500 word sermon for a wedding - As God turns water into wine, we learn to walk on water

The following sermon was preached in English and in French at the wonderful wedding in Dardagny of Nicolas and Susan - avec mes excuses aux lecteurs/lectrices francophones - la version française n'existe pas par écrit.

As God turns water into wine, we learn to walk on water

There’s an expression in French which I like: “la vie quotidienne” – somehow when you translate it into English it doesn’t have quite the same ring – “everyday life”

- in our everyday life we don’t expect miracles
- in our everyday life people don’t walk on water
- in everyday life water isn’t turned in to wine.

(Though I have to say that when people learn that I’m a pastor I often get remarks like “Oh good does that mean you can turn water into wine for us?”)

The water Jesus turns into wine was water for the everyday purpose of ritual purification. It is ordinary water – in those days it was ordinary to be religious not extraordinary – and it became miraculous, wonderful delicious wine.

Water is essential for life
Jesus takes this everyday essential element
And makes it more essential
As wine it speaks not only of thirst that is quenched
But of joy, of the deeper more profound things in life,
it speaks of covenant, of time, of maturity, of work and pain
and of love overcoming travail.

Nicolas and Susi
Perhaps you too do not expect miracles, even if this is not an everyday kind of day but an extraordinary one.
Yet in many ways a marriage is a miracle
- a miracle of love
- an everyday miracle.
Sometimes marriage really is like walking on water
At other times it may be like wading through muddy, turbulent stormy waters

But you have invited us to a miraculous place for your wedding
The vines in the vineyards all around us are not flowering like in the reading from the Song of Solomon but are already fruiting
All around us God’s good creation, tended by human hand, is turning water into wine.

As you make your covenant today
So God continues in covenant with you and with all of us
Turning the water of our everyday lives
Into the wine of deep commitment

This special, extraordinary day
which celebrates the everyday covenant of your marriage
speaks to us of eternity, of miracles
it helps us to commit ourselves once more to our everyday lives
helping us to walk on water
to swim against the tide
and to reconnect with the wondrous covenant of love and life.

There is a Jewish saying that a happy marriage is an even greater miracle than the parting of the red sea – not exactly walking on water but walking on liberating dry land between water.

Nicolas and Susan we wish you an extraordinary, ordinary life together,
We pray that it may be filled with the love, promise and support of God’s covenant.
All around us in our everyday lives God in Christ is turning water into wine
Encouraging you and all of us to
walk on water
dare to love
and drink that joyous wine which can speak to us of depth and eternity everyday of our lives.
We wish you an extraordinary, everyday life together.

Amen




copyright (c) Jane Stranz