Abundance Wedding…

A Wedding Homily for Boris and Mariecris.

Friends I know I’ve told you to put the phones away for the ceremony, but I notice most have ignored me, and hey, it’s understandable given such an instagrammable couple and the beautiful view.

Which of course begs the important question.

Which celebrity couple name hashtag are you going to go with? 

I couldn’t quite swing anything with their given names but perhaps the surnames could work? Try hashtag #BEYGALA

In fact Mariecris and Boris are already a well branded couple as they are all about hashtag #adundance. 

Abundance Property, Abundance Living Co. and today… an Abundant wedding. 

Yes here we have the high powered,  beautiful, motivational, life coach couple, who with persistence manage to pull off a beautiful black tie event in a time of great covid, health, supply chain, big festival event and even toilet paper scarcity. 

because friends  what are they all about… 

and now you gotta help me get my preach on and say it with me… its ‘the abundance’

they are all about…… ‘the abundance’! 

Before I do a wedding I often query couples for what resources they might need , not just for a wedding but for a successful relationship. 

With Mariecris and Boris they tell me they’ve already gone with the full Tony Robbins personal mastery, self improvement course and tell me they are pre -marriage prepping with ice baths,  special diets and working up life goals. 

Because even with marriage prep, they all about … let me hear you…. ‘the abundance’! 

So we go deeper on the whole positive thinking thing and about the spirituality of words and whether public vows have the power to shape a positive reality for them and our world. Then what happens is that they start life coaching me, saying this is good stuff, and how can we work on your marketing! 

because not only for themselves, but for others  they care about…

they’re all about…. ‘the abundance’ 

So the bible story I just had to go with was Jesus at the wedding at Cana … 

The one where he’s at the three day party where the wine runs out, risking shame on the host family.  After encouragement from his mum, Jesus saves the day by famously turning water into wine. 

It’s the story i thought to share today because like our couple Jesus too was all about …’the abundance’!

Now in the gospel this miracle is described as a sign.  

It’s actually the first of seven signs that constitutes Jesus ministry career (in Johns gospel).

Now a sign in the gospels actually has a bit in common with the motivational speaker scene where the aim is to create visceral experiences for those you want to attract, challenge and inspire. 

While a motivational speaker may use lights. music or repetitive phrases, the goal is to create a shared, high arousal experience that feels profound and is often described in religious terms. 

A biblical commentator described theses signs as ‘acts that require interpretation, evoke discussion and demand decision.”  Like a life coach they are designed shake us out of our comfort zones.

Now i’m a Baptist, in the Tagala family tradition, so if we’re talking comfort zones we need to acknowledge that many Baptists are uncomfortable with the idea that Jesus did this miracle in the first place.

Baptists  have been more popularly known as the teetotal, wowsers who are good at naming the destructive addictive power of alcohol upon individuals, families and  society. 

Sometimes I think that Baptists would prefer than Jesus would have gone the other way and  turned wine into water!

I just want to say that a Baptist pastor i’m going to do my bit for this tradition and would ask you to join me as tonight as I aim to turn as much wine in to water as possible! 

Because the sometimes uncomfortable truth for any tradition to remain fresh and powerful is… it’s all about ‘the abundance’!

In a world of scarcity we sometimes forget how to party, This couple know from coaching that even people that have paid the big dollars or say they want change, can be threatened by the idea.

Seeing the sign and living the sign can be difficult. 

Now my relational angle in here is as a youth worker in schools with kids across cultures in St. Albans 15 years ago. That’s where I first met and worked with Mariecris working with first culture, fresh off the boat kid, for whom the risk and reward of drug and gang culture seemed a much more accesible way to success than Aussie culture. Some of you got through all that are here today! 

These days my community work involves running an inner city food rescue  and redistribution project known as Flemington Peoples Pantry. For years it’s been a multi-cultural, multi-faith food swap event run by and for members of the public housing estates.

For a while there a year ago my volunteers were literally locked into the Towers due to Covid. Things felt pretty scarce. But whilst  some other bigger charities were forced to close, we were agile and able to adapt to become the Uber eats style , contactless delivery service of local food charity. 

Now the Pantry was inspired by another one of these gospel signs. Once again it’s a bit like a Tony Robbins seminar, (?!😂) where Jesus has a big crowd of hungry people, so he gets one person up on stage,  a kid who pulls the heart strings, sharing his story and the little he had. Five loves and two fish.  It doesn’t seem to be much but it becomes a high arousal act inspiring abundant sharing so that all were fed.

It’s a story we workshop regularly with my pantry volunteers and 2000 years on its a sign that inspires much food sharing across the world,. 

Sometimes you don’t feel like have much in life people but the sign is if you are thankful and share it can be miraculously ‘enough’!, and why… because it’s all about… ‘the abundance’! 

Now I do get tired. At times I need a holiday and something you may not know about Mariecris is that she’s the person I have asked to help do what I do. She is just the right mix of the successful, kick-arse woman but with an empathy for those that are broken or hurting to pull it off. And I love that she says yes.

(I try and pay her some money which she says pays he tax or she spends on food for my volunteers which means they love her… she’s all about the abundance… it just makes them bloody hard to manage when i get back 😂)

Anyway at Christmas I was delivering our pantry hampers and we were delivering to this old Italian Catholic couple, who in thankfulness spontaneously gave us a large statue of Mary that they had right there at their front door. Random right!?!

So I get back to the truck and she’s so big i have to buckle her into the back seat.

I’m  picking up Maricecris for the pre-wedding meeting and she jumps in and the back seat of my truck is filled with left over Christmas hampers and a big statue of the Virgin Mary pointing the way… Mariecris looks at me and smiles and just gets it! 

Surely Its a sign people and another reason I chose the story for today.

You see like Mariecris, Mary is no meek and mild, washed out, passive character (like the statue depicts.)

It’s Mary who life coaches her son Jesus to get the whole story happening.

Jesus is at first uncomfortable. I find it reassuring that just like the rest of us:  He has a mother who expects Him to do the impossible… especially at a wedding. 

(I say this with all due respect to the beautiful Virgie and Natalie! )

In an awkward family wedding moment he says he’s not ready,  that it’s not his time.  But one of my favourite pastors Nadia Bolz Weber says I can almost see Mary, the feisty prophet, staring him down as she tells the servant do whatever he says! 

I will not keep silent. I will obey you and I will tell others to obey you but I will not keep silent. We have run out of wine and people are thirsty!

So the impossible happens. An almost embarrassing adundance of wine is produced, so much so it that can’t be hoarded, it simply must be shared or it will be vinegar! 

It’s a story adundant enough to critique the emptiness of Jesus own religion, You see instead of filling kegs or barrels or glasses, the jars he fills were the water jars used for handwashing purification purposes.  Perhaps it would be like filling the empty sanitiser bottles today; a symbol scarcity and fear today today for some, and filling them with Russian vodka! 

It’s a story abundant enough to challenge that of the local, pagan party religion of Dionysus which was located at the same Cana venue as the Wedding. This Greek cult ran the sex and drug parties, the other high arousal experiences of the ancient world, and friends there’s plenty of that that’s sold to us as abundance still today. 

But Boris and Mariecris have worked hard something more than this, because marriage means something for the true abundance we crave. This is why they make so many movies and bad reality tv series and why we have referendums on it because, despite some bad publicity, marriage remains a powerful sign of abundance. 

Whilst they’ve been together for a long time, marriage is the high arousal experience they’re seeking and ‘massively acting’ on today, allowing promises of love and fidelity to shape their reality.

Sure ‘Love is Love’, the idea and experience is big, but it can never remain an abstraction. Love by its nature doubles down and wants to know deeply and so grounds itself in specific people and places and moments. If you want to experience it and see and live the sign in all its fullness: Give your body and life to knowing and loving one as stubborn and beautiful and demanding and wonderful as a Boris, or a Mariecris, not just in moments of joy but in the abundance of all the challenges that life has to offer. 

And again in this it’s the strong women like Mary who frame the gospel. She’s so formidable she’s not even named, she always ‘The Mother’! She’s actually only mentioned twice, once here at the start and once at the end. You could say she haunts the story like a statue in the backseat of car. At the end of the story as her son dies on the cross, Jesus creates a new sense of family and care for her at his death. 

This end story works because Mary, becomes the great bearer of suffering in the church tradition. A mother to us all.

Because karma doesn’t always work. You don’t always get back what you give . Our economy doesn’t always trickle down, it sucks from those who need it most. Death and suffering are present in life and whilst words and mindset have power to shape reality we don’t always have the capacity to live up to them. 

I’m a grace trumps karma guys which is why I want they words you say today to exist within a bigger word. A creative word that knows each hair on your head and the deepest desires of your heart. The living word that became flesh and suffered and died and rose as the ultimate sign of love so that we may have life in all abundance. 

Finally ,the water into wine story is abundant enough to practically save face for a family amidst the burdensome obligations of a traditional culture. 

It’s a burden we often see on on families trying to live the impossible ideal of commercial Christmas.

However when delivering Christmas Hampers to those in need, what so often blows my volunteers minds is their experience of abundance. 

More than just statues, people give back biscuits and chocolates and treats and home grown olives… This year Im even homemade vodka (i’m too scared to drink!) 

People would share tears. Some would say can you help me with presents for my kids and people would go together… and it becomes a highlight for both the giver and recipients experience of Christmas. 

And you can share it today with a tax deductible donation at peoplespantry.org.au (guess who’s been helping with my marketing! 😂

Friends, gospel abundance isn’t always marked by the superficial signs of worldly success.

It’s a mum at a wedding pushing her son. It’s a son at his death caring for his mother. It’s unlikely kids and the unemployable sharing loaves and fishes, and today its you two crazy kids doing this thing.

In joy and suffering the signs of Jesus create new life, new family, and new access to an abundance that exists beyond our efforts, an economy of love and grace. 

So when you can no longer do ice baths in your own strength, when you can’t save yourself and when living the promises you’ve made today seem impossible, may this love and abundance hold you and may this living word shape your reality. 

Boris, Mariecris, #beygala, we love you and the many ways you inspire, challenge and bless us. May your marriage, and your words find their work and rest in the abundance of the one who turned water into wine… and may you always listen to your life coach mothers! 

because its all about ... ‘the abundance’!

Amen.