Sermon: Glory Broke Out

Scripture Text: John 2:1-11

Quotes for Reflection

Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places
You would think that believing that Jesus is God among us would be the hardest thing. It is not. It turns out that the hardest thing is to believe that God's work--this dazzling creation, this astonishing salvation, this cascade of blessings--is all being worked out in and under the conditions of our humanity: at picnics and around dinner tables, in conversations and while walking along roads, in puzzled questions and homely stories, with blind beggars and suppurating lepers, at weddings and funerals. Everything that Jesus does and says takes place within the limits of our humanity. No fireworks. No special effects. Yes, there are miracles, plenty of them. But because for the most part they are so much a part of the fabric of everyday life, very few notice. The miraculousness of miracle is obscured by the familiarity of the setting, the ordinariness of the people involved.

Tish Harrison Warren, Liturgy of the Ordinary: Sacred Practices in Everyday Life
The new life into which we are baptized is lived out in days, hours, and minutes. God is forming us into a new people. And the place of that formation is in the small moments of today.

Gerard Manley Hopkins, As Kingfishers Catch Fire
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves — goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying Whát I dó is me: for that I came.

I say móre: the just man justices;
Keeps grace: thát keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is —
Chríst — for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father through the features of men's faces.

Application Questions

1. What does the story of the Wedding at Cana reveal about God?

2. What do you make of the fact that Jesus didn't announce the miracle to the entire wedding party? What implication does this have, if any, for our life and worship?

3. What are some normal, mundane activities that seem trivial to us where God might be actively forming us and others through us?