Disrupting the Order of Oppression

Preached Sunday, July 27, 2025, at Blue Ocean Faith Columbus

Note - Inspiration for this sermon came from a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Nichelle Guidry at the 2025 Holy Convocation of The Fellowship of Affirming Ministries (TFAM).

“Disrupting the Order of Oppression” - A Sermon on John 2:1-11

Church, let me tell you something about parties. Let me tell you something about wine. And let me tell you something about the way this world operates when it thinks nobody’s watching. Because what happened at a wedding in first-century Palestine is the same thing that happens in boardrooms and ballot boxes and immigration courts today.

You see, there’s an unspoken rule at every fancy gathering, every wedding reception, every corporate event where the powerful gather. The host knows exactly what they’re doing when they roll out the good stuff first. They pour the premium wine, the top-shelf liquor, the expensive champagne, because everyone’s sober, everyone’s paying attention, and everyone can still taste the difference. The guests take their first sip and think, “Oh my, what excellent taste our host has! What generosity! What class!”

This isn’t just hospitality, friends. This is strategy. This is the way power maintains itself by creating the illusion of abundance while planning for scarcity. The wealthy host serves expensive wine not out of generosity, but out of calculated self-interest. Because reputation matters in an honor-shame culture. Because social standing is everything when your status determines your access to resources, protection, and opportunity. Because when you bankrupt six companies (three in the same year and at least one multiple times), create a for-profit “university” which isn’t a university, produce a line of highly flammable neckties, create a truly ironically named social media platform, launch several businesses which fold within a year or two of opening—one in just two months—to say nothing of your more than 43 felony convictions and civil judgements, your ability to impress people and ultimately con them out of their money, integrity, and freedom is all you really have.

But here’s the thing: once folks have had a few drinks, once the evening wears on, once people are laughing a little too loud and standing a little less steady, that’s when you bring out the cheap wine. The ten-dollar-a-bottle (or less) stuff. The wine that would make a sommelier weep. The wine that’s been watered down, cut with inferior vintages, stored in conditions that would horrify any self-respecting winemaker.

Because by then, nobody notices. By then, nobody cares. By then, they’re just grateful for another glass. By then, their judgment is impaired, their standards lowered, their ability to complain compromised. By then, they’re dependent on the host’s continued generosity, and who bites the hand that feeds them? This was even more true in ancient Middle Eastern weddings when the celebration lasted days, not just hours.

This, church, is the economy of oppression distilled into a wedding celebration. Give them the best when they’re alert and give them scraps when they’re vulnerable, dependent, and past the point of complaint. Start with promises and end with exploitation. Begin with dignity and conclude with degradation.

Sound familiar?

This is the same system that tells LGBTQIA+ people we’re “welcome” in houses of worship, that God loves everyone. But when we seek to marry the person we love, when we try to raise children, when we dare to seek leadership and ordination, suddenly it’s time for the inferior wine. “We love you, but...” “We love you, but God's design...” “We love you, but biblical marriage...” “We love you, but we have to think about the children...” Each “but” another sip of cheap wine, another moment of being told that your full humanity is somehow too expensive for God’s table.

And let me tell you about how this plays out in our immigration system, because if you want to see the bait-and-switch of oppression in action, just look at our borders. The Statue of Liberty stands there with her torch raised high, promising the good wine: “Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Come to America, land of opportunity! Come for the American Dream! We’ll welcome you with open arms!

But when you actually arrive, when you’ve sold everything you own, when you’ve walked through deserts and crossed rivers, when you’ve left behind everything familiar because you believed in that promise; that’s when they serve you the cheap wine. Detention centers that are concentration camps by another name. Prisons where American citizens pose for photos and buy merch. Children separated from their parents and lost in a bureaucratic maze. Deportation orders for people who have been here for decades, who have built lives, raised families, contributed to communities. “We welcome immigrants,” they say, pouring the good wine for the cameras. But the people actually seeking refuge? Time for the bottom shelf.

This is the way the world works! Amen?

The powerful serve the good wine first because they know—they KNOW—that once you’re dependent, once you’re invested, once you’ve built your life around their promises, they can get away with serving you anything. Anything at all.

Look at how this plays out in our economic systems. The wealthy get tax breaks, bailouts, subsidies. The good wine flows freely for those who already have full cups.

“Too big to fail,” they say when banks collapse from their own reckless gambling.

“Job creators,” they call the billionaires who pay their workers poverty wages.

“Investment incentives,” they name the tax loopholes that allow massive corporations to pay less in taxes than a single mother working two jobs.

But for working families? For those struggling to afford healthcare that doesn't bankrupt them, housing that doesn’t consume half or more of their income, education that doesn’t bury them in debt for decades. Time for the cheap wine. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps,” they say, while systematically cutting the very programs that provided those bootstraps in the first place. “Personal responsibility,” they preach, while the system is rigged to ensure that no amount of responsibility can overcome structural inequality.

They serve the good wine of opportunity when they need your vote, your labor, your compliance. But when you actually need healthcare, childcare, fair wages, and affordable housing, suddenly they throw their hands in the air and shout “we can’t afford that,” “that’s socialism,” “that would hurt the economy.” In fact, rather than fund and expand health care and education, they took that money to cover tax breaks for the wealthy.

And don’t even get us started on how this applies to women, women’s bodies, and their reproductive choices. When politicians need votes, they’ll pour the good wine of respect and equality. “We value women! We support families! We believe in life!” The rhetoric is beautiful, the promises flow like fine vintage even from the mouths of politicians who have never practiced the respect and family values they preach or have practiced warped versions of them.

Yet when women need actual healthcare; when they need access to contraception that prevents unplanned pregnancies, when they need comprehensive sex education that reduces the need for abortions, when they need economic support for the children they’re told they must have, when they need paid family leave and affordable childcare and living wages that make parenthood economically viable, suddenly it’s bottom-shelf wine all around.

Suddenly it’s “you should have thought of that before,” as if women make reproductive choices in a vacuum, as if pregnancy and childrearing happen without economic, social, and medical complexities. As if men are not part of the equation. Suddenly it’s “personal responsibility” while voting against every policy that would make that responsibility manageable. They force women to give birth and then abandon those women to poverty, inadequate healthcare, and impossible choices. That’s not pro-life. That’s pro-birth. That’s pro-cheap wine. Remember, the line between “glowing, honorable pregnant woman” and “welfare queen” is delivery.

But here’s where Jesus shows up to this wedding in Cana and when Jesus shows up, the whole game changes.

The wine runs out. The party’s in trouble. The host is about to be humiliated, the celebration ruined. And in this moment of crisis, Jesus doesn’t just replenish what was lost. Jesus doesn’t just fix the immediate problem. No, Jesus takes the entire system and turns it upside down. Ever wondered why Jesus’ first miracle would be turning water into wine? It wasn’t just obedience to his mother. This miracle sets the tone for his public ministry: turning corrupt and dehumanizing oppression on its head. The world is about to be shaken and this is the first step.

Now pay attention to what Jesus uses for this miracle, because the details matter in God’s economy. John tells us there were six stone water jars, not wine vessels, not decorative pottery, but jars specifically used for Jewish rites of purification. These were the containers where faithful Jews would wash their hands, their feet, their dishes according to religious law. These jars held the water that made you clean enough to approach God, clean enough to participate in worship, clean enough to be part of the community.

But let’s dig deeper into what these purification rituals really meant, because this is where the liberation becomes revolutionary. These weren’t just casual washing stations. These were the physical manifestation of a complex system of religious law that determined who was worthy and who was not, who was included and who was excluded, who could approach the divine and who had to remain outside.

Picture these stone jars, each one holding twenty to thirty gallons of water. That’s 120 to 180 gallons total. And in a region where water was precious, where every drop had to be carried from wells or cisterns, the very existence of these jars represented enormous privilege. Only wealthy households could afford to keep that much water on hand purely for ritual purposes.

But more than that, these jars represented a theological economy that was just as oppressive as the wedding’s wine protocol. The purity laws they served created endless categories of clean and unclean, acceptable and unacceptable, worthy and unworthy.

Can you see what Jesus is doing here? Can you feel the revolution brewing?

Jesus takes the very containers that religious law used to determine who was clean and who was unclean, who was worthy and who was not, who could approach the divine and who had to stay outside. Jesus takes THOSE containers and fills them with celebration. With joy. With the kind of wine that makes the steward gasp in amazement.

This is liberation theology in action! This is God saying that the systems we’ve created to exclude, to purify, to separate the worthy from the unworthy, those very systems will become the vessels of God’s radical inclusion. This is divine justice with a sense of irony that should make every oppressor tremble and every marginalized person leap for joy.

Rather than view the purification rituals and the jars that contained the water for those rituals as a reflection on ancient or contemporary Jewish faith, what do they symbolize and to what do they translate for us? Think about how religious laws and expectations have created endless categories of clean and unclean, righteousness and sin. Think about what those expectations require of people. Who have we judged or how we’ve been judged when we miss church on Sunday? Who have we thought of when a baby cries in church or children can’t sit still? Who have we shaken our head at because they how they behaved in church?

Systems of purity have never been about spiritual cleanliness. They’ve always been about social control. They’ve always aimed to make sure that those who were already marginalized remained on the margins, that those who were already excluded stayed excluded, and that those who were already powerless remained powerless.

These water jars represent systems that say you have to earn your way to God. You have to wash enough, pray enough, sacrifice enough, follow enough rules. These jars are the physical manifestation of barriers between humanity and the divine. They are containers of conditional love, of earned grace, of purchased acceptance. They are the stone monuments to a God who was supposedly too holy to touch the unclean, too pure to associate with the impure, too righteous to embrace sinners.

Jesus took those barriers and turned them into the source of the party. Amen?

But let’s not miss the radical nature of what Jesus does with these particular containers. Jesus doesn’t empty them out and start fresh. Jesus doesn’t throw them away and bring in wine barrels. Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge that they’ve been changed from their original purpose. Jesus simply says, “Fill the jars with water,” and then transforms that water—water that was meant for ritual purification—into wine for celebration.

This is crucial, friends, because it means Jesus isn’t rejecting the impulse toward cleanliness, toward purification, toward approaching the divine with reverence. Jesus is transforming what it means to be clean, what it means to be pure, what it means to be worthy of God’s presence.

When the steward tastes this wine, when he realizes what has happened, he doesn’t just compliment the flavor. He declares: “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.”

Friends, this is not just about party planning. This is about the kin-dom of God operating by completely different rules.

In God’s economy, the best comes last because the last shall be first. In God’s economy, those who have been served cheap wine their whole lives get the vintage selection. In God’s economy, the containers of ritual separation become vessels of radical celebration.

And here’s what makes this miracle so subversive, so revolutionary, so dangerous to every system of oppression: Jesus doesn’t just provide good wine. Jesus provides wine that is better than what came before. Wine that is so good it makes people question everything they thought they knew about how things are supposed to work.

The steward’s response isn’t just surprise, it’s confusion. It’s the result of someone whose entire worldview has just been turned upside down. “Everyone serves the good wine first,” he says, because that’s how power works. That’s how the world operates. That’s how every system he knows functions. The powerful start with promises and end with exploitation. The wealthy begin with generosity and conclude with stinginess. The oppressors offer hope and deliver despair.

But this wine, the wine that came from the vessels of exclusion, this wine that emerged from the containers of conditional acceptance, this wine that bubbled up from the stone jars of earned righteousness; this wine is better than anything that came before.

Turn to someone and say, “Jesus turns it around.”

Because that’s exactly what our Liberator does. Jesus turns it around. Jesus takes every system of oppression and flips the script. The immigration system that separates families becomes a highway of welcome for every tribe and nation. The religious system that excludes Queer folks becomes a celebration of the radical diversity of God’s creation. The economic system that hoards resources for the wealthy becomes a table where everyone has enough.

Friends, I need to pause here and speak directly to those of you who have been served cheap wine your whole lives. Those of you who have been told you’re not clean enough, not straight enough, not documented enough, not wealthy enough, not male enough, not white enough, not citizen enough, not Christian enough to deserve the good stuff.

I need you to hear this with every fiber of your being: the steward in this story, he doesn’t know where the good wine came from. He’s amazed, he’s confused, he’s completely bewildered by what has happened. The powerful rarely understand the source of liberation. The oppressors seldom recognize the hand of justice. Those who have always had access to the good wine can’t comprehend that God specializes in upgrading the cheap wine experience.

But John tells us that the servants knew. The servants who drew the water, who followed Jesus’ instructions, who participated in the miracle, they knew exactly what had happened. They were the ones who filled those purification jars to the brim. They were the ones who carried the transformed wine to the steward. They were the ones who witnessed the impossible become inevitable.

Friends, we are those servants. We are the ones who know where the good wine comes from. We are the ones who have seen Jesus take the containers of our oppression and fill them with liberation. We are the ones who have witnessed the miracle of transformation, who have tasted the wine of justice, who have experienced the celebration that breaks out when exclusion becomes inclusion.

And if we are those servants, if we truly know what we know, then we have responsibilities. We have work to do. We can’t simply marvel at the miracle and go back to business as usual. We can’t just enjoy our upgraded wine while others are still being served the cheap stuff.

Because here’s what the servants in this story teach us: miracles require participation. Transformation demands cooperation. Liberation needs laborers. Jesus doesn’t just wave a magic wand and make everything better. Jesus says, “Fill the jars with water.” Jesus gives instructions that require action, faith that demands works, hope that needs hands and feet.

The servants had to trust Mary enough to listen to Jesus and they had to trust Jesus enough to fill those purification jars with ordinary water. They had to believe that something extraordinary could come from something so mundane. They had to risk their jobs, their reputations, their standing in the household by following the instructions of this Galilean nobody who had just shown up to the party.

And then they had to carry the wine to the steward. They had to present the results of the miracle to the very people who controlled access to resources, who determined who got what, who had the power to validate or reject what had happened.

That’s our calling. That’s our commission. We are called to fill the containers of oppression with the water of justice. We are called to trust that Jesus can transform even the most broken systems into vessels of celebration. And we are called to carry the results of that transformation to those in power, to demand that they taste the difference, to insist that they acknowledge what God has done.

And if we know this—if we truly know this—then we can’t be silent when we see those systems operating in our world today. We can’t be passive when children are caged at borders. We can’t be neutral when LGBTQIA+ people are denied our full humanity. We can’t be quiet when women’s bodies are legislated further and further under the control of those who will never bear the consequences.

Because we know where the good wine comes from, we know that our God is in the business of flipping scripts and turning systems upside down.

But here’s what I want you to understand about this miracle: it’s not just about justice, it’s about joy. It’s not just about tearing down oppressive systems; it’s about building tables that welcome all. Jesus doesn’t just empty the purification jars; Jesus fills them with the kind of wine that makes people dance, laugh, embrace one another across lines of difference that previously seemed insurmountable.

God’s liberation is not grim duty. God’s justice is not joyless obligation. When Jesus transforms those containers of religious law into vessels of celebration, Jesus is showing us that the kin-dom of God is fundamentally about abundance, community, and joy. This is party theology! This is the good news that oppressive systems fear most: not just that they will be torn down, but that something infinitely better will be built in their place. Amen?

This is why oppressive systems fear the gospel so much. It’s not just that Jesus challenges their power, it’s that Jesus offers something so much better, so much more attractive, so much more life-giving that people start to wonder why they ever settled for cheap wine in the first place.

The miracle at Cana is about systemic transformation. It’s about taking the very structures that have been used to exclude and transforming them into instruments of inclusion. It’s about recognizing that personal salvation and social justice aren’t separate issues. Rather they’re two sides of the same coin, two sips from the same cup, two tastes of the same good wine that God has been saving for this moment in history.

Next week, we’re going to talk about another kind of washing, another kind of purification, when the saints in Revelation have “washed their robes…in the blood of the Lamb.” I want you to remember this moment in Cana, because the same God who turned purification jars into wine vessels is the God who turns the blood of sacrifice into the cleansing waters of radical inclusion.

But today, right now, in this moment, I want you to know that if you have been served inferior wine by systems of oppression, if you have been told that the containers of your identity—your race, your gender identity, your gender expression, your sexuality, your economic status, your immigration status—if you’ve been told those containers disqualify you from the good wine, Jesus has news for you.

Jesus looks at every jar of exclusion and sees a vessel of celebration waiting to happen. Jesus looks at every system of oppression and sees an opportunity for divine disruption. Jesus looks at every place where you’ve been told “you don’t belong” and says “Then I don’t belong either. Come, be with me.”

Because our God saves the best for those the world has labeled least. Our God takes the containers of ritual purification and turns them into vessels of revolutionary celebration.

So, when the world serves you cheap wine, when they tell you to be grateful for scraps, when they order you to accept less than your full humanity, when they require that you stay in your place and be quiet—remember the wedding feast at Cana. Remember that your Savior’s first miracle was about disrupting the very systems that determine who deserves the best.

Remember that you are not just a guest at this wedding feast. You know where the good wine comes from. You are called to participate in the miracle of transformation. You are invited to help Jesus fill every container of oppression with the wine of liberation.

Thanks be to God, who turns the water of justice into the wine of liberation and calls us to serve others. May it be so. Amen.