But John's marvelous imagery touches not only our lives, it touches our religion, too. John tells us the contours and contents of our religious practice and procedures are renewed in fresh and radical ways as well. Those pitchers filled with water for ritual purification now filled with wine illustrate religion undergoing renewal and transformation by the power of the Gospel. This promise of the Gospel comes home to me more these days than almost anytime since the human rights revolutions of the sixties. But it's cut from the same cloth.
Justice is at stake.
How we talk about God, how we name God, how we perceive God, how we understand and serve this person to whom we offer our loyalty, our commitment and to whom we surrender ourselves is not a trivial word game, not a matter of some distant academics messing around with angels on the head of a pin. It's finally a matter of justice, a matter of embracing and recognizing each of us in our fullest humanity. What's going on in our churches is something like turning water into wine. Let me illustrate. And I don't doubt there are some in our congregation who from time to time feel at least disconcerted.