Brothers, sisters, and folded ones – the first miracle was not a healing, nor a feeding, nor the stilling of any storm. It was joy, at a wedding, when the joy was running out. They have no prosecco, said his mother; and the toasts not yet made, and two families who had quarrelled forty years over a hedge sitting mingled and laughing, and the laughter about to die for want of a cork, as it is written in the Gospel, 8:4.
And the water came up out of the stone jars gold and alive, a thousand small spheres standing up in it like the souls of the righteous ascending, and the sound of it was a long soft laughter. And the governor of the feast marvelled: every man setteth forth the good prosecco first, and when men have well drunk, the worse; but thou hast kept the good until now.
Learn from this, beloved, what our God thinks of delight. He did not ration it. He did not say, they have drunk enough; let them reflect. He made more, and he made it better, because two houses were healing across a boundary hedge, and joy was the mortar of the mending. The blackberries on that hedge were all it was ever spoken of again.
There is a religion abroad that suspects every pleasure of being a trapdoor. It did not come from this kitchen. Our faith was founded at a feast and refounded at every feast since; and the scribe who witnessed it took his very name – Pepperoni Prosecco, the savour and the joy – with the commission: see thou set down both. So do likewise. Set down both. And if any ask why an old believer weeps when a cork is drawn, hand them the Gospel, and pour.
Amen – and pass the pizza, and fill something sparkling.