St Clement Church Community Epiphany Service

St Clement Church Epiphany 2

Community Service

Good morning to you all

With the Christmas stories over for another year, we look at Jesus’ first miracle. It’s a good story isn’t it, but, like all Jesus stories there’s always more than initially meets the eye.

What do you see in the story?

My love to you all

Liz

Loving God, we have come to worship you. Help us to pray to you in faith, to sing your praise with gratitude, and to listen to your word with eagerness. Amen

We say together:

Lord of all, as we gather to worship You, we ask for hearts open to

Your presence. Fill this place with Your Spirit and our souls with Your peace.

Let every song, prayer, and word spoken glorify You and draw us closer in communion with You and each other. Amen

Hymn: 390 Jesus, where’er thy people meet

We say together our Prayer of Penitence:

Seek the Lord while he may be found,

call upon him while he is near.

Let the wicked abandon their ways

and the unrighteous their thoughts.

Turn back to the Lord, who will have mercy;

to our God who will richly pardon.

Lord God, we have sinned against you;

We have done evil in your sight.

We are sorry and repent.

Have mercy on us according to your love.

Wash away our wrongdoing and cleanse us from our sin.

Renew a right spirit within us and restore us to the joy of your salvation, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen

The Collect for Epiphany Sunday

Almighty God, in Christ you make all things new; transform the poverty of our nature by the riches of your grace, and in the renewal of our lives make known your heavenly glory; through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord, who is alive and reigns with you, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen

Readings:

Isaiah 62. 1 – 5

1 Corinthians 12. 1 - 11

Hymn: 137 Come down, O Love divine

Gospel: John 2. 1 - 11

(Hear the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ according to John. Response: ‘Glory to you O Lord.’) There was a wedding in Cana in Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there.

Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.

When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, ‘They have no wine.’

And Jesus said to her, ‘Woman, what concern is that to you and me? My hour has not yet come.’

His mother said to the servants, ‘Do whatever he tells you.’

Now there were six stone water-jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons.

Jesus said to them, ‘Fill the jars with water.’

And they filled them up to the brim.

He said to them, ‘ow draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’

So they took it.

When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it had come from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew) the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’

Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana in Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

(This is the Gospel of our Lord. Praise to you, O Christ)

Reflection

Christmas is over, and New Year, and so the stories related to those seasons are finished for another year.

Now we are starting on a miracle story – the first miracle story.

What is a miracle?

Well, I looked up the word in a dictionary for a definition.

‘A miracle is an extraordinary and welcome event that is not explicable by natural or scientific laws and is therefore attributed to a divine agency. ‘

In other words, it is something for which we can’t come up with a logical explanation, but is that all it is?

‘They have no wine.’

It was reading this story about the wedding at Cana yet again, that made me realise how the words Mary speaks are a truth about our lives, a truth that at some point we all experience. There comes a day when the wine runs out. The glass is empty. The party is over. On that day life seems empty and dry. There is no vibrancy or vitality. Nothing is growing or fermenting within us. Our world is colourless and tasteless. The bouquet of life is absent and we are living less than fully alive.

Mary’s words hold before us some serious questions and wonderings. Where and when has the wine of our life given out? What relationships have run dry? What parts of us remain empty?

Each one of us could tell a story about the day the wine gave out. It might be about the death of a loved one or the loss of a friendship or marriage. Some will speak about their search for love and acceptance. Some will describe their thirst for meaning and significance. Others will tell of their guilt, disappointments, or regrets. Many of the stories will be about fear of what is or what might be. Stories of failure and self-doubt abound. Some will describe a longing and desire for something that they cannot name or describe. The storyline of unanswered prayer, doubts or questions is known by most. They are not all stories about the past, however. Some of us are living these stories today.

Despite our best efforts, good intentions, and hard work, it seems that the wine of our life is always giving out. No matter how often we refill it our glass remains empty. There is never enough wine. As the day wears on we become increasingly aware that we cannot replenish the wine from our own resources.

That day seems like a disaster, an embarrassment, a failure. That must have been what it was like for the bride and groom at the wedding at Cana. “They have no wine,” Mary tells Jesus. That is not a condemnation or judgement but simply an observation.

Too often we live with the illusion of our own self-sufficiency. That illusion is shattered on the day that the wine runs out and the jars of our life stand empty and dry. That day confronts us with a new truth as old as creation itself. We are the recipients and not the creators of our life. We were never intended nor expected to live by the sufficiency of our own resources. Christ is the true vintner and chief steward of our lives.

Regardless of how it feels or what we think about it, the day the wine runs out is the beginning of a miracle. Christ does not simply refill our glasses, He transforms our lives, turning water into wine. Our lives are filled to the brim with good wine. That’s the miracle at Cana and it has never ceased happening. Every moment of every day Christ pours Himself into the empty jars of our life. He is the good wine; extravagant, abundant, endless.

Every time that good wine is poured our lives are changed and transformed. How it happens, I don’t know. Suffice to say, it does happen. I have experienced the miracle at Cana in my life and seen it in the lives of others.

I have experienced moments when death is turned into life, sorrow into joy, despair into hope. I have seen that in the lives of others too. I have been surprised by fear that was transformed into courage and seen people do things they never thought possible. I have watched empty lives filled back up.

Those and a thousand others like them are the miracles of Cana. Those are moments Christ’s glory is revealed and we are illumined, shining with the radiance of His glory. His glory becomes ours. Two lives win one glory.

“They have no wine,” Mary says. But they will. The miracle begins when the wine gives out.

Amen

Let us declare our faith in God.

We believe in God the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named.

We believe in God the Son, who lives in our hearts through faith, and fills us with his love.

We believe in God the Holy Spirit, who strengthens us with power from on high.

We believe in one God; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen

Hymn: 377 Immortal, invisible, God only wise

Our Intercessions

Let us pray

Gracious God, your Son began His ministry at a wedding celebration and through the miracle of the wine showed us the abundance of your wonderful love for us. May Jesus continue to transform the water of our everyday lives into the new wine of your kingdom on earth, transforming by His love the ordinary into the extra-ordinary.