drove the truck in reverse and around the corner in front of our trees!

   Flames were starting to come out of the hydraulics area behind the cab. I asked if he could pull the truck forward a few feet to get away from our trees but not block the entrance to the cul-de-sac or endanger our neighbor’s trees, which he did as the fire trucks arrived.

   Then more fire trucks came, and ten or so sheriffs’ vehicles to close off the street.

   The firefighters had the truck driver dump as much as he could, and they began fighting the fire.

   I pulled out a hose in the front of the house and watered the foliage near the fire and the roof above it to shield it from the embers every few minutes. James kept an eye on the side of the house.

   The firefighters used water, and then foam, on the recycling and then they set a ladder up the side of the truck behind the cab and fought the hydraulics fire. In the midst of near hurricane force winds, they put out the fire.

   A tow truck eventually came, and Sally made coffee for the driver. The trash truck was hauled away, and a crew came to clean up the mess. They finished a little after midnight.

   The neighbors were out during the firefight, talking and keeping an eye on things, and the firefighters and sheriffs did an outstanding job of not only fighting the fires but also of answering our questions and concerns. It was going to be a long night for all of them.

   We have lived here for 37 years, and this was the strongest winds and the most excitement we’ve seen. 😊  

   The winds aren’t over, but the cleanup and fireproofing has continued since the first night of the fires.

   We are very grateful and ask that you continue to pray for those who have experienced devastating losses elsewhere. Over 10,000 structures have been lost. Our bishop lost her home. A colleague lost his. The president of another colleague’s nearby congregation lost hers. I attended our synod’s Zoom meeting to discuss the response we will make to the devastation, and the pastor of Christ the Shepherd Lutheran Church in Altadena, where the Eaton fire is, the nearest fire to us, said that is looked like the church survived (she was still under mandatory evacuation) but that 80-85% of her church members have lost their homes.

   Sally and I went to mail a letter at a local post office on Monday and the woman behind the desk said that they had been visited all week by people changing their mail delivery address from Altadena to the homes of relatives in San Dimas.

   How can Christians respond to the fires that have devastated whole communities and put a deep mark on thousands and thousands of lives, many of which will remain upended for many months, maybe many years?

   The gospel reading that will be shared in the vast majority of churches throughout the world this coming Sunday gives us a clue, in John 2:1-11,

2 On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. ² Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. ³ When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” ⁴ And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” ⁵ His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” ⁶ Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. ⁷ Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. ⁸ He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. ⁹ When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom ¹⁰ and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” ¹¹ Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

   This was Jesus’s first miracle, and John is the only Gospel writer to record it.

   John often calls Jesus’ miracles “signs”. What do signs do? They point to something else. Jesus’ miracles weren’t suspensions of the laws of nature. They were signs that pointed to the way God intended the world to be from the beginning of Creation, and to the way it will be again when Jesus returns and ushers in a new heaven and a new earth. John reports that this “sign” revealed Jesus’ glory.

   The world we live in today is not the way it’s supposed to be. Evil entered the world when humans rebelled, and continue to rebel, against God (see Genesis 1 and 2 to understand why the world is the way is is).

   Evil like brush fires exists because of human rebellion against God. We rebelled. We are no longer in harmony with God or with one another, or with anything else in all of Creation, even with Creation itself.

   What’s our answer? What is God’s answer? It’s Jesus. On the cross. For you.

   Christians used to get a lot of flack for offering “thoughts and prayers”, as if it was the most practically ineffective thing people can do in the face of real need.

   Prayer is, in fact, one of the most meaningful things we can do, not because prayer changes things. It doesn’t. God changes things, and prayer is our acknowledgment of that.

   What do Christians have to offer? Sadly, today, at least in the Western world, including the United States, not much.

   People who call themselves Christians often offer the counterfeit religion, though possibly the most popular religion in the United States, of Moralistic, Therapeutic, Deism (Google it).

   We also often populate churches that are actually closed communities with an ingrown culture and language.

   We offer social service agencies that use religious language. We offer businesses that tell you what you want to hear, especially what you want to hear about yourself, and promise to make you successful or it’s your fault that you’re not. We offer bitterly nostalgic communities with legacy leadership longing for the past. We offer program churches where people can worship regularly and not understand the basics of what is being taught. At all.

   It has been very disappointing to me to encounter Christians who have attended worship services regularly for years, even decades, but who will encounter a calamity like death and reject the very things that could give them actual comfort because there is no actual faith, no living relationship with the one true living God, just a place-holder for their identity.

   I some ways, I believe, catastrophe is an amplifier of how we view the world. People with no faith ask, “How could a good God allow this to happen (particularly ‘to me’)? There is no good God” People who come into the same catastrophe with faith say, “I don’t know how I’d get through this without my faith.”

   As the Western world becomes increasingly secular, and our churches do little more than chase the acceptance that will never come, except on the world’s terms, we offer little to the world.

   We are now experts in turning wine into water.

   What can we do as the people of God?

   I tuned-in to our Synod Zoom meeting that asked that question recently, and it was, in my opinion, a microcosm of the mess we are in now. Too many leaders drifted, waiting for coordination. If an idea was offered the response was a classic creativity killer: “Would you be willing to be in charge of that?” Almost all the focus was on things that secular or specialized organizations are already doing and much better: food, clothing, shelter, mental health, information, resource sharing, logistics, and so on. 

   Someone did mention the possibility of offering chaplaincy in shelters, which is clergy-focused and already in place in some organizations.

   But there was very little focus on what we do best, what is the greatest need in the midst of disorder, and what we are called, equipped and sent to do.

   Christians live in two kingdoms. The kingdom of this world and the kingdom of God, and God reigns in both.

   Christians are serving and seeking to do God’s will in every aspect of the kingdom of this world.

   What is our contribution from the Church, the Body of Christ, the kingdom of God?

   First, to recognize that God works through some means in both kingdoms.

   I’ve often told the story of the guy who was sitting in his home one day when a Red Cross worker pounded on his door yelling, “The dam has broken. Get out! Get out now! We’ll help you.”

   The man replied, “Oh, thank you very much but I’m a Christian. I know that God will take care of me. I’ll be fine.” And the Red cross worker finally left and went on to the next house.

   The waters came and flooded the first floor of his house, so that he had to move up to the second floor. A guy in a rowboat came by and said, “Hop in, buddy. I’ll get you out of here.”

   “Oh, thank you,” the man said. “But I’m a Christian. I know that God won’t let anything harm me.” The man in the rowboat finally went on to other houses.

   The waters continued to rise, and the man had to crawl out onto his roof. A helicopter flew over and the crew spotted the man. They dropped a rope ladder and shouted, “Climb up and we’ll get you out of here. The waters are rising. This is your last chance!”.

   “Thanks for coming, but I’ll be fine. My faith is strong. I know God will take care of me,” the man shouted.

   The waters kept rising and pretty soon they rose over the house and over the man, and he drowned.

   When he arrived at the gates of heaven, dripping wet, he immediately demanded to be taken to the throne of Grace. “That’s kind of an unusual request but, OK.” St. Peter said.

   The man stomped through the throne room into God’s presence and whined, “You promised me! You said that you’d always be with me, no matter what. What happened?”

   “What do you mean,” God said. “I sent you a Red Cross worker, a rowboat and a helicopter.”

   God uses some means in a time of trouble in this world.

   Second, to bring a sense of perspective.

   Almost everyone I’ve seen interviewed on TV has said, “We’ve lost everything, but it’s just stuff. We are all alive, and that’s the only thing that matters.”

   The actor Mel Gibson had a further perspective on the same experience. He said, “I’ve been relieved from the burden of my stuff,” a reflection, I think, on the words of Jesus in Luke 12:15,

¹⁵ And he said to them, “Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions.”

   What is life? It’s what we have to offer the world in times of trouble. It is, as Jesus said in John 14:6,

⁶ Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

   Third, to name the Name of Jesus.

   Our hope does not come from within us, or from within our community. Our hope comes from outside of ourselves. It comes from Jesus, and He is already at work in the hearts of all affected by this current chaos. We just name the Name. No one else can do that but us, it is what we are best equipped to do. And we are not alone.

   We are in this rebellious world, but we are not of this world. We have been baptized. We belong to God. What do we bring to this chaos? Logos.

   “Chaos” is a Greek word that came to be an English word. The Greeks believed that the world is in a state of chaos, or disorder and confusion. “Logos” is a Greek word that means “The Word”. The Word brings order. At the beginning of the Gospel of John we hear Christianity’s answer to chaos in a text that is read every Christmas. It ends with John 1:14,

¹⁴ And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.

   Jesus restored at the cross the living relationship with the one true living God for which all things were created.

   I saw a story on KTLA-TV about a church in Altadena that held a high church worship service where members came together to worship as soon as the fires were somewhat under control. They said that they came because they just needed to be together. That is the Body of Christ, with Christ as the head of the body. That is an expression of our harmony with God.

   We offer worship, prayer meetings, Bible study for all ages, and time together in the presence of God.

   Martin Luther, the 16^th century Church reformer, wrote the hymn, “A Mighty Fortress is Our God”, on the basis of Psalm 46, which begins with Psalm 46:1,

¹    God is our refuge and strength,

a very present help in trouble.

   Where is God? God is present in this time of trouble.

   We may be prone to transforming the power to change lives through Jesus Christ into some bland imitation of life that reflects the world. We are changing wine into water. We are sinners.

   But Jesus has redeemed us, lost and condemned sinners, and opened the way to eternal life in the living relationship with the one true living God for which we were created.

   That is what we have to offer. That is what we say in a catastrophe: Jesus.

   He changes water into wine.