I noticed during the past week that the TV station is promoting the 20th anniversary season of American Idol. Twenty years. And you may recall, if you ever watched the series on a regular basis, that the week before the finals begin, each of the finalists go home. And the camera crews follow them to their hometown, where there’s almost always the same set of things. There’s a parade through town, if weather allows, in an open car, and they are followed to their parents’ homes, and to meet a couple of their friends here and there. It’s all very carefully rehearsed. And finally it ends with a concert, usually in their high school gym. Every now and then, people are interviewed who say nice things about the candidate. And we’ll never know if that candidate was really that beloved in the community or not. The whole thing is very carefully staged.

That’s kind of the same thing that we have in Luke’s story this morning. Very often, when we have our Sunday reading, for the sake of making it a little bit shorter, they cut out the connections. But, in ancient writings, the connections between one story and another are very important. So this is what it says in the gospel just before I began to read. “And so Jesus came to Nazareth, where He had been raised. And, as was His custom, He entered a synagogue on the Sabbath day. And when He was handed the scroll of scripture to read, this is what He said.” Now, that connection is extremely important because it tells us an awful lot of things. First of all, He’s coming to His own home town. He’s been out on the road preaching and working miracles ever since He picked up the fallen mantle of John the Baptist, who had been arrested. And He is beginning to change the content of John the Baptist’s preaching. So, when He gets home, it says, on the Sabbath He went to the synagogue. Which means He got home before the Sabbath. Where did He go?

Enthronement of the Word of God is all the readings we have today. Enthronement of the Word of God. Nehemiah, with a red face, had to tell us the story of what happened in exile, fifty years of exile. Where Nehemiah himself was in the king’s court as a cup-bearer in that place. And so he was somebody who was known in the place. Ezra himself, as a scribe and a priest was also, almost at the same time, over there. And, you know, the Persian kings were powerful people in those days. Artaxerxes, himself, was a very powerful king. But there was another small king rising up to become somebody we call Cyrus the Great, who overtook and defeated Babylon. So, when he came to Babylon, and as their king, he told the Israelites, who had been in bondage for fifty years, they can now return to Jerusalem. That was the handiwork of God anyway. So, Nehemiah, when he heard that the city was in ruins, he decided to go there to rebuild the city walls, to fortify the place. His intention wasn’t to stay there, but he had to stay there for so many years, rebuilding, and then trying to help the people for twelve years and more.

Ezra, himself, acted like Moses. Moses read the Law of God, the Commandments, to the people at an elevated area. You know, when they got annoyed, he threw the Commandments at them. But Ezra had to do that for a long, long time. And people listened. They didn’t complain. Rather, they cried after hearing the Word of God. He read from the Torah. The Torah is the first five books of the bible, we call it the Pentateuch. He read from there for so many hours. So, instead of the people complaining about, “Oh, the preacher was so long, what now are we going to do? Why does he expect as if we have nothing to do at home.” They didn’t. Rather, they cried after hearing it. And he told them not to cry because, “Today is not the day of crying. It is the day of worshiping, honoring, glorifying God through His words. It’s the day of the Lord, the “Yom Yahweh,” the day of the Lord,” he said. And the people were happy after that because now they have decided to listen to the Word of God. They have decided to come back to God. They have decided to come back and reconcile with their God. That was the joy created by Ezra, the priest and the scribe.

I want to show you something. This is just about a gallon. It’s actually four liters, but it’s like a gallon-point-something. If we put this here, and put another one next to it, and another one next to it, right across, and then start putting them down the center aisle, we would get to here with gallon jugs of wine. That’s how much wine Jesus made. Do a little bit of math. It says six jars holding twenty to thirty gallons. So let’s split the difference, and call the jugs twenty-five gallon jars, ok? Six twenty-five gallon jars is one hundred and fifty gallons of wine. The average serving of wine in a restaurant or bar today is five ounces. So, if you multiply… First you divide five ounces into each gallon, and you get thirteen servings to a gallon, times one hundred and fifty gallons, means that Jesus made one thousand nine hundred fifty servings of wine.

Historians tell us that there were probably about four hundred people living in Cana at that time. Most weddings in villages at that time would have involved most of the village; everybody was welcome to drop in at the wedding ceremony. And so, if you divide the number of drinks of wine Jesus made by the number of people in Cana at the time, everybody would have gotten five more drinks of wine out of what Jesus made. That’s a lot of wine.

So tell me if this is the story you just heard. Three wise men follow a star from the East to Jerusalem. Stop off a Herod’s palace to get directions. Go to see the Christ child. And because Herod is plotting to kill Jesus, they go home another way. Pretty much sums it up right?

Nope, every single detail of the story that I just told you is not in the gospel. It’s not there. The gospel does not say how many magi there were. Magi are not kings. They don’t follow the star from the East. They saw the star only at its rising and, because they were interested in astrology, believed that when a new star appeared it portended the birth of an important person. Herod does not reveal to them the reason why he wants them to go and search diligently. And so they have no understanding that Herod means to do Jesus harm. All those details I gave you have been added to the story over the years. You have to understand whose writing this gospel, and who it’s for, and the fact that the first line would have caused scandal to its readers.