More Wine! Drinks All Around! & the Homelessness Crisis

The Rev. Brad Sullivan
Lord of the Streets, Houston
January 19, 2025
2 Epiphany, C
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
Psalm 36:5-10
John 2:1-11

Jesus and his mother, Mary, were guests at a wedding, and when the wine ran out, Mary instructed her son to get them all more wine. Then, in a rather surprising move from a devoted son to his loving mother, Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come,” so then, after giving Jesus a stern look which said, “Son of God or not, you do not talk to your mother that way,” Mary said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”

So, Jesus turned a huge amount of water into a huge amount of wine, like a twelve kegger of wine. That was his very first sign and miracle, which revealed his glory, keeping the party going, like Robert Earl Keen sings, “The road goes on forever, and the party never ends.” That sounds kinda like the party in heaven: feasting and joy united with God and one another
forever.

When the wine ran out, Jesus saved the day for the everyone there, and Jesus gave us a taste of what the forever party will be like with God and one another. More wine! Drinks all around!

Now, at the same time, we know this story may cause some challenges for some within the church like the Baptist denomination who believe drinking wine, beer, or any alcohol is the wrong thing to do. I heard a joke, told to me by a Baptist preacher about a Baptist preacher talking about how folks shouldn’t drink, and someone said, “Well, you know, Jesus drank wine.” “I know,” said the preacher, “and I’d think a lot better of him if he hadn’t.”

We’ve got groups in the church that think drinking is ok and groups that think it isn’t, and that ok. We can believe differently from one another and still be united in Jesus. We might even learn something from each other. There’s no need to look down on people who do drink alcohol, and we can realize that the freedom to drink comes with potential dangers and a need to be careful not to be overcome by it. The two different groups, the drinkers and the non-drinkers, can help temper each other to a healthy place within the church. They don’t need to fight over who’s right and who’s wrong.

They may just be inspired by the same Holy Spirit. That’s what Paul was getting at in his letter to the Corinthians which we heard today, 1 Corinthians 12:1-11. Paul wrote that wisdom, knowledge, faith, gifts of healing, working of miracles, prophecy, discernment of spirits, speaking in various tongues, interpreting those tongues, all of these gifts were given by the same Holy Spirit. The folks in the church seemed to think that different spirits were giving different gifts different people. You can see where that would be a problem. Folks who had previously worshipped various idols thinking that perhaps these different idols were leading some to prophecy and knowledge while others were being led to working of miracles by the Holy Spirit.

No, Paul was saying, it is not by different spirits or idols that you have all these spiritual gifts. The one Holy Spirit is granting all of these different gifts to you. There is one Jesus, one Spirit, one Body of Christ which we all are, and God gives different gifts and understandings as we have need.

So, looking again at the drinking question, Baptists have a way of life in which they don’t drink. Great. Others have a way of life in which they do. Great. Each group has something to offer the Body of Christ, and fighting over which is right breaks the unity of the Body of Christ.

Looking at another case of possible disunity within the church, I was talking recently with a pastor of a different church who has very different beliefs than I do about homelessness, about folks who are experiencing homelessness, and about how to help. The very short version is that he is advocating for homeowners and business owners who properties and businesses are harmed by challenges often associated with homelessness.

He's right that there are challenges, which I know from things that I’ve seen. When you see people fighting in the middle of the street and cars have to stop to avoid running them over, that’s a problem. When people won’t go to a business because there is drug use on the sidewalk just outside the business, along with aggressiveness and shouting. That’s a problem. Shouting, and fighting, and drug use aren’t ok, and businesses end up going out of business because of it. When that happens, you have even more people possibly living on the streets.

So, this other pastor has some good points which need to be listened to and taken to heart. At the same time, the fighting and the drug use, while certainly a noticeable aspect of some homelessness, is not the majority of homelessness. This other pastor has a lot of incorrect assumptions, overly broad generalizations, and a downright harmful ignorance of the realities of being homeless. When the solutions are things like, “They should get a job,” or “They should just go somewhere else,” or “Stop feeding them and you won’t enable them anymore,” those are dangerously harmful, ignorant statements.

Hearing this pastor hurts my soul. I want to simply silence him and somehow just make him understand. When I’m in that mindset, though, I tend to be in an adversarial, him against me kind of mindset, and that isn’t following the way of the Holy Spirit. Being against this other pastor is following the way of the adversary, whose name is Satan. As difficult as it is for me to listen to this guy, and as much as he is dangerously ignorant, the people for whom he is advocating do need his advocacy.

In fact, if we put his and my approaches together, we’ll probably find a better way to help everyone than just taking one side over the other. That’s the 1 Corinthians way, realizing that sometimes when parts of the church seem opposed to one another, it just may be the Holy Spirit helping to unite us into one body, into a greater middle way, than we might take on our own.

Division stops us. When we stop listening to one another, simply go with we’re right and they’re wrong; when we stop caring about the harm we do to one another, then the wine stops flowing, and the party does end. Unity instead, brings us forward together. When we strive together, when we trust that the Holy Spirit is working through the other side as well, then we might just temper each other into greater healing than we find on our own. We might just find something of that heavenly banquet, where the wine keeps flowing, where “the road goes on forever, and the party never ends.”