Now Hiring

This Sunday we approach two significant events:  The celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday and the Eastern Orthodox celebration of Epiphany, as manifest by the turning of water into wine.  Both, events of Epiphany.  Both occasions manifest the mighty presence of the divine.

Too often, when it comes to the end result of fine wine, what we so often end up with is sour vinegar, or in the case of one story, just plain old water.

When I was priest at St. Andrew’s in Petersburg I received a call one day from my friend, Fr. Gary, priest at St. John’s in Ketchikan.  A reasonably sized city down the coast of the long strip of Alaska along the west of British Columbia.

They had a seamen’s center there and the director Bob wanted to get up to Juneau.  Fr. Gary’s request was, did we have any place he could stay overnight while he waited for the ferry to leave Petersburg?

I told Fr. Gary that I had a couch in my office that pulled out to be a bed – just for such occasions.  He could stay there overnight.  He would need to keep to himself and be quiet because that Tuesday evening we had an AA group that met in the church.

Bob responded that would be wonderful – he would be able to make his meeting for the week.

The following Sunday when one of our altar-guild women was preparing for communion, she came over to me with a puzzled look.  She was perplexed that the wine didn’t look or smell like wine.  Being a tea- teetotaler, she asked me to taste it.

She was right.  It was water.  Our guest had turned the wine into plain old water.

I told Fr. Gary that he had given this fellow poor instruction.  The water supposed to be turned into wine.  His seminary education was greatly lacking.

Unfortunately, we humans are very adept in turning fine wine into vinegar and worse.

This is true of our heritage found in the Declaration of Independence and in the Bill of Rights.  Dr. King so eloquently urged us to live up to the promises of our founding documents in his “I Have a Dream” speech at the Poor People’s March in 1968.

Unfortunately, the remnants of prejudice and Jim Crow continue to turn the fine wine of those ideals into vinegar for far too many – the poor, people of color, those in impoverished rural America and in our inner cities.

I share the journey of Bettina Love, now a professor at Teachers’ College at Columbia University.[1]

She tells of her public-school education in Upstate New York.  She writes of her experience as a young girl and that of her friend Zakia, whom everyone called Zook – both were Black. 

Growing up in the eighties and nineties, they were “labeled disposable because of our zip code, test-scores, and Black skin.”

Her friend, who finally managed to transcend a troubled childhood, told Bettina this shameful thing.  “She told me that through thirteen years of schooling, she could not recall a single teacher who ever took an interest in her or positively impacted her life.”[2]

But as a gifted athlete, Zook could remember numerous coaches who supported her.  She could still rattle off their names.

But not one of her teachers ever took an interest in her! 

The fine wine of our public education turned to vinegar, worse than just water.  The American dream gone rancid. Failure is also an occasion for an Epiphany.  A wake-up call.

Epiphanies can be understood as eye-opening experiences.  Ah-ha moments.  We have them all the time.  If we’re awake to what’s going on around us.  If we have a care.

In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the Miracle of Water into Wine was the ah-ha tip-off that Jesus was not any ordinary guest at that wedding.  Something much more was going on.

And why was this incident so central to the memory of the gospel writer and the early church?  It was precisely because the spirit of the Risen Christ continued in their midst to turn their meager efforts into fine wine.  Fine wine to the Glory of God.

We celebrate Dr. King’s birthday because he turned the rancid vinegar of failed promises and Jim Crow into the fine wine of a vision of Grace for all God’s Children.

And that’s where we come in.  The Holy Spirit is NOW HIRING.  Seeking recruits for the Jesus Movement to carry on the work of our Baptismal Promises – our Baptismal General Orders, if you will.

We are the making of fine wine – fulsome with a robust bouquet of rich flavor.  The sort of followers Jesus needs at this moment.

All about us we see such folks in action.  For the Epistle of James tells us that is where the vintage shines forth.

Like my friend who is going through his closet up in Bakersfield gathering up everything he has not worn in a while or grown out of and getting it to a church that will take it down to the Rose Bowl to be distributed to those who have lost everything.  Fine wine, though he’s now a teetotaler. 

The ordinary stuff of H2O turned into a delicious drink by those who every week work at our San Bernardino Food Bank, distributing the stuff of nourishing meals at St. John’s Episcopal Church.  And those working our garden at St. Francis, providing the fresh vegetables from seeds now being planted this week.  And water is definitely being turned into that nourishment.

It is those folks working now to elect candidates who will restore dignity and truth to our politics – working to mitigate the potential harms of this incoming administration — headed by a criminal with the morals of an alley cat.  Surrounded by a bunch of incompetents and billionaires out to line their pockets at our expense.

One thing my late friend John Cobb had said of the first iteration of the Orange Felon – John mentioned what was good about his election – first, there will be no lack of work for those of us who believe in an America that works for all.  Secondly, he said that a whole lot more folks will now be paying attention to what their government is doing.  Yes!  And to the Fox News political hacks, billionaires and incompetents running it.

This Sunday let us celebrate two occasions of Epiphany – first, that each of us is offered the opportunity to become the finest wine as we yield to the promptings of the Spirit.  Secondly, for the life and ministry of Dr. King who, following Jesus, has blazed the trail.

The Spirit is now hiring. May we all have such Epiphanies and put our shoulders to the plow and don’t turn back.  Don’t turn back.  Amen.

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[1] Bettiina L. Love, Punished for Dreaming: How School Reform Harms Black Children and How We Heal (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2023).

[2] Ibid, 1.

January 19, 2025
2^nd Sunday after Epiphany

Isaiah 62:1-5; Psalm 36:5-10;
I Corinthians 12:1-11; John 2:1-11

“Now Hiring”