He Came to the Party and He Stayed

Somebody has strung the lights along the wall again, the ones with three bulbs out, and every year somebody says they will fix them and every year they do not, and by now the three dead bulbs are practically family.

The table runs the whole length of the courtyard. Two tables really, pushed together, with a cloth over the join so it looks like one. Plates going down the middle. His sister's arroz, his cousin's thing with the peppers that nobody admits is better.

It is his birthday. Forty something. They have all come.

And he is thanking everybody properly. That is the thing about him, he thanks people properly, he always has, he looks at them when he does it. His aunt is being told exactly what her being here means to him and every word of it is true.

He is nowhere near this table.

He has been like this for a while. He hosts his own life the way you would host somebody else's: attentively, competently, from a step back. Nobody has any idea. The gap is entirely on the inside, and it is the loneliest thing he owns, and it is his own birthday party.

Hermano, come to the end of the table where the light does not reach. Because I want to tell you where Jesus started, and I do not think you have ever really thought about the room He picked.

Of all the rooms, He picked a party

The very first thing He did in public, the first miracle in John's account, was not a healing and was not a sermon.

And the third day there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee; and the mother of Jesus was there: And both Jesus was called, and his disciples, to the marriage.John 2:1

He was called to the marriage. He went. He brought His friends.

And then, when the wine ran out, which is a hospitality catastrophe and nothing more, He quietly made sure the party did not stop. Not a rescue from danger. Not a deliverance from evil. He saved a celebration from ending early, and He did it without anybody at the party knowing where the good wine had come from.

Now think about what that says about the room He is comfortable in.

You are at a table He would gladly be at, and gladness is not a room He has to be persuaded into. That is not a light reading of John's Gospel; John 2:1 has Him called to a wedding and He goes, and it is the Holy Spirit who takes a courtyard in Galilee and stands it up in one with lights along the wall and three bulbs out. He is not standing outside your birthday waiting for it to get serious.

Now let me say the second half, which is the one under your ribs.

You host from a step back because you have decided that somebody has to hold this together, and the holding requires distance. You cannot be swept up in something and also be checking that everybody has a drink. So you took the job, and you have had it for years, and nobody at that table knows there is a man missing from it.

The distance is not selfishness and it is not coldness. It is a job you gave yourself and then forgot was optional.

You have been doing a job nobody assigned you, and you are permitted to sit down at your own table. Psalm 55:22 says cast thy burden upon the Lord, and He shall sustain thee, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes sustaining a real thing under a real man rather than a promise made to somebody else. Somebody is holding this. It has never had to be you.

He stayed to the end

One detail from Cana that people miss, and it matters for a man at a long table.

The governor of the feast tastes the wine and says the famous line, that most people bring out the good wine first and the worse afterward, but you have kept the good wine until now. Which tells you where in the evening this happened. Late. Well into it. The stage of a party where people have relaxed and the formality has gone.

He was still there. He had not put in an appearance and left. The whole point of the miracle is that He was present at the unglamorous end of a long night, making sure the thing kept going.

You are in company with Somebody who stays to the end of a long evening, and He has never once left before the good part. John 2:10 records the good wine arriving late, and it is the Holy Spirit who makes His staying a felt thing at a table rather than a footnote in a chapter. He is not a guest who has to be entertained. He is family at this table.

And here is the last piece, because you have a mouth and it does more than thank people properly.

Jesus said in Matthew 17:20 that faith the size of a mustard seed, spoken to a mountain, is enough to move it. The smallest seed a man ever handles. Not the strength of what you feel at forty something. That a person opens their mouth and says what God has said. You have that standing because you are in Christ and Christ is in you, and speaking is the appointed way this works. We flip the switch. He sends the current.