A
few years ago when my daughter was in Kindergarten, I remember her suddenly
beginning to use the phrase, “You filled my bucket, Mommy.” That meant Dana had
done something to make her feel happy.
She would also say, “You’re not filling my bucket.” Usually that meant she wasn’t getting her
way.
We
came to learn that her Kindergarten teacher had been teaching the bucket system
to her students. She explained that
people are like buckets. We can do nice
things for one another and fill those buckets with good feelings or we can do
mean things to one another and empty those buckets. Empty buckets are not good at all. Empty buckets mean we’re sad and hurt or
angry. So, if we all just fill each
other’s buckets by doing nice things, everything will be wonderful. All the world’s problems solved.
Those
empty jars in our reading from John’s Gospel makes me think of the bucket
system. As buckets represent people, so
those jars are representative of something having to do with the people of God
back in Jesus’ day, something to do with the state of their faith, with their
relationship to God within the context of their religion. John tells us that these jars, they were
rather big jars holding 20-30 gallons of water, were for holding water for rituals
of purification particularly at feasts.
Assumingly they were standing empty, not being used at this
wedding. That is significant.
Ritual
washing for purification was nearly a fanatical practice among certain groups
of Jews back then, particularly the Pharisees.
I don’t think scholarship has quite pinpointed a reason for it because
there is no biblical requirement for it.
Yet, they washed their hands in a specially prescribed manner. It was more of dip and a rubbing them
together so that everyone could see than an actual scrubbing with soap.
Ritual
bathing was quite popular back then as well.
In excavations dating to that time, archaeologists have found that many
people had a small cistern called a mikvah
just outside of their house or at ground level inside where they would ritually
dip before entering the living area of the house. It had nothing to do with actual cleanliness,
but rather with washing off iniquity, the stain of sin, so as to not bring it
in their homes where other people could come in contact with it.
It
seems that they believed that if a person was dirty with the stain of sin, or “unclean”
as it would be called in the Bible, you could not go to synagogue or to the
Temple to be in the presence of God.
According to the Old Testament, uncleanness was dealt with through
separating oneself from others, synagogue, and Temple worship for a prescribed
time and then offering an sacrifice when the time of separation was finished. As I said, no one knows how this ritual
washing got started, but people were doing it nearly fanatically as a way of
keeping themselves ritually “clean” and worthy of being in the presence of God
rather than or in addition to the sacrificial requirements.
Some
would say that they took to ritual washing because they had lost faith in the
sacrificial system that was being operated by the Jerusalem priesthood that was
known to be corrupt. Since the Temple
and priests were corrupted and the Romans were there occupying the land, a
significant number of the people had a great expectation that God would send
his promised Holy Spirit anointed king, the Messiah, to come put things right
and establish the Kingdom of God. And so
washing became a Populist practice to keep oneself ready for the coming Messiah
and the Day of the Lord. Some would say
this was why John the Baptist baptized.
Back
to the jars, that these jars used for holding water for ritual washing stood
empty at a wedding is quite significant.
They were standing there like a big King James family Bible enshrined on
a coffee table in a home where the people don’t go to church anymore. That the jars were there indicates the people
of that household had at one time lost faith in the Temple establishment and
had become participants in that Populist movement of ritual washing. But the jars are now standing empty and
unused at a wedding feast when ritual washing would have certainly occurred. This would indicate that the people of that
household no longer believed the reasons for ritual washing either.
To
make an analogy to today, recent sociological studies on religion in North
America indicate that the two largest categories of religious practice among
people in North America are the “Nones” – those who claim to be spiritual yet
have never had any Christian affiliation – and the “Dones” – those who have
quit church and will never go back. The
people hosting the wedding feast were like the “Dones”, just done with it
all. Jerusalem was corrupt and the
“washing” wasn’t doing it for them likely because the ritual of washing came
with a bunch of other little rules that only led to religious bullying and hypocrisy. It is great that the “washers” had Messianic
hopes and were trying to be faithful, but God’s call to righteousness meant
being compassionate, just, and fair rather than simply observing rituals and
traditions.
It
was no coincidence that Jesus told the servants to fill those empty jars for
ritual purification with water and in turn he turned that water into wine, good
wine. The Jesus wine was better than the
wine wedding go-ers had gotten drunk on.
The Jesus wine saved the wedding feast from becoming a fiasco that would
have brought shame upon the groom and his family. The symbolism with respect to the wine is so
blatant that John calls the act a “sign”, an act by Jesus that reveals who he
is – the Messiah and somehow God with us.
He revealed himself to be the One in whom the true believers in Israel
were hoping, the one who would bring the abundant life – the compassionate,
just, and fair life rather than life suffocated by rituals and rules that lead
to a false sense of righteousness.
Let’s
go back to the “Nones” and “Dones”, for the last fifty years people have been
leaving the church vowing never to go back.
Around the top of the list of reasons is that the church has so often
put rituals, rules, and conduct codes before compassion, justice, and fairness and
done so at the expense of hurting people.
Our society is full of people who have “empty jars”. They tried real hard to find meaning in “doing
church”, but left it behind because “doing church” seemed like a lot of busyness
that had little to do with Jesus and his abundant life. The straw that broke the camels back was
usually an encounter with a hypocrite or a bully, two types of people that
churches rarely seem to hold accountable in their midst.
We
have a responsibility to go to these folks and fill their empty jars. We who drink the good wine of the Holy
Spirit, who know the abundant life that Jesus has to give to those who will
follow him. Crucial to this task is that
we must be readily tending to our jars, making sure there’s water in them. We must be avid followers of Jesus
ourselves. We must learn the power in
prayer by taking time to be prayerful.
We must be hearing God speak to us through the Scriptures by giving God
the opportunity to speak us through the Scriptures. We must be students of Jesus, adamant in
striving to be like him in his simple lifestyle and sincere compassion. When the “Nones” and “Dones” sense that our
jars are full of the Holy Spirit rather than just empty, powerless religion,
they will see and might even let us help fill their jars. There is a thirst for good wine of Jesus out
there and we have it in abundance. Amen.
