Joy at the Heavenly Banquet!

Meditation on John 2

In Memory of Michael John Robinson

Jan. 31, 1957 – Sept. 13, 2023

First Presbyterian Church of Smithtown, NY

Pastor Karen Crawford

Dec. 9, 2023

He was outgoing, friendly, funny, lighthearted. He never lost his silly, child-like sense of humor.

As we celebrate his life today, we remember his joy and love for his family.

Mike was born and raised in Babylon. He had three brothers. One was a twin named Tommy, whom he gave a kidney when they were 18 or 19 when he was ill. He graduated from North Babylon High School in 1975. He confessed to his children that he was a class clown. There are plenty of stories of him and Tommy getting in trouble for their antics. He was creative. There was that frog dissection incident in middle school. Mike and Tommy cut the frog’s head off and put it on the water fountain.

He loved to play games and was passionate about sports—especially hockey. He was a diehard Rangers fan. He enjoyed nature—being in the great outdoors. He found peace while kayaking.

After high school, he worked as a computer programmer for a bank and met his former wife, the first Linda, there. They married in 1978 at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Plainview. They had three children—Jennifer, Sean, and Patty.

Mike’s outgoing personality and gifts of hospitality led him to find work as a bartender for Old Street Pub in Smithtown.

When he went home to be with the Lord in September, he was living in Mooresville, North Carolina, where he had settled with his late partner, the second Linda, Linda Mansfield, who, sadly, passed away five years ago. They had enjoyed their life together in the country—going kayaking, attending a Baptist church, and Facetiming and texting with the children and grandchildren.

The scene from the Wedding in Cana at Galilee came to mind when Mike’s daughters described his silly sense of humor, his love for people, his work as a bartender, and his gifts of hospitality.

This is the first of the signs that Jesus will do in the gospel of John that point to his identity as the Messiah, the Son of God and Savior for all people. But Jesus appears to be reluctant to do this miracle when his mother takes him aside at the wedding. She says, “They have no wine.” Meaning, “Do something!” The wedding would be a disaster—a huge embarrassment to the entire family and community—if they were to run out of wine before the celebration came to an end. Back then, wedding receptions could go on for days!

 He says, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.”  In other words, “Mom, this isn’t any of our business! Not now!”

This is where the story becomes humorous. She ignores his protests and tells the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them to do. She places her trust in her firstborn son, the one of humble birth—the one she laid in a manger, a feedbox for animals—because there was no other place for her and Joseph to stay in Bethlehem, at the time of the census.

Jesus tells them to fill the purification jars with water. The stone jars are used for the ritual washing of the people of faith as they prepare themselves to come before a holy God in worship.

The servants obey. Without any fanfare, they draw some water out and take it to the man in charge of the wedding banquet; it has suddenly, mysteriously, been changed to wine. And not just any old wine. Fine wine—finer than the wine served at the beginning.

If he were attending the wedding at Cana today with Jesus, Mary, and the disciples, I can imagine Mike in the role of the person in charge of the banquet. In my mind, he is the one who tasted the water that Jesus had turned to wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew). The person in charge calls the bridegroom to compliment him on his choice of vintage and unusual generosity, “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.”

This passage is full of the joy of the Spirit of the day—a wedding in a peasant Jewish community in antiquity is a celebration of love, family, and faith. And it makes us laugh every time we read it—because we know that the choice wine was only water, but in a blink of an eye, became so much more with the help of the Lord—and better than the wine served before.

We laugh at Jesus’s relationship with his mom! He gives her a hard time, just like grown children often give their parents a hard time. And his mother ignores his ridiculous answer because she knows he is not going to let the wine run out at the wedding that he, his disciples, and his mother are attending! He isn’t going to let that happen—not now, not at the beginning of his ministry of healing, feeding, and proclamation of the good news of the kingdom of God that is drawing near.

We laugh with joy because this is the first of Jesus’ signs of the Kingdom where all who hunger will be filled and there will be food leftover, like the feeding of the 5,000! We laugh at the thought of wine being as plentiful as water—and as Jesus being our host at the Heavenly Banquet Table, when we join with his followers from every time and place who have come from east and west, north and south, to feast with him in glory.

We laugh as we imagine Jesus, the true host at the wedding in Cana at Galilee. After the wine is served, we can picture him laughing and dancing with the guests, without spilling the beans that the wine is merely water, after all. At least, it started out that way.

We laugh because it is the miracle of the water that becomes wedding wine that reveals the Glory of the Lord and persuades the disciples to believe in him and commit to following him–he who promises to be with us always and to fill us with his living water, so that we may never thirst again.

We laugh because we believe in the power of the Spirit to heal and transform us from ordinary to extraordinary so we might be used for God’s healing, transforming purposes, too.

As we celebrate Mike’s life today, at the same time, we are sad! We miss him and will miss him—his silliness, his childlike sense of humor and his great love for his family, especially the children and grandchildren. We remember his sadness and deep loneliness after the loss of his partner Linda from cancer and the loss of his twin brother, Tommy, last November. But he would want us to remember his love and joy—his greatest spiritual gifts—and the love and joy he is experiencing now in the Father’s house of many rooms. Mike would want us to know the joy of the heavenly banquet in everlasting life with Christ, our host. A banquet for all eternity that is open to all who come to believe, like his first disciples who saw his glory in water turned to wine at the wedding in Cana of Galilee.

Amen.