Playing Our Part

Sometimes, you get a new and thought-proving take on sonething familiar from a place where you weren’t expecting it… though, if I’m being honest, I probably should not be surprised about this one.

In brief, I was at church years ago and heard a sermon about a very familiar reading from the Bible. Interestingly, while there is certainly a religious aspect to this post, I’ve actually found that the lessons I learned that day have been applicable to my broader life and so it seemed like a great basis for what to write about today.

The Bible story in question concerns the first public miracle that Jesus performs – turning water into wine at a wedding feast. To provide a little context, Jewish wedding at the time were multi-day affairs where friends and families did some serious partying. However, at this particular feast, they ran out of wine before the festivities are over which is hugely embarrassing (imagine not having champagne for your New Years Eve party or forgetting the turkey on Thanksgiving). It was that big of a deal.

This story is set before Jesus has really started his public ministry so he’s just another guest at this party. His mom is also there and, knowing who Jesus really is and what he’s capable of, she tells him to do something about the situation. After an amusing mother/son exchange, Jesus calls the servers over and instructs them to fill six giant stone water jugs, each holding between 20 – 30 gallons. Keep in mind, there’s no indoor plumbing and so the servants have to make countless trips to a local well to do what Jesus asks. Once that was done, Jesus then performs his first public miracle and changes the water into wine and the celebration continues.

Again, I’ve heard this reading all my life but what this sermon made me consider for the first time was what those servants had to go through. When they really need wine, this guy Jesus tells them to go fetch 120+ gallons of water… which not only seems pointless but it’s going to take forever since they have to haul the water in by hand, making lots of trips using buckets. Putting myself in their place for a moment, I could easily envision a lot of grumbling going on. But then the miracle happens and – somehow – this water gets transformed into the best wine anyone has ever tasted.

Our parish priest then made two observations which, now obvious, still brought me up short. First, he said, there are times when we are asked to do something that doesn’t make a lot of sense and may seem to be a waste of time. Assuming we agree to do it, we might be understandably unhappy about it and grumbling the whole time. But then something amazing happens as a result that was completely unexpected. That got me thinking about lots of seemingly useless work I was asked to do over the years and realizing that, if I was honest, there was often a point to it.

Then our priest made his second point – that sometimes these “miracles” can be for the benefit of someone else. And that stopped me cold.

How often are we placed in a situation where we have an opportunity to do something that we know is right, or at least is something that we’ve been asked to do. And how often do we willingly jump in and do it? Hopefully often but I know from my own life that it’s probably not as often as it could be.

I don’t want to be preachy here but this sermon has helped me many times over the year to put my challenges in perspective especially when I feel frustrated and don’t see the value in what I’m doing. I’ve come back to this as a way to remind myself that I am not always aware of the larger picture or of what my efforts are contributing towards… but if I permit some faith to creep in, it helps me to offer up what I’m doing in the hopes that it will benefit someone – myself, my friends or family or maybe even a complete stranger.

Know that I’m pulling for you.