Sermon preached by Rev. Margie Quinn on Sunday, February 22, 2026
This morning’s scripture reading will be Matthew 13, verses 31 and 32. You can find that in your pew Bibles on page 14 of the New Testament.
He put before them another parable: The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field. It is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown, it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.
For the Word of God in scripture,
for the Word of God among us,
for the Word of God within us.
Thanks be to God.
I’m coming down here today because we’re going to have a chat.
Will you pray with me?
Holy One, it is easy to see the mustard plant and forget to marvel at the seed. It’s easy to taste good wine and not appreciate it. It’s easy to miss the holy that is in our midst. So as we turn to your text today, we pray: surprise us, speak to us, move through us, draw us closer to your good news. We wait with bated breath. Amen.
You may or may not know this, but the season of Lent—its initial intent—was to prepare new Christians for their baptism on Easter. This was for new converts to begin to understand the ministry of Jesus and the tenets and core beliefs of the Christian faith.
On Easter, they would be baptized, having now come to know what is central to Christianity. We typically think of the beginning of Lent as Jesus being tempted in the wilderness, of fasting and deprivation. And certainly, that is how the story begins in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. What the good news could have really meant to them—and what it means for us—is something we want to explore. How were the early converts coming to understand what the word gospel meant? What good news actually means?
So we are grounding ourselves in the good news of Lent. Because I think at the heart of Jesus’ teachings, we find love, and we find mercy, and we find wide, long tables, and we find fine wine, and we find good surprises. I think it was a ministry he hoped we would understand as truly meant to be good.
On Ash Wednesday, we talked about a host who throws a great dinner. First, he invites his friends—people of the same class as him, people of the same social status. One after the other—maybe you’ve had this experience with a birthday party—the first guy says, “Hey, I can’t make it. I just bought a piece of land. I’ve got to go look at it. I send my regrets.” The second guy says, “I can’t make it. I just bought a bunch of oxen, and I want to go test them out. I send my regrets.” The third guy just says, “I got married, and I can’t come. I send my regrets.” We don’t need to think about that too hard.
So then this man sends his slave out and says, “Okay, don’t go find people like me anymore. Go to the streets and the lanes of the town and find the poor, find the crippled, find the lame, and find the blind.” And the slave does. These people come in for the great dinner, and scripture tells us there is still room. There is still room.
So he sends his slave out again. The slave says, “What you’ve told me to do, I’ve done, so that your house may be filled—and there is still room.” If the good news on Ash Wednesday is that there is still room, then I’m hoping that today the good news we hear in the wedding at Cana, in this moment of fine wine, is that there is still more. Still more for us in this good news.
For early converts, if they opened up the first three Gospels, they would have found temptation and deprivation. But if they opened up the Gospel of John, after Jesus is baptized, after he calls his disciples, the very first story we get in his ministry is what? A wedding. A wedding—not healings or exorcisms. We find our Savior at a wedding in Cana.
I want to read that passage to you now. This is from the second chapter of John, verses 1–11.
On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the one in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. When the one in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the one in charge called the bridegroom and said to him, “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.”
Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.
So at this wedding, Jesus, his disciples, and his mother are there, and the wine has run out. Mary pulls Jesus aside, and when I read it, they kind of have this mother-son dynamic going on. Maybe you caught that, too. Mary—ever attentive and observant, like a lot of parents—has noticed the scarcity at this wedding. She lets Jesus know, and then she looks at the servants and says, “Okay, do whatever he tells you.”
We have to note that in this context—the lack of clean water, the large number of guests, how long wedding feasts usually lasted—the lack of wine was a problem. It was a failure of hospitality. It would have brought great shame on the bride and groom and the family hosting the event.
So how did the family fail to provide enough wine? How does that happen? Lindsay Scott notes that it was also an ancient custom for guests to come with gifts of food and drink. So did the community not provide enough resources for this celebration? That doesn’t look good for the family and friends of this couple.
Jesus was not only acting on behalf of the hosts; he was acting as a community member—jumping into action, showing up, being loyal to this family. And what follows next is a series of what I’m going to call good surprises.
The first good surprise, and we all know it, is that Jesus turns water into wine. This isn’t just any wine. This isn’t wine that’s on sale. This isn’t wine that tastes a lot like grape juice. This is fine wine—the fancy stuff, the good stuff, the top-shelf stuff. It’s almost as if Jesus is revealing that part of his glory is showing the abundance of goodness he brings—sometimes when we least expect it. That he saves the best for last, even when we think things have run out. That’s the first good surprise.
The second good surprise—and maybe you caught it, too—is that the only people who know about this miracle are not the bride and groom, not the guests, not the person in charge. It’s the servants. This is written almost as an aside: the ones who drew the water knew. It’s as if the writer of John is letting us in on a secret.
The servants are the ones who know about the miracle—the background characters, the ones cooking in the kitchen, the ones making sure everything runs smoothly. Jesus reveals in his glory the abundance of God and the sneaky, surprising nature of God that we see again and again in his life.
And the third good surprise—and I’ve mentioned it already—is that the first story we learn about Jesus is not a healing or an exorcism. It’s not him turning over tables for justice. It’s him stretching out joy. It’s him keeping the party going. It’s him reminding you and me that even in this world right now, there is cause for celebration.
Church, we’ve got to lean into it. Hope is a muscle we stretch. Joy is a discipline we practice—to celebrate the goodness and abundance of God. That is a good surprise. It’s as if Jesus knows the end of the story. He knows that evil is defeated and love has the last word. Evil is predictable. So Jesus doesn’t have to start by showing how to overcome it. He already knows the plot twist. He starts his ministry by saying, “God’s abundance overflows like fine wine every single time.”
This week I asked people to tell me about a good surprise they’ve experienced lately, and I want to read some of those to you.
One woman said, “After three years of infertility, I am pregnant.”
Another said, “I was diagnosed with diabetes a month ago, and I’ve been surprised by how supportive and encouraging my friends and family have been.”
Another: “A cousin called me out of the blue just to check in.”
“The office parking attendant, who’s only known me three days, brought me avocados from her tree.”
“I’ve been feeling closer to my partner through the grief of losing our dog.”
And this one is my favorite: “My driver’s license was lost for six months, and I found it in the pocket of an old jacket.”
I kind of wonder if they had already ordered a new one. You know how that goes—you order a new card, then you find the old one, and now you’ve got to cut it up. It’s a whole thing.
Some of these are grand—life-changing. Some are small, like a mustard seed people once thought was just a weed. So I wonder what it looks like for you and me to notice the good surprises in our lives, both big and small. What does it look like to have eyes to see the holy abundance that God shows us—the overflow of the best stuff?
Maybe it’s small, like a couple of avocados from a parking attendant. Maybe it’s grand, like closeness after loss or birth after hardship. Maybe it’s like these little resurrection surprises sprinkled throughout our Lenten journey.
For the early converts—and perhaps for you and me today—we have to remember: the good news really is good. His ministry was about showing us that the gospel is as good as he says it is. Not only is there still room, there is still more wine. It overflows, church, if we look for it, if we believe in its goodness.
So may we bask in the joy of this first miracle—in these unsuspecting characters, in the overflowing abundance, in a Christian faith that, if we examine it closely, is filled to the brim. The fine wine was saved for last. God’s love is good and abundant. It will never run dry.
We’ve got to look for it, be surprised by it, and surprise others with it.
Amen. Amen.