The back door of the Red Brick Church opens at 10 in the morning. People have been waiting in the parking lot. Some are regulars and know the drill: fill out the form, show ID, sit at the table with the interviewer, get a box with three days’ food.

Two older guys sit at my table and fill out their forms. They are old hands at this, at most things, at most of the hard things in life. One of them was married twice, but doesn’t think about marriage any more. Who would have him? The other was married for all of six months, and he ain’t proud of it, and he’s made some mistakes in life, but why don’t people ever forgive these days?

They work on their forms.

Jen calls me over to her table. A woman named Judith is there, asking about someone named Pastor Gary. Yes, I knew him: he died in November. Judith had not heard that, and begins to weep. Pastor Gary was a good man, and much beloved, and his death makes her reflect. She has made bad choices; she says she has lost her way, and news of his death causes her to want to get right. Weeping, she vows to get her life in order.

Judith needs to get to some dentist appointments but has no money. I make a quick trip up to the corner gas station and buy a gas card. The station sells junk food and cigarettes and slushies. People just like Judith are milling around inside buying or wishing they could buy the things on the shelves, in the machines, on the hot dog rollers. Overweight teen girls in camo pants buy 20-ounce bottles of Mountain Dew and packs of gum. They have the neighborhood look that we have come to know, all those unquantifiable visual cues that mark the people in urban poverty.

Last week I ate dinner at a table with the retired CEO of this gas station company. I do not know him, but I wonder if he has seen the world of his gas stations from this point of view, from underneath. And I do not think these people have seen his world.

I see both and live in neither.

Renee lives in her car because she has no home. She shares her car with her fiance. The word Fiance, here in this neighborhood, is a lie. Whether it is for my benefit or hers, I do not know. It is a lie that they will marry. Does she lie to herself, so as to deny the reality (so obvious to an outsider) that this man is incapable of commitment? Or does she lie to me, so as to attach a thin veneer of marital respectability to her tawdry situation?

The fiance is an alcoholic. He was sober for six months and then lost his job, so he turned to drink. He is destroying his liver and slowly killing himself. Two of his brothers already killed themselves driving drunk. The other was murdered outside a bar.

Renee is deep in debt, in poor health, and has no teeth. She is not any older than me.

James is a stand-up comic. He took drama classes at a college. His career is not in full swing just yet, although he does show up for open mic nights at a local coffee shop. He just needs to hustle together some money to get on the road, and he is going to make it big.

He never was a nine-to-five kind of person, although “society” pressures you to do that sort of thing; James is a born free-lancer. At this time his main comedy activities are open mic nights at the coffee shop, and thinking up new material.

Recently he tried out some of his new material at the Un Mundo cafe. He didn’t drop the F-bomb, but he told a joke–and here he leans toward me and lowers his voice with the tacit assumption that I want to be in on the fun–about an illicit encounter with a 72-year-old woman with one lung.

The owner of the El Mundo disapproved, but James kept at it because as a seasoned stand-up comic he knows to play for his audience and not the owner. And he most definitely saw a few smiles, or hints of smiles, start to form, and he knew it was a dynamic moment, a defining moment.

He will be back at the next open mic night. He tells me that large crowds have never intimidated him. He gets up and peruses the clothes pantry, then takes his box of three days’ food and leaves.

Isaiah 62:1-5
Psalm 96
John 2:1-11

Here, near the end of the book of Isaiah, the old Hebrew prophet begins speaking not of the end of the world, but the end of the world as we have known it. Or, the beginning of the world as it ought to be. Isaiah tells of a world with no conflict or war, with no illness or suffering, where everyone is rightly related to each other and to God. No jails, no worries about money, no fighting. Isaiah gives hints of God’s dream for the world, and pictures of what God is doing in his rescue mission for the world and everyone in it.

In our reading today, the prophet uses an imaginary picture to explain what it will be like. The picture is found in two words, new names given to the city of Jerusalem: Hephzibah and Beulah. The first means “my delight is in her” and the second means “married”. So the picture is that the city of Jerusalem, and by extension the whole world, will be like a girl who finds some guy who is crazy about her and marries her. Not only that, but she used to be terribly lonely with no friends, and she lived in a cold empty house with nothing on the walls but cracks and cobwebs. And all of a sudden this amazing guy asks her to marry him, and hundreds of people show up, and someone buys her a drop-dead gorgeous dress.

And the house is completely done over with color and beauty, and they hire a band to play traditional Irish music. And people show up with casserole dishes and crock pots and cheesecakes and cookies and the house smells good. And so they have a wedding with a great party afterwards.

People who used to ignore each other sit together and tell hilarious stories. The children get all the desserts they want, and old ladies pluck flowers from the table arrangements and stick them in their hair. The music is playing and people are spinning and dancing around the room.

People who never get invited to anything are brought in and given huge pieces of cheesecake and introduced to new friends.

That is Isaiah’s picture. It’s a good picture. When the Bible speaks of God saving us, this is the picture you should imagine, or something like it. (See also Isaiah 25, for example.)

And it is only with such a picture in mind that the Psalm makes any sense.Why would the writer of this Psalm get so excited over the fact that God is King, that he is in charge? Why sing a song about the fact that God is sitting on a throne somewhere, being large and in charge? Here in Springfield, anyway, it’s gray and wet and dreary and we still have all of our problems. Not to be rude, but an invisible God on an invisible throne somewhere far away doesn’t appear to have much to do with us. It just doesn’t seem very helpful.

But before we give up on the Psalm, notice the point. Three times, in verses 10 and 13, it says that the reason for all the noise is that God is going to judge the world. In fact, this is such a great piece of news that the sea and the fish and the trees and the fields are all astir to hear it.

Why? Why is all nature glad that God will judge the world?

It is because God’s judgement has the power not only to defeat evil but to set things right. God’s judgement always seeks not only to stop the bad things from happening, but to reconcile and heal people, and to teach them to relate rightly to each other and to God.

The judgement of God is not like the school principal coming and smacking everyone with a yardstick. It is not like Hulk Hogan making a surprise appearance and throwing everyone out of the wrestling ring. It is not like Jack Bauer smashing through the window and mowing everyone down with gunfire.

What is it like?

It is like a woman who was lonely and lived in a cold empty house, and suddenly this amazing guy showed up and married her, and the party was unbelievable.

And so, once upon a time, Jesus went to a wedding.

Now, Jesus knew this Isaiah passage. He knew the whole book of Isaiah, and he often told people that it was written about him. He once publicly read the part just before today’s reading, and then told everyone “This is about me.”

So you have to imagine him going to this wedding, and to everyone else it is a normal wedding, but he’s got images from Isaiah in his head, and to him a wedding is a picture of the world set right by God.

Then they run out of wine, which in that culture was a serious embarassment to the bridegroom. It would be like having a great party at your house and suddenly the power goes out and the sewer backs up and cockroaches take over the kitchen. Bad party.

So Jesus takes these huge water jars and turns the water into wine, and the host completely misreads the situation. He thinks the bridegroom bought this wine, and he is impressed because usually bridegrooms are sneaky cheapskates who give people a little fancy good wine early on, and when they get plastered and don’t know the difference they switch to the 99 cents a gallon swill that tastes like diesel fuel. It is not recorded what the bridegroom said, but probably he just took credit for the good wine, because bridegrooms, at least most of them, are sneaky cheapskates.

Why did Jesus do this? Was it to show that he had superpowers so people would believe he was the Son of God? Maybe, a little, although he had a low opinion of the faith-building effects of miracles. Instead, he was enacting a parable. He was acting out a story that connected him with the things Isaiah said.

Remember that the bridegroom was supposed to buy the wine. Whoever this guy was, he dropped the ball and ran out. So who provided the wine and saved the wedding party? (And not just cheap wine but great wine.) So who is the real bridegroom in this story?

Jesus wants his followers to put it together. Once upon a time there was this lonely girl who lived in a cold empty house. The girl stands for the whole world as it now is, in pain. And this amazing bridegroom showed up and married her, and the party was just unbelievable, and that is what it will be like when God saves the world.

You might say that our calling as a church is to enact parables in this neighborhood. Our calling is to do things in such a way that it tells a surprising story about what God is like, and about God’s rescue mission to the world, and about Jesus who accomplishes that mission.

One of my favorite stories that we are trying to enact is the story of this building. This building is beautiful but broken. It had gotten to a point where it was empty and cold, deserted, desolate, with no life going on inside. But a few repairs have started, and more are in the works, and we have hope of seeing it completely restored. Better still, it is now noisy and busy with life and activity, with people making music and food and playing games, and it is open to the neighborhood. It is changing from a picture of abandonment to a picture of hope.

Another good story is the way people come together here. It is a surprising and beautiful story when people cross boundaries of race, comfort, and economic status so that they can be friends and help with each others’ burdens. There are dark powers in the world who would keep us separate, disconnected, suspicious of each other, and unreconciled. But in the Kingdom of God everyone is invited. Even tonight I have seen this enacted, and it is beautiful.

This is why it is very important for you, when you come here, to ask yourself what you are called to do. What story are you called to enact? Do not come as a spectator or a consumer; come as a disciple, ready to cross boundaries where you may not be comfortable. Look for someone who might need a friend in the service or at dinner, and sit with them. Offer to enter the chaos of the kid’s ministry. Sweep the floor and wipe the tables down.

Because once upon a time there was this lonely girl who lived in a cold empty house. And this amazing bridegroom showed up and married her, and the party was just unbelievable, and that is what it will be like when God saves the world.