Celebrating at the Feast

​Today is the first sermon that is explicitly part of our centennial celebration. The occasion is the anniversary of the consecration of this building, twenty-eight years ago.
 
Our building was consecrated at a time of great optimism for our parish. We had outgrown our old building down the street. After a couple of years of worshipping in borrowed space, we at last had a brand new building that could accommodate us. We were even able to pay it off remarkably quickly.
 
And our dreams were still bigger. Our original hope had been to use this building as a temporary worship space while we built a separate sanctuary. Then this building would serve as our parish hall.
 
It was a beautiful vision. But life got in the way. A beloved rector left. The new rector turned out not to be a good fit. The denomination made some decisions that upset people. And within a year or two our numbers were down enough that we had to give up the idea of a separate sanctuary.
 
All that happened twenty years ago, well before I came to Saint David’s. But in this centennial year, it is good to look back at our past to learn what we can as we look forward to our next century as a parish.
 
And I want to celebrate that time, those first hard years in this building. I know that they weren’t easy years. It was painful and discouraging to let go of our big vision, and to adjust to reduced circumstances.
 
I certainly don’t fault those who left during those hard years. But I celebrate those who stayed, the people who kept our parish going even when it was hard, the people who showed up Sunday after Sunday, and the people who worked through the week to make Sunday worship possible. They, and by they I mean some of you, are our saints.
 
Our Gospel reading and its aftermath speaks to that time in our parish’s history, and to what our saints of that time accomplished. It is Jesus’ very first miracle, the beginning of his public ministry. It was a happy occasion, a wedding. And not just any wedding. The best kind of wedding, with wine that never runs out and just gets better and better. John tells us that this was the first of Jesus’ signs, and that it revealed Jesus’ glory, and that Jesus’ disciples believed in him.
 
As I often do, I imagine what was going through the disciples’ heads that day. They had only just started following Jesus. And at that wedding, their decision to follow Jesus looked really smart. Clearly, hanging out with Jesus was going to be great.
 
And I imagine the disciples looking forward to more miracles, to more days like their day in Cana, to triumph after triumph, as Jesus worked miracles and gathered followers and gradually worked up to establishing his kingdom, all with them at his side.
 
That day at Cana was surely a day of great optimism and hope. The disciples surely had a big and beautiful vision for what was to come.
 
But if they had a beautiful vision on that day, they must have been sorely disappointed by what actually happened. They were right about Jesus, of course. But they were not right about how things were going to unfold.
 
Jesus kept working miracles. But Jesus also said things that upset people. Powerful people began to resent Jesus. Even some of his followers wavered.
 
In the single most poignant scene in the Gospel of John, Jesus tells people to eat his flesh and drink his blood. At that, many of his followers dropped away. And Jesus turned to his remaining disciples and asked, do you also wish to go away (6:67)?
 
Peter responded that they had nowhere else to go, that Jesus and Jesus alone had the true words of eternal life (6:68). Peter and the other disciples we remember today all stayed. And Peter and the other disciples who remained faithful began the long and hard process of letting go of their own big visions, of adjusting to their new and reduced circumstances.
 
And, most importantly, they kept following Jesus, listening to Jesus, learning from Jesus, being formed more and more in Jesus’ image and likeness over time. And that is why they are our capital S Saints, the saints who kept the Church going through the discouraging moments in Jesus’ public ministry and the much more discouraging days after Jesus’ crucifixion.
 
What they learned, those faithful disciples who stayed, is that the Christian life is not always easy. Sometimes the Christian life really does involve taking up the cross. The faithful disciples learned not to put too much weight on their own vision of what the Church should be, and instead to keep following Jesus through the ups and downs. The faithful disciples learned to rely on Christ’s presence with them and on God’s strength, rather than their own.
 
Those are lessons that every Christian has to learn, one way or another. Those are lessons that we can learn from the difficult parts of our own history. Those are lessons that will stand us in good stead as we look ahead to our next century.
 
We need to plan for our future. We need to dream, and to dream big. But in the end, and all along the way, too, it’s not our dream that truly matters. It is God’s dream for us, and for our world. Our task as Christians is to bring our dreams, our visions, into alignment with God’s, no matter what God has in store for us. That is the way to be truly faithful, and therefore also the way of true life and true joy.
 
But I want to return to the wedding at Cana.
 
I am pretty sure that at Cana the disciples formed wrong-headed visions of what following Christ was going to be like. But the disciples were right to rejoice with Christ in what was happening in that moment. Weddings really are joyful, especially when Christ is present!
 
And that, too, is a lesson for us. From where I sit, things are going pretty well here at Saint David’s in early 2025. I see reasons for hope and optimism about our future. Of course, I also see reasons to worry.
 
But our Gospel reading invites us not to dwell on what might be coming, good or bad, but rather to focus on the good things that are happening all around us right now. It invites us to pay attention to the way God is at work in our midst. It invites us to celebrate with joy Christ’s presence with us. And, after all, we are about to share our own Eucharistic feast. Just with less wine!
 
And so, on this anniversary of the consecration of our building, I thank God for the people who had an ambitious vision for Saint David’s, and who worked hard to make it happen. I thank God for our saints, the people who stuck it out through the hard times over those next few years. Mostly I give thanks to God for working with and through us every step of the way.
 
And, as I look ahead to our next century, my prayer is that God will continue to lead us, and to accompany us, and to strengthen us for whatever comes, helping us always to be discerning and faithful disciples.
 
And I pray that in Christ’s name. Amen.