A wise man once said, “Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind.” Does that describe your life? It’s tempting to imagine that this is the result of our always-connected devices, with the expectation that you work from the moment you awake until the moment before your head hits the pillow. Certainly the ability to be on another continent in a matter of hours, and the twenty-four hour news cycle, leads to a frenzied sort of existence. But at its core, the saying reflects a very old problem. This saying—“Some people work very hard at top speed, only to find themselves falling further behind”—this saying comes from The Wisdom of Sirach [11.11 NJB], a second-century BC Jewish book similar to Proverbs. The more things change, the more they stay the same. I read from the NJB; the ESV is a bit more stately: “There is a man who works and toils and presses on, but falls behind so much the more.”

That idea of failing, falling, falling behind – it’s a universal human experience. Try as we might to accumulate resources, it’s never enough. And time, our most precious commodity, is steadily ticking away. All the fears about population and climate change reflect the human anxiety that we are running short, lacking, dying.

That’s what underlies today’s Gospel. It’s a real event, not a parable. Jesus really did change water into wine at Cana. It’s not fiction – but it is loaded with symbolism. Running out of wine makes the wedding a failure….