"We picked up one excellent word, a word worth traveling to New Orleans to get; a nice limber, expressive, handy word: 'lagniappe.' They pronounce it lanny-yap. It is Spanish, so they said. We discovered it at the head of a column of odds and ends in the Picayune, the first day; heard twenty people use it the second; inquired what it meant the third; adopted it and got facility in swinging it the fourth. It has a restricted meaning, but I think the people spread it out a little when they choose. It is the equivalent of the thirteenth roll in a "baker's dozen." It is something thrown in, gratis, for good measure."
Mark Twain wrote those words in 1883 in his travelogue Life on the Mississippi. In my lifetime, my late father, John Hawkins, used Twain's favorite new word frequently in his everyday banter. "Lagniappe." Makes you feel like you know some fun French, even if you don't. "Just a little something extra," my dad used to say, with a wink. "Just because." And the kids in line at the church picnic, waiting for his homemade ice cream, were ever so grateful for his generosity.
Sunday's gospel reading is a lagniappe moment in Jesus' ministry, a story with a wink built in. John arranges his rich gospel collection in such a way that Jesus' first remembered miracle is an entirely unnecessary one: transforming a large batch of everyday water into a vivifying wedding wine. John 2:1-11. No blindness is cured; no leprosy healed. No lame legs are given new traction; no dark demons dethroned. Just some wine. Just because. At a wedding party in a side-road town called Cana, our Lord simply does a heaven-shaped favor for an everyday family throwing a party, lubricating the evening with wine when the supplies run out. It is a lagniappe miracle, a sign pointing to heaven — gratis, for good measure. Furthermore, it turns out the Son of God likes a good party as much as most of us (secretly) do. Who knew?
What does it suggest about the nature of God the Father that Jesus the Son performs a lagniappe miracle as a sign of heaven's shape? How does a beverage give a fresh taste-test of God's true heart? What does it mean to be a wine-flavored church in this sour-water kind of public season? Where have you noticed the Holy Spirit turning ordinary moments into kingdom encounters in your life? What must we run out of, and then have transformed, before we will trust afresh that we serve a generous God, our lagniappe Lord?
