Lots of folks have great experiences at summer camps. People make life-long friends, learn lots of new things like canoeing and a million songs. Or something along these lines. I’m not really sure, because I am not one of these people.

I went to Lutherhaven on Coeur D’alene Lake once when I was a kid. I was incredibly shy when I was little, so going to a place where I knew no one was horrifying in general. The one thing I remember in particular was our counselor had us group of girls (about seven-ish years old) doing trust exercises. Lutherhaven had various situations for doing trust falls with your people so you could experience the trust that’s generated when they catch you. Well, for whatever reason, my group did not manage to catch me in these situations that were supposed to be designed to help you feel supported. I just fell instead of being caught. Not ideal for a terrified young one.

One of these times I was on the ground instead of in my fellow campers arms, I must have said something, because I remember one of my fellow campers says, “Well, you fall funny.”

While I did make some friends that week, I can honestly say I was not sad to go home at the end of the week. My introverted, awkward heart was exhausted.

That said, I don’t doubt that I did indeed “fall funny”. I remember resisting falling on the ropes course to the point of things going “funny”, twisting around this way and that. I think my fellow campers did their best and I’m sure my poor camp counselor struggled to help me feel included, supported, and safe. I don’t doubt that at all. That said, sometimes our best efforts come up short and the one we’re trying to help ends up on the ground with her adorable glasses all askew. Or we’re the one on the ground, looking up at the well-meaning people in our lives, wondering what just happened.

In our gospel today, we hear the story of a wedding party that has run out of wine. This is not the end of the world, of course, but it’s still kind of a big deal for the families. In this honor-based culture in the ancient world, running out of wine would be a mark of dishonor. It might signal to the community your lack of resources, lack of generosity, or perhaps a lack of planning. No matter the reason, it would not have been good.

If this wedding was a ropes course like the one I did at Lutherhaven, they were about to go down with no one to catch them. Except for Jesus…and his mom, of course.

Not only did Jesus catch them, but he did so in a spectacular way. He not only provided wine, but in he provided the best wine in massive quantities. If we do the math, it was 120-180 gallons. That is a lot of wine. In a manner of speaking, this is a limitless amount of wine. Not only is it a lot, but it could be provided again and again it seems. There really is no limit here.

What this story speaks to in my hearing this week is the stark difference between what people can provide under our own power and what God can provide. Us humans, despite all our best efforts, will come to our limits of what we can give to each other or the world. We will come to the limits of our compassion or understanding. We will come to the end of our ability to work or listen or collaborate or create or anything. No doubt, we as a species can do better for each other, the planet, animals…you name it. But, we are also finite beings. The needs of our loved ones, the needs of our community, the world, and perhaps even ourselves will outstrip our capacity to fulfill those needs.

In one way or another, we all run out of wine.

The flip side of that is also true. There will come a time when we are in need and come with our empty wine glasses for a little something more, only to find that the wine has indeed run dry with our families, friends, workplaces, or whatever. The truth is it seems, people will at some point hurt you in relationship. Maybe it is because you “fell funny” and they couldn’t catch you. Or maybe they just messed up. Whatever the reason, our blessed and holy human relationships are marked in one way or another by our failures to really be there for each other. Think of Jesus praying in the garden of Gethsemane, admonishing his disciples for not being able to stay awake with him. There are imperfections in how we love, care, and even understand each other.

The good news in this story is that Jesus has our backs. Our limitations exist, even as our capacities to love are continually expanded in Christ. So, when our wine runs dry, we can trust our people, our loved ones to Christ. And the same is true the other way around. When we hit someone else’s limits in their capacity to meet our needs, understand us, or even accept us, we can rely on the fact that Christ is still holding us and providing for us in ways that cannot and will not come to an end.  

We can be disappointed, angry, or hurt. We can be surprised and perplexed by people. We can think they really should be doing better than they are doing. We can perplex ourselves and wonder why we’re not doing better. But if there’s one thing we know it is that we all fall short of the glory of God. We all have limits. The wine will run out. And we also know that it is, in fact, OK. God ensures that our cups somehow continue to overflow.  

This Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. The Civil Rights Movement was a response to the monumental injustices of the Jim Crow laws and the widespread racial injustices that were rampant throughout our country. Talk about the wine running out, or just being withheld, in this country when it came to African Americans, as well as people of color.

The resilience of Black Americans in the face of such blatant or horrific racism is remarkable. The Civil Rights Movement and the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. makes me wonder about God’s provision in the presence of human limitation.

Truly, the faith of MLK Jr was remarkable. He was remarkable in his capacity to lovingly engage with people who hated him, distrusted him, and undermined him from all sides. This must have been a God-given capacity, the capacity of Christ in him to be so expansive in his love of people and so bold in his pursuit of justice even as he was himself a flawed and limited man.

It is never just up to us limited human individuals to do all that is asked of us on our own. We need our communities, filled with people with a wide array of spiritual gifts, like Paul names in the 1 Corinthians reading. We need prayer. We need to be made new in Christ over the course of our lifetimes. We need our loved ones to help hold us accountable. None of this is done truly on our own. It is all done in relationship with each other and with God.

It is oddly freeing for me to consider how all of us will, on our own, run out of wine. We will hit our limits of being able to be the people we want to be in relationship. Maybe this has been you. Or maybe there is someone in your life who you struggle to understand how they could fail you how they have. The truth is we all run out of wine, but the one who holds us all will never be depleted.

My hope is that with Christ, we can expand our capacities to meet each other in love. MLK Jr was just a man who, through Christ, demonstrated to all of us what Christ’s capacity in our human lives can look like. We can love those who hate us and thereby change the world. We can courageously stand for justice without apology and thereby change the world. We can lovingly call out the limitations of others without hating them because their wine has run dry for the poor, people of different cultures or racial groups, or for people who are just somehow different.  

The good news is that God’s provision and capacity will always be greater than us, greater than we could be. So, if we start with simply knowing that our wine is going to run dry, perhaps we could call on Jesus from the beginning. Perhaps we could fall into the arms of others before we get all “funny” about it. Perhaps we could trust in the gifts and beloved-ness of the people with whom we share this world. In this way, we may be blessed by experiencing the best of the wine coming at the last, coming when we really need it, coming when our own capacities have given out.

AMEN