Sermon Notes — February 22, 2026
John 2:1-11 (CEB)
February 22, 2026
“So Good It Takes Us By Surprise”
Rev. Dr. Mary Beth Bernheisel
Do you remember the best news you’ve ever heard? Think about it for a minute – dig way back if you need to.
The best news you’ve ever heard.
I remember the best news I’ve ever heard. It came in the form of a phone call on March 19, 2012 from a Vanderbilt Hospital transplant nurse, calling to tell Jay that a liver was available. The news was fraught because for Jay to get a liver meant that someone else no longer needed a liver, but that’s not the first thing I thought of. The first thing I thought of was that Sherry from transplant had just given me the best news I’d ever heard.
That was the beginning of a very, very long story, as you might imagine – but when I think of the best news I’ve ever heard, that takes top honors.
Maybe I should have given a more Jesus-y answer to the question. Something like, The best news I’ve ever heard is that Jesus died on the cross for my sins, or The best news I’ve ever heard is that I get to live forever in heaven with God. And while those things are true, and they are good news, in the end I think Jesus really does understand that the best news I’ve ever heard is that my husband gets to live. After all, Jesus was the one who revealed his glory by turning water into wine for the sake of a good party.
We all need some good news, and if you spend too much time scrolling through a news feed or watching the news media, you might be tempted to believe that there is no good news to be found. So our journey during Lent is a journey to the root of the good news. I know that when I am not rooted in the good news of Jesus, I will look everywhere else for good news and then be disappointed when I don’t find it.
So let’s go to the root.
Will you pray with me and for me?
There’s good news and there’s the good news – the good news is the heart of our faith, the root of our lives as Jesus’s disciples. What do we mean when we say the good news?
At its very heart, the good news of Jesus Christ is that God has come to be with us. As John the Baptist proclaims in Matthew and Jesus proclaims in Luke, “The Kingdom of heaven has come near!” God is nearby.
What does that mean? It means that despite any and all evidence to the contrary, God is still working to make the world as God has always intended it to be – a world where the hungry are fed and the stranger is welcomed and where every single person knows themself to be cherished by God. The world as God intends it is a world where forgiveness flows freely and everything broken is whole again. God’s nearness to us means that the way things have always been is not the way things always have to be. It means that the way we have always been is not the way we always have to be. It means that we don’t have to have all the answers and we don’t have to be in control. It means that we don’t have to place our hope in the people and institutions and rulers of the world because we can rightly place our hope in God.
That is good news. That is the good news at the heart of our faith. God is here.
And in today’s text from John’s gospel that Reagan read for us, here is a wedding.
Did you know that in John’s gospel there is no story about Jesus going into the wilderness for forty days and forty nights to fast and pray? In the other three gospels Jesus goes out to the wilderness and is baptized by John, and then he immediately spends forty days alone, fasting, and praying. But not in John’s gospel. In John’s gospel, John the Baptist just tells his audience that he saw the Holy Spirit come down from heaven and rest on Jesus. And the next thing we know Jesus is calling people to follow him – first Andrew and then Simon, and then Philip and Nathanael.
And then they’re at a wedding. No dreary temptation in the wilderness. No encounter with Satan. And weddings in the first century Ancient Near East were not like the weddings that most of us are used to. These were multi-day affairs where the music kept playing and the wine kept flowing. Only this time it ran out.
Scholars think that perhaps Mary, Jesus’s mother, was related to either the bride or the groom because she seems to be one of the first to know that tragedy has struck in the form of wine depletion. Confident that Jesus will be able to do something about it, she tells him that there is no more wine.
Lots of ink has been spilled over the interaction between Jesus and his mother. Was he being sassy to her? Was he being rude? Disrespectful? Wherever we might come down in our opinion, Mary leaves the interaction simply by telling the wedding servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. Regardless of what he said or how he said it, she is confident that he will do what needs to be done in the situation.
And he does. There are six stone water jars nearby for the Jewish cleansing ritual. The family would have used these for washing their hands before they ate, and for washing cups and plates and utensils that they would eat off of. The jars are made of stone because, unlike clay, stone did not become ritually unclean and therefore these water jars could be used over and over again. Each of these jars holds 20 to 30 gallons of water, so at the most generous we’re talking 180 gallons of water. The servants do what Jesus tells them to do and they fill the jars all the way to the top.
Now, Jesus says, take some to the headwaiter and let him taste it.
Jesus knows what’s happened and the servants know what’s going on, but the headwaiter is oblivious. All he knows is that he’s tasting the best wine he’s had all night. Maybe the best wine he’s had ever. And he calls the groom over to say just that. Most people serve the good stuff first and the cheap stuff last, but you’ve saved the good stuff for now!
I’m guessing that the groom is just as surprised as the headwaiter, but we won’t find out, because here John turns from storytelling to commentary. This was the first miraculous sign that Jesus did. He revealed his glory and his disciples believed in him.
Speaking of believing in him, the Instagram algorithm thought I needed to see this the other day and I didn’t want any of you to miss out.
Play Instagram video
Several weeks ago I noted that the early church, like so early we’re talking the first few centuries – the early church celebrated Epiphany by remembering three events at the same time – they remembered Jesus’s birth, his baptism, and his first miracle. The other three gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – all have a story about Jesus’s baptism. Matthew and Luke have a story about Jesus’ birth. But John has neither birth nor baptism stories. And so for the early church, it was this story – this story of Jesus turning water into wine at a wedding – this story is how Jesus reveals himself as the Son of God.
Surprising, huh?
Here’s the good news from this story.
There is enough and more than enough.
I asked Google how many bottles of wine you could make out of 180 gallons. The answer is 900. 900 standard bottles of wine. I don’t care how big the wedding is, you’re not going to go through 900 bottles of wine. I’m fully convinced that Jesus could do the math. I know that he looked at those six stone jars and he knew that the wedding guests could never finish that much wine, and still he told the servants to fill them all. He could have told him to fill up three and that probably would have been enough. But he told them to fill up all six. It is our human nature to default to a mindset of scarcity – to assume that we must hold on for our lives to what we have just in case we run out. But that’s not how it works in God’s kingdom. God’s Kingdom dares us to put our trust in abundance. To trust that there is enough and more than enough. To trust that we can hold on loosely to what we have and God will surprise us with what God can do with it. There is enough and more than enough. More than enough wine. More than enough love. More than enough room. More than enough mercy. Enough to go around and then some.
I was reading a commentary last week in which the author wondered aloud why it is that we are reluctant to seek out the help of Jesus until we’ve absolutely run out of what we need. Somewhere along the way we have convinced ourselves that Jesus isn’t interested in hearing our sad story until we’ve exhausted all of our other resources – as though Jesus has ever asked us to rely on ourselves alone. We settle for old wine because at least it’s wine, instead of asking Jesus if there’s something else that he wants to give us. We settle for relationships that deplete us because at least it’s a relationship. We settle for life that is barely life because we forget that Jesus came for us to have abundant life. We settle for less than abundance because we’re scared to let go of what we have so that Jesus can give us something else.
Now I’m not talking about trading in the old car because Jesus wants us to have something new and fancy, or throwing away a relationship because it doesn't satisfy us anymore. What I’m talking about is earnestly seeking the wisdom of God found in Jesus so that we can have lives – and a life together – that allows us to receive the surprising mercy and love and grace that Jesus came to give us. If it’s just about making us look good or feel good, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about asking God how it is that we can share God’s abundant goodness with the world.
There is enough and there is more than enough. And lest we believe that the very best we can expect from God is what God has already done for us, let this story of Jesus’s glory be our constant reminder that if we will trust Jesus with what we have we will find that God’s best for us is yet to come.
This week, let’s let ourselves be wonderfully surprised by all that God can do. Like the tiniest seed that grows into the tallest plant and then offers shelter and shade to God’s creation, let us offer ourselves to God for the sake of the world.
At its heart, the season of Lent focuses on three practices: fasting or self-denial, engaging in prayer, and giving our gifts. Each Sunday during Lent we will offer a prayer of confession, so I invite you to hear this Call to Confession and then join us in the Prayer of Confession on the screens around us.