When the wine was gone, Jesus' mother said to him, "They have no more wine." – John 2:3

Today's Scripture Reading (December 7, 2023): John 2

The words were spoken by an Appalachian pastor condemning the modern church. He was trying to sum up what he saw as the condition of the church, and he remarked,

They have no more. They have no more wine, they have no more backup plans, they have no more morality, no more faith, no more expectancy, and no more miracles. The modern church is weak, impotent, desolate, and divided because it has forsaken the divine elements that God intended to be a part of her life.

I can't shake the words. I have recently become aware of the genius of St. John of the Cross (1542-1591). And I feel he would proclaim similar words over our contemporary church. We have lost the expectancy that God will do something special in our midst. And because we don't expect it, God does nothing. We have lost the mysticism that St. John of the Cross believed was so important to the Christian Church.  

And I don't mean to be super critical, but if I am honest, this is precisely where I think the church is living right now. We are out of wine. I think the legacy of modernism will be a dependence on what we can see and touch. There is no room for the mysterious or what we might think of as the acts of God. We have become the spiritual descendants of the Sadducees of Jesus's day. We have become eminently practical and have no expectations of what God might want to do in our midst or lives.

I must admit that I often think we have taken our spiritual lessons from Louis the XV of France (1710-1774). Louis XV was known as Louis the Well-Loved, and a story is told that miracles allegedly took place in a particular cemetery during his reign. Louis was bothered by the rumors, so in his infinite wisdom, he locked the cemetery gates and hung a sign that read, "By order of the King, God is hereby forbidden to work miracles in this place." I wonder if we have moved that sign from the cemetery to the church's front doors. We want to see revival and a movement of God, but we don't want to be made uncomfortable by it. And revivals are anything but comfortable because revivals always demand a change from us. So, we skirt around the edges, wanting revival but fearing the supernatural.

We are a church in need of more wine and more Jesus. We must humbly come to our spiritual gatherings and expect that God will do something extraordinary in our midst. We must tear down the sign asking God to refrain from moving and beg that he change us inside and out instead. We are out of wine, whether we realize it or not, and we make excuses because I am afraid that we don't have time for God to come and move in our lives, and there is no time for God to refill our wine glasses.

Tomorrow's Scripture Reading: John 3