Healing Social Wounds: MLK, the Inauguration and The Wedding at Cana

Sermon Transcript - 1/20/25

“Worries about a new civil war in the United States are misplaced because the Civil War never fully ended. That is essential knowledge for understanding current political divisions.” This is a quote from Professor Jeremi Suri, who holds the Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at The University of Texas at Austin. In a piece he wrote for Time Magazine, Suri notes that while some things may have changed on paper, following the civil war there was never an intentional effort in this nation to heal, to bridge the political and social divides and wrestle and reconcile with the most problematic pieces of our national history, including chattel slavery. Suri says that a lot of the work that wasn’t done following the Civil War accounts for the deep political divisions in this nation that have persisted, and that are being felt particularly deeply today.

Tomorrow is a big day, a day in which our state of deep political divide almost seems highlighted in a blatant and potent way. Tomorrow is both the national holiday in honor of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Inauguration of the 47th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. It’s not often that these two events align, and it has only happened one other time in history, as Martin Luther King Jr. Day is a newer federal holiday, only being made official in 1983. As presidential inaugurations usually only happen every four years, these events rarely line up. The next time Martin Luther King Jr. Day aligns with the Inauguration Day will the 2053.

In a time when our political polarization is near a record high, it almost feels as though folks in our nation will be celebrating one event or the other – either MLK’s holiday or the Inauguration. There isn’t room enough in our hearts and mind for both things to be celebrated, especially when so many feel that they represent two very different American ideologies. Our deep social divide in this nation right now is painful. The names we call one another. The unchecked assumptions we make about those on the other side. The deepening social divisions in this country have ended friendships, torn families apart, torn churches apart and caused some of the oldest denominations in Christianity to fracture and split. 1 in 4 Americans has ended a friendship over a political argument.

The chasm that separates us has proven profitable for media empires and personalities that cash in on stoking the fires of division. And the thing of it is, even as these divisions are growing wider, none of this makes any of us happy. Study after study has shown that political and social divisions in this country cause us more stress, anxiety and lead to increased rates of isolation and anger. Being an “us” and a “them” isn’t just not fun, it’s bad for our health and wellbeing.

So let’s talk about something more fun and uplifting, like a wedding. As you can tell from our text today in the Gospel of John, weddings were a big deal in the time of Jesus, and they included prolonged celebrations with multiple days of drinking and feasting. Just like today, the hosts were expected to throw a good party, just for a longer period of time.

At the wedding at Cana, Jesus, his mother and the disciples are at a wedding, and it seems from the text that this wedding is in the middle of it’s prolonged celebration. The time where you start serving the less fancy wine because folks have been drinking long enough that their tastes are less refined and they are just happy to keep the party going. In other words, they’ve moved to the boxed wine part of the festivities where quality has given way to quantity.

Now, something terrible happens. The wine runs out. I don’t know who the host hired as a wedding planner or caterer, but the calculations were way off and the wine has run out in the middle of the party! Now we can make jokes about that now, and speculate about whether there was some bad math or whether some folks in the wedding party were drinking a little too much that led to the wine running out early, but this would have actually been a pretty big deal. This wedding celebration was a large group of people that had been invited by the hosts. We know it’s a large group because calculations of how much wine Jesus produced is the equivalent of 908 bottles of wine! (Yes, I did the math). That’s a lot of wine needed to get through the rest of the celebration, so we know there must have been a lot of people in attendance at this wedding party!

So the wine has run out, and Jesus’ mom comes over to him and says, “They have no wine,” which we understand as her motherly nudge for him to address this situation. Jesus kind of snaps at her, saying, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you?  My hour has not yet come.” The mother of Jesus is nudging him to address the situation, because she believes that he can, and he declines with a little bit of snark.

This is the point where I have to take a special moment to comment on Mary’s nudge. The miracle that Jesus performs at the Wedding of Cana is the first of seven signs in the Gospel of John that demonstrate that Jesus was/is the Messiah. These signs demonstrate not only the power of God but also offer some glimpse of God’s priorities. Mary wants Jesus to begin this powerful ministry of miracles at this occasion – at this wedding that has run out of wine in the middle of the party.

Initially, Jesus declines. It’s not his problem that someone has been a poor party planner. Why should he worry that the math was off or some folks were drinking way more than their share of the booze? Why would this social faux pas matter to the Son of God? When Jesus dismisses his mother, calling her “woman,” which is always good for a chuckle, she doesn’t argue or try to convince him that he’s wrong. But she does give him a motherly nudge. She calls to the servants and says, “Do whatever he tells you to do.”

Now, as a mother, I know this trick – the one where you put the ball back in your kid’s court because you know that ultimately they will make the right decision. Many a time I have told my girls that a room is too messy and they should clean it up. When they respond with, “I don’t want to,” sometimes all I have to do is say something like, “Well, if you think this room looks OK and we should just leave it like this then that’s what we’ll do.” When said with the right facial expression and eye stare, I kid you not that nine times out of ten, they will start picking up that room within the next few minutes. In telling the servants, “Do whatever he tells you to do,” Mary knew that her child would not do nothing.

But why did Mary think that a party running out of wine was a big enough deal for Jesus to begin his public ministry of miraculous works? Almost every other sign he performs in this Gospel of John is arguably a matter of life or death – healing people, feeding people, walking on water in a violent storm, literally raising Lazarus from the dead. So, perhaps we can understand Jesus’ reluctance in having his first public miracle be making more wine for people who have already been drinking at a party. But I think there is some deep wisdom in Mary’s encouragement that this occasion was significant enough to merit a miraculous intervention.

We’ve already noted that weddings during this time were a big deal, so running out of supplies in the middle of it, could have caused a social rift between the families, neighbors and friends gathered. Some might have thought it was rude. Some might have ridiculed. Some might have publicly shunned or shamed the responsible party. The social stigma of failing in this act of hospitality could have been tacked on to the newly married couple, affecting the ways that they related to their neighbors going forward. It seems small, but social stigmas are very real, and they have real consequences. A social wound is a wound nonetheless. In this situation, Mary, Jesus’ mother, had the concern and awareness to know that running out of supplies for a very large crowd gathered to celebrate the marriage of a new couple could lead to bigger problems. Jesus proactively healed what would have been a social wound in his first public act of ministry as the Messiah.

So, what are the implications of this for us today? As I mentioned at the beginning, our social wounds in this nation have a long, complicated and very painful history. The legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, violent colonization and removal of indigenous peoples, degradation of non-Anglo, non-western European, non-Christians, the subordination of women, all of these are social wounds and many of them are not new. Social wounds can and do heal over time and become scars that we can point to and remember the horrible things that took place. But some social wounds in this country have never healed. They have festered. Maybe they were stitched up and bandaged and on the way to healing but the social climate ripped them back open and they have grown larger again.

Let me be clear about something. When we have social wounds in our society, every single one of us suffers. When we reject, avoid, scorn, demonize and degrade fellow siblings in the family of God, it hurts all of us. I think Mary knew that. I think that she had the wisdom to know that preventing a social wound was a Godly act - that God performing a miracle in the midst of a celebration was just as important as performing a miracle in the midst of a crisis like death or lack of food.

And the bonus of this being the first of Jesus’ signs in the Gospel of the John is that it tells us that God can perform miracles that celebrate the best things about humanity – love, hospitality, and celebrations of togetherness. Jesus shows us that God doesn’t just perform miracles in the midst of despair, but in the midst of joy and celebration -  these things are important to God too.

Tomorrow, in addition to the Inauguration we celebrate the legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and this day always feels especially important to us here in the city of Memphis – the place where MLK breathed his last breath. The place where MLK was martyred working for the dignity of garbage workers. MLK devoted his ministry of activism toward trying to heal the social wounds in this country that had lingered and festered from the days of slavery. He had a vision, a dream, for what this country could look like if those wounds were to heal to become scars.

Does anyone remember what Dr. King called his vision of an America that looks a little more like the Kingdom of God? Beloved Community.

As we look toward tomorrow, and the days afterward, I call on each of us as followers of Christ to look to God for a miracle like the one performed by Jesus at the Wedding at Cana. God has shown us that it is possible to heal social wounds. God has shown us that it is important to heal social wounds.

Are we a people who believe that God can work a miracle that brings the people in our country closer to one another? Do we have that kind of faith? If we do, what is our role in working toward beloved community? How does faith that God can heal our social wounds inspire the ways we interact with one another? How does it change the ways we talk about one another, think about one another – especially those from whom we presently feel very far apart? The world has shown us that it is profitable to poke at our unhealed social wounds. Some people have much to gain from keeping us separated and wounded. How will we, as proclaimers of the Christ who performed miracles of all kinds, resist the lies that keep us wounded? How will we believe in the miraculous healing that God can perform?

May we all seek Beloved Community together, tomorrow, and every day. Amen.