Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Dear Friends in Christ, God’s grace and peace be with you. Amen.

You won’t be surprised to learn that social media algorithms know how much I enjoy videos of babies. They send them to me constantly. I’m particularly drawn to videos of babies who are receiving their first pair of glasses, or their first hearing implants, who suddenly see or hear the world in all its splendor.

The baby’s mother’s smile comes into focus. They hear their father’s voice for the first time. And those tiny faces light up with a joy that is simply breathtaking. The blurry, muffled confusion they have so far experienced in life is not all that they can hope for. But in fact, life is beautiful. Life is miraculously good. Life is so much more than they had realized.

The wine in Cana tasted like that. Suddenly, all that the wedding guests had known or tasted before just didn’t matter. The good wine was served, and life was so much more than they had realized.

The season of epiphany is all about removing the veil and showing us the truth. The light of a star, the voice from the heavens, the taste of the finest wine, all show us the most profound truth: God is here. We are claimed as beloved children, and the world is good beyond anything we had believed. Just when we begin to think there’s nothing left to celebrate and the sweetness has run out, Jesus provides an astounding amount of the best wine yet, gallons and gallons served from bath jugs. Grace upon grace; more than enough; way more than imaginable. Epiphany shows us the abundant glory of God, like a world that suddenly comes into vibrant focus for a baby wearing their first pair of glasses.

I wonder though if the social media reels are selective in what they show me. There must be instances where medical treatments don’t go as well. Maybe the child doesn’t see much at all. Maybe the implants don’t make a difference. Maybe the experiment fails and life is still a struggle for this little one. Or maybe the shock of what the baby sees isn’t good for them.

That’s the trouble with lifting the veil. It sometimes reveals a truth we don’t want to see.

Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life and work we honor the weekend, was good at lifting veils. He was a truth teller, who called out the gaps between the ideals of our nation and its lived reality: pervasive poverty in a wealthy nation, the abuses of war, and of course, the injustice of institutionalized of racism. He articulated truths that we didn’t want to acknowledge about ourselves. We still find it uncomfortable to see though the world he showed us even sixty years later.

The events in May, 2020, around the killing of George Floyd served as another lifting of a veil. They showed us a side even of Minnesota many of us didn’t want to admit was real.

Tomorrow’s inauguration seems to usher us into a new era in which the veils of our naivety are lifted, and we see ourselves a little too clearly. The rhetoric and messages we have witnessed over the past several years reveal things we thought could not be true about our nation. So many times we have wanted to say, “This just isn’t who we are,” but we are now forced to admit, “Apparently, this is exactly who we are.”

We’re left standing with the steward at the wedding banquet, fearing that there is no wine. What we thought we could enjoy of a good life — built on decency and compassion and care of others –has run out, and we’re left with no reserves in the tank for refreshing our guests or ourselves. Or are we?

Dr. King’s message was never of scarcity or empty vessels. He didn’t tell us to give up the fight because the sweetness of the celebration had run out. Rather, he called on our better selves, reminding us of the ideals we valued as a community, pointing us to the principles of liberty and justice, and preaching of a God of love who embraces every child. He envisioned a world filled with the glory and splendor of God. And he worked that we might see that deeper truth.

“Love is the greatest force in the universe,” King reminded us. “It is the heartbeat of the moral cosmos. He who loves is a participant in the being of God[i].”

A participant in the being of God. “Do whatever he tells you to do,” Jesus’ mother instructs the wedding servants.

Here’s what the unveiling shows us. The world needs love. The world needs God’s love and transforming power to overflow with beauty and compassion. The world needs us to participate in generous, miraculous healing. The world needs us to drive out hatred with hope and goodness and love. We join in the work God is doing, by doing what Jesus tells us to do: Love our neighbor. Care for the stranger. Feed the hungry. Visit the imprisoned.

Here’s what happens when we put on a gospel lens – we discover how much good there is in the world, and become participants in the abundant, generous, creative, loving being of God.

There are people whose lives reflect abundance and demonstrate to us what it means to participate in the being of God. When wildfires threaten to destroy Los Angeles, firefighters fly to Southern California from every country of the world to help. When immigrants feel threatened or intimidated, advocates show up to offer legal counsel. Community organizers direct non-violent resistance marches and demonstrations like those Dr. King led. When emergency rooms are overwhelmed with sick patients, health care workers step in to support those who are the sickest. When we are looking for ways to make a difference, Sunday School and Confirmation volunteers check in with Kyrstin or Deacon Ashley and ask, “How can I help?”

On Monday, we gathered to commend one of Gloria Dei’s beloved members into the embrace of God. Like any memorial service, it was tender and bittersweet. We lamented the limit to love and goodness, as the loving-kindness we had known in this beloved friend and grandmother had run out.

But June’s family decided to offer everyone who came a gift from her incredible collection of Beanie Babies, and you can’t even imagine the number of these sweet gifts. They served as center pieces and table runners for every table in Fellowship Hall. We’re talking hundreds and hundreds of the sweet collectables — puppies and kittens, bunnies and horses, donkeys, frogs, lobsters, fish, reptiles, birds, goats, sheep, every imaginable Beanie Baby ever made. As if 30-gallon water jugs had been filled to the top with sorrow, and the finest collection of lovies came pouring out for everyone in the village. Suddenly our grief over the end of June’s life was surpassed by an amazing joy of seeing that her best graciousness was still being served: loss overcome by generous abundance; scarcity undone by love that never ends. Grace upon grace. More than enough. Way more than imaginable.

Friends, I don’t know what tomorrow will bring, so I’ll just keep on listening to Dr. King, and Mother Mary, and do whatever Jesus tells us to do.

Cana invites us to see a world through a lens of abundant love. To see the world more clearly than we ever have, not ignoring the injustice or racism that continues to try breaking society apart, but with a persistent focus on the greater good, with an acknowledgement that love resists any false claim of scarcity and all insistence on fear or hatred, and overflows in acts of kindness, compassion, and generosity, like the finest wine ever served.

[i] CNN https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/09/us/martin-luther-king-jr-handwritten-note-for-sale-trnd/index.html