There are jokes that call out groups of people by ethnicity, language, even hair color. They’re often offensive because they rely on stereotypes about those people, even though that group will include many people who do not fit that stereotype, and people outside the group may fit that stereotype.

For instance, there’s a joke about women of a particular ethnic group who are citizens of the United States of America, and who seem as if they are royal descendants.

I am not of that ethnic group, but I am a citizen of the USA. I’ll leave the royalty question up for debate.

But the joke does apply to me. So here’s the joke as it applies to me:

What does Cindi make for dinner?

Reservations.

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Let’s go to God in prayer.

God of wisdom, may the words that I speak, and the ways they are received by each of our hearts and minds, help us to continue to grow into the people, and the church, that you have dreamed us to be.

Amen.

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I am capable of preparing a meal.

I don’t have a lot of practice, and I don’t have a lot of variety in what I can prepare, but I have prepared food for myself and occasionally for others, and no one has died.

Yet.

But preparing a meal isn’t really one of my stronger gifts, so I’m much more likely to take my wife out to dinner than to cook something.

I work with what I have.

I can, and have, changed a tire. So long as I have an appropriate jack, lug wrench, and spare tire, I’m more likely to change the tire myself rather than to call for someone to help and wait for them to arrive.

I do what I can.

Our Gospel reading is a familiar one: Jesus turns water to wine.

There are several interesting points in this brief story:

Jesus and his mother, Mary, are guests at a wedding banquet, when the banquet runs out of wine.

Mary tells Jesus they have no wine.

It’s not the responsibility of the guests to supply wine for the banquet, so Jesus says

“Woman, what concern is that to me and to you?”

– John 2:4a

But he goes on to say

“My hour has not yet come.”

– John 2:4b

He hasn’t started his ministry yet. He’s not on the clock, so to speak.

Mary, ignoring Jesus’ indication that this is not his responsibility nor his time, tells the servants

“Do whatever he tells you.”

– John 2:5b

This is an indication of faith as well as a bit of a nudge to Jesus.

Jesus tells the servants to fill jars with water, then draw some out and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.

– John 2:6-8

When did Jesus change the water to wine? He doesn’t pass his hands over it. He doesn’t pray over it.

He told the servants to work with what they had: jars and water.

Fill the jars with water. Take some of the contents of the jars to the person in charge of the banquet.

There are a lot of ideas about what happened:

• Maybe it’s just a miracle and unexplainable.
• Maybe there was so much wine drunk that even the water seemed like wine.
• Maybe some of the oxygen in the water molecules underwent nuclear decay, emitting an alpha particle and turning into carbon, and recombining with remaining hydrogen and oxygen in the water to become alcohol.

We don’t know. There’s not a lot of detail here. But what we see is that Jesus works with what is there. We see it later with loaves and fishes.

Our reading from the letter to the Corinthians speaks of spiritual gifts we receive. We don’t all receive the same gifts in the same measures, but we are each gifted in some ways.

So when it comes to how we serve the church and the community, we work with what we have.

Some of us are able to cook spaghetti perfectly al dente.

Some of us might order pizzas.

But we as individuals, and we as a church, have something to work with, and we ought not neglect to use what we have.

We may be concerned about changes in the way that immigrants are treated. What resources do we have to help?

We may be concerned about changes in the way transgender people are treated. What can we do?

We may be concerned about changes in social services. How might we resist these changes?

We may be concerned about availability of reproductive health services. How can we help?

So my challenge to to all of us this week is to take a look at what we each have to work with,

and how we can use those resources to make a difference.

We don’t have to be able to do miracles, but we can do something.

Even if it’s just making reservations.

Amen.

* Scripture quotations marked NRSVue are taken from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. https://www.friendshippress.org/pages/about-the-nrsvue

* Scripture quotations marked KJV are taken from the King James version of the Bible.