This morning I want to think about parties. Now I really liked parties when I was a child. I enjoyed the party games, the jelly and ice cream, the cake, seeing my friends and then as I got older replacing party games for dancing. Then came the parties with a smaller group of friends at home. Teenage parties a whole new world !
I remember going to friends birthday parties as a teenager and watching films that scared me, eating too much ice cream and being sick, I enjoyed organising parties. When I planned a party everything had to be perfect. At the age of 13 I read an article about sleep overs. It sounded great having your friends to stay the night, it couldn’t be any better.
I asked my parents and they agreed to let me have a sleep over. I invited 6 friends and started the preparations. I picked the music play list, got some videos, got some make up to experiment with and of course, every teenage girls dream - face masks ! It was a great time until …. One part of my planning fell apart.
It was getting late it was past 10:00 pm and no one wanted to go to sleep. Now I had not prepared for this, I have always needed my sleep and have a very special relationship with my bed. However, in all my planning I had failed to notice that the word “sleep” in sleep over is not actually a good indication of what you should expect to happen. I remember going into my parents room in tears begging my Mum to make my friends go to sleep !! They stayed my friends but sleep overs were a thing of the past !
In our gospel reading (John 2:1-11) this morning we heard about something that had been planned not going quite right. At a wedding they ran out of wine. This was a planning nightmare, running out of wine would suggest that the hosts of the wedding were not very hospitable, there was a problem that needed to be dealt with.
This was the first of Jesus’ miracles and in the gospel of John every miracle is called a sign. This is because in the miracle Jesus was showing a sign of who He was. In this case Jesus turned a bad situation into something amazing, as He turned water into wine.
Now as a popular miracle goes, that is very high up. I like the fact that Jesus showed His power in a way that helped people to enjoy life. Every one of the signs or miracles that Jesus did turned a bad situation into something good. Every miracle or sign showed something of who Jesus was and I think that it is not a small part of the story that Jesus was in a party and He made it better.
God likes to see people enjoying themselves, He is God who likes to party.
God as a God of parties makes sense to me. Parties are supposed to be happy occasions, and they usually are but they are also the times when both the best and worst things can happen. One of the things that the Gospel today tells us about God, and His ability to party is, that in every situation God is there.
I think life can seem like a party at times. The times when everything is going well. The times when we feel that God is on our side, the times when everything seems perfect.
At times like this it’s easy to praise God and to see that in life God is with us through the good times. In any party we celebrate good things and good moments. I think that the idea of having a party suggests happiness, and so when life is not so perfect when things are not going the way that we would expect, the idea of God being a God who likes parties can be unhelpful.
However, God is with us through the good times and the bad times. A party is a celebration and we have the best thing in the world to celebrate. The celebration of being made in God’s image and loved by Him.
This doesn’t mean that we always have to be happy. It does mean that we always have to remember that in all our hard times of life the one thing we can always celebrate and rely on, is God’s love for us and the fact that He wants the best for us.
In the gospel reading when Jesus turned water into wine He didn’t turn the water into cheap wine, but into wine that was so good no one had tasted any wine as good as that before. God is a God of quality. God isn’t just a God who likes to party He is a God who gives us the best, who gives us quality and quantity. Jesus filled the jars with the equivalent of 150 gallons of wine, from no wine to an overflow of wine, Jesus provided not just quality but quantity.
This is what He offers to all of us as well. God is one who offers us something more and something better.
God is a God who likes to party, God is a God who offers us the best and not in small amounts but bigger and better than we could ever imagine on our own.
The party of life, the celebration of God’s love is, like all good parties to be shared and reported upon to others. To the world around us, in despair, we can offer something so wonderful. We can share the joys and celebration that knowing the love of God can bring.
The party of life doesn’t mean that we can dismiss the problems of refugees, or ignore conflicts throughout the world, or injustice that we see and hear of happening; and it doesn’t mean that we can close our eyes to the economic problems in our own country, to unemployment, homelessness or any of the many other social problems we have today.
In fact it means we should be having a party to work together to try and build that better world which is God’s hope and intention. We must be seeking to share God’s message of love with everyone with whom God intended it to be shared with – and that’s quite a tall order, because that means everybody!
The party of life must begin with prayer, and it must include listening to the call of God to live out his love.
Yes God is indeed a good God and He wants the best for us, and He will continue to protect and support us. May we rejoice in all the good things that God offers us and may we be ready to enjoy our faith, to accept all that God wants to give us and to share that celebration with others. AMEN
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