I have often been asked to lead a class at Ashland High School. Most often it’s a class on World Religions. The section on Christianity. The last time I began by asking what anyone knew about Jesus. The first two things the kids said was, “he walked on water,” and “he turned water into wine.” Now, neither of those things come immediately to mind for me but they did for these kids. Jesus and his water miracles.

I find it interesting, though, that the miraculousness of the wine is not made much of. What is made much of is its quality:

“ When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it had come from . . . the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ Jesus did this, the first of his signs in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.”

Actually, what really interests me is that this story that so underscores Jesus’ power also reveals a lot about his humanity. For example: the fact that Jesus refers to his mother as “Woman,” as in, “Woman, my time has not come yet,” is very odd to sociologists of first century Palestine. There is no parallel for this kind of indignation with a mother it in any piece of ancient Greek or Hebrew literature. How shall we account for it?

Here’s a sociological explanation: Boys were more highly valued than girls in that 1st century Palestinian culture. They were always brought up in the company of women so it was always a rude awakening to enter manhood. And, this was especially true of oldest sons who were pampered and spoiled by their mothers. So, often, in adolescence, boys would find ways to distance themselves from previously close relations with their mothers.

In the first century childhood and young manhood was something to survive. It was something to get through so you could be a full-fledged adult. The older you lived the more respect you were due.

Our culture is almost the opposite. Children are prized, and youth is idealized. Age, or at least what age brings us, is to be avoided at all costs.

To compare this value system to the miracle at Cana, our culture says the first half of the party is what it’s all about. The second half is to try to slow or stop the process of losing those things that make the first half of the party the most valued part.

But isn’t it true that too often young people just aren’t ready to appreciate the finer things in life. I mean, consider the business of marriage, since the text this morning is all about a wedding.

Listen to this sad first person tale told by a man named Tony from Louisiana –

Elizabeth was a 16 year old pot-smoking hippie. I met her in Frank’s Pool Hall the summer I was twenty. She was fleeing her aunt and uncle, psychotic alcoholics who would dress her like a five- year-old and set her hair in ringlets. She needed a place to stay.

No sooner had she moved in with me than my mother came to town and found us shacked up in my attic apartment, washing down speed with codeine
cough syrup.

“Why, Tony,” my mother declared, “I’ve never seen you so happy. Why don’t you two get married?” Before we could reply, she began calling around, trying to obtain a marriage license for an underage girl. Elizabeth and I just sat there,

My mother bribed a judge across the river to give us a license and found a
clergyman who would marry us the next day. She asked Elizabeth what kind of
wedding dress she wanted. Elizabeth shrugged and said dark green velvet.
My mother went shopping and came back with a boxy chartreuse suit. Eliz-
abeth tried it on. She looked like a hot-water heater.

I told my mother that I didn’t think this wedding was such a good idea. For one thing, I said I was a homosexual.

“Tony, Tony,” she said, “don’t you know that all men think they’re homosexuals
just before they get married?” I took another swig of Robitussin. Elizabeth sat in the corner, staring at the floor.

The next day the florist came with an armload of white tulips, and we left for
the church. My mother rode in the back seat and complained that her heart was
racing. The gang from the Seven Seas Bar, my neighborhood hangout, was
waiting impatiently at the church doors; my mother must have invited them. The
minister came, introduced himself, and began the ceremony. As he was reading a long passage from Kahlil Gibran, Elizabeth thrust the tulips into my hands and lit a cigarette. In no time at all, we were husband and wife.

There was no wine, no cake, no hors d’oeuvres. Our friends from the bar left quickly, leaving us alone with my mother. Elizabeth and I were speechless, in awe of the monstrous thing we had just done. My mother showed no signs of leaving.

Elizabeth and I went into my bedroom and closed the door. Eventually we heard my mother calling a cab and shutting the front door behind her. We held each other tight and cried ourselves to sleep.

Several days later an envelope arrived from my mother. It contained a newspaper clipping about our elaborate church wedding, the lavish reception at the Pontchartrain Hotel, and our plans for a Tuscan honeymoon in the spring.

The first 30 years of life – it’s a wonder anyone gets through them. But there are nice gifts truly loving parents give their children when they marry. Here is one, a poem by former Poet Laureate, Richard Wilbur.

Wedding Toast
St. John tells how, at Cana's wedding feast, The water-pots poured wine in such amount ?That by his sober count ?There were a hundred gallons at the least. ??It made no earthly sense, unless to show ?How whatsoever love elects to bless ?Brims to a sweet excess ?That can without depletion overflow. ??Which is to say that what love sees is true; ?That this world's fullness is not made but found. ?Life hungers to abound ?And pour its plenty out for such as you. ??Now, if your loves will lend an ear to mine, ?I toast you both, good son and dear new daughter. ?May you not lack for water, ?And may that water smack of Cana's wine.
“ This world’s fullness is not made but found. Life hungers to abound.”

Jesus turns so many things on their heads – could we possibly imagine him turning our own cultural values upside down in his miracle. Would I be going too far to make it into an allegory. Can the best wine of life be said to be available to us in the second half of life? Listen to this from an anonymous senior-aged gentleman who was part of a study done on Adult Development.

“Contrary to all expectations, I seem to grow happier as I grow older. I think America has been sold a bill of goods on the theory that youth is marvelous but old age is a terror. On the contrary, it’s taken me sixty years to learn how to live reasonably well, to do my work and cope with my inadequacies. For me youth was a woeful time – sick parents, war, relative poverty, the miseries of learning a profession, a mistake of a marriage, self-doubts, booze and blundering around. Old age is knowing what I am doing, the respect of others, a relatively sane financial base, a loving wife, and the realization that what I can’t beat, I can endure.”

On the advent of his 60th birthday, Garrison Keillor made these observations on aging:

There’s a new survey out saying that people who take a positive view of aging actually live longer than those who grouse and grumble, which is hogwash, and I am paying no attention to it. I turned 60 last week and it’s no picnic. And anybody who says so is whistling in the dark. Maybe this doesn’t sound life-affirming to you. So – shoot me . . . Turning 60 is darned awkward in America. We glorify carefree youth and feel sheepish if our abdomen is not hard enough to crack walnuts on and our heart is not warm and smiley. Geezers and geezerettes go around in juvenile clothes, shorts and flip-flops and jokey T shIrts [that say things like, MY GOAL IS TO LIVE FOREVER, SO FAR SO GOOD.] Embarrassing. A man my age should not aim for boyishness, He should wear an old tweed jacket and wool trousers and a silk vest with a great belly under it and have wild eyebrows the size of rats and carry a knobby walking stick and smoke . . . cigars and sit around kick! ing the bejabbers out of the government.

So I ask you. Is there life after youth? The first Baby Boomers hit 60 recently. What can make for happiness in the last decades of life?

How much power do we really have over making our twilight years happy? What might indicate whether the wine in the second half of this journey might be better than the vintage in the first half?

The best book I’ve read on this endeavor was recommended to me in the last year by Reiny Sundeen. It’s called AGING WELL and it’s by Dr. George Vaillant. Here are some observations from a very impressive study of seniors.

The past often predicts but never determines [happiness in] our old age.

Bad things that happen to us [do not] doom us [as many believe]; ;[in fact] good people who happen to us all life long facilitate enjoyable old age.

Healing relationships are facilitated by a capacity for gratitude, for forgiveness, and for taking people inside. By this I mean being eternally enriched by loving a particular person.

To be healthy in ones mind it is necessary to be able to move into the last decades of life with much more gratitude than resentment.

A good marriage at age 50 predicted positive aging at 80. But, surprisingly, low cholesterol levels at age 50 did not.

Alcoholism . . . consistently predicted unsuccessful aging, in part be cause alcoholism damaged future social supports.

Learning to play and create after retirement and learning to gain younger friends as we lose older ones adds more to life’s enjoyment than retirement income.

Objective good physical health was less important to successful aging than subjective good health. By this I mean that it is alright to be ill as long as you don’t feel sick.

Vaillant seems to be telling us that relationships are the key to happiness life long; more important, even, than our health. You know, every time Jesus talks about heaven and the reign of God he uses the same metaphor. A banquet; a celebration – lots of food, lots of wine -- people being with people at a moment that says yes to life. How perfect, then, for this, his first sign to be a wedding feast that Jesus extends by the gift of an ocean of wine. John speaks of his miracles as “signs” – moments of in-pouring of the Spirit that give us information about the nature of the heart of God. God loves a party. God is a party animal.

As Jesus launches into his adult life right here at the wedding, like the rest of us, he’s contending with his mother. But he is also beginning the second chapter of living – the second half of life and this half is what it’s all about. Connecting with new people to celebrate the joy of having breath in your lungs and the gift of another day.

And maybe reconnecting with old friends can be healthful too. One more story before closing.

When my mother-in-law, Leighton was a teenager, she was very much in love with a handsome, hardworking, young man named Arthur Tuthill, whom everyone called, “Tut.” Leighton and Tut dated all through high school and college, but then Tut shipped off to the South Pacific during World War Two and Leighton met and married another man in his absence. When Tut returned from the war he started his own family and moved a number of times for work. He and Leighton lost contact.

Leighton was widowed in her early 60s and for twenty years lived by herself. Then one day she got a phone call from Arthur Tuthill, whose own wife had died some months before. He lived about an hour away and asked if he could come over for a visit.

Tut visited Leighton every Sunday. They shared memories of the war years and talked about friends from school. She spent a weekend at his home, and he spent a few weekends at hers.

A little less than a year after their reunion Leighton announced that she and Tut were getting married. She was 83 and he was 84. It would be a very simple ceremony, she said, just her, Tut, and the minister in a small country church.

About a week before the wedding Leighton told me the dress she’d ordered from a catalog had come in the wrong size, and there wasn’t time to reorder.

She’d have to go shopping with her daughter. She was so worried about the wedding that she wasn’t sleeping well.

“It’ll be fine, Leighton,” I said. “You know, if God can bring you and Tut back together after all these years, he can certainly handle a wedding.”

“You’re right,” she said, with tears in her voice. “He brought that boy back to me.” After 60 years she was still a nervous bride and Tut was still her handsome boy.

“This world’s fullness is not made but found. Life hungers to abound.”

Amen.