John 2:1-11
Epiphany 2
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
We tend to think wrongly about miracles. We think of them as basically just a bit of divine magic. Jesus heals someone, or calms a storm, or in today’s case, He does something fun and produces 150 gallons of fine wine. And our focus is directed almost entirely on the supernatural event rather than on the One who makes it happen and what it means about Him. We become more enthralled with the spectacle of what Jesus does than with who He is. And then we begin to wonder, “Well, where’s my miracle?” We begin to desire something spectacular and miraculous more than we desire the words and the presence of God. We seek an extraordinary experience from Jesus more than we seek Jesus Himself.
And so it’s good to remember that the miracle in today’s Gospel is called a sign. A sign’s purpose is to direct our attention to something more than itself, to the real presence of the Creator and the Redeemer of the world. Jesus’ miracles aren’t examples of how if you ask Jesus the right way, you’ll get your miracle too. The miracles aren’t little bits of Jesus interfering with the normal course of events, with the expectation that He’ll do the same for you if you just believe in Him enough. After all, almost nobody believed in Jesus in today’s Gospel until after the water became wine anyway. Signs like these reveal Jesus for who He is, namely, the Word who created all things and who upholds everything in Himself. John even says at the end of his Gospel that Jesus did many more signs, but he wrote down seven of them in His Gospel so that you might believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and have life in His name. And if we take John seriously, (which we should) once you believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, there’s no need for miracles any more, is there? Because you already have the One to whom the signs are pointing. There’s nothing wrong with praying for God to intervene in our lives to heal or help, even miraculously so if that is His will. But we always do so with the understanding that we already have everything that we need in the risen Jesus and His words.
So let’s consider this miracle, with our eyes squarely fixed on Jesus to whom this sign is pointing. First of all, this miracle is not primarily about marriage and how Jesus approves of marriage–although, of course, He does. He’s the one who invented and instituted marriage. It’s worth reminding ourselves of that in a world where most people think that it’s just fine to join themselves together sexually without God first joining them together in marriage. A man and a woman are not to give themselves to each other in this way until God has given them to each other. It’s as simple as that. Think of how much heartache and trouble would be avoided if people simply honored marriage in that way. Marriage is God’s good gift. To reject it in favor of your own ways of finding sexual fulfillment is to reject God. Scripture begins with the wedding of Adam and Eve and ends with the marriage feast of the Lamb in His kingdom which has no end. And it is especially that marriage of Christ and the Church that the wedding feast at Cana is meant to be a sign of for us.
This miracle is also not about divinely approved drinking, though Jesus certainly is no prohibitionist. In fact the religious types in His day called Him a glutton and a drunkard, and no doubt they had this incident on their checklist. 150 gallons of wine at a time when the people had already emptied the supply is hardly an endorsement for the use of grape juice. But this, too, is only incidental. Wine represents joy, “wine that gladdens the hearts of men” as Scripture puts it. This is more than Jesus eliminating the middle man and saving them a trip to the liquor store. This is about joy overflowing in the age of Messiah, when, as Amos said, “the mountains shall drip with sweet wine, and all the hills shall flow with it.”
So back to the story. Mary tells Jesus, “They have no wine.” We don’t know how she found out, or if someone in charge tipped her off. But this rather indirect statement is intended to be a pretty big hint for Jesus, “You could do something about this, if you wanted.” Jesus seems a little put off by the suggestion, though. “Woman, what does that have to do with Me?” Then Jesus says one of those rich, pregnant phrases: My hour has not yet come. That term, “hour,” in John’s Gospel refers to the moment when Jesus will bring glory to the Father by laying down His life on the cross for us. This is a big reminder to us that there is much more to miracles than we realize; they are always connected to His sacrificial death. For miracles are a setting right of what has gone wrong in this fallen world, even something relatively trivial like running out of wine. And things are only truly set right when Jesus conquers the curse at Calvary.
Whatever else Jesus might have said, or whatever look He gave Mary, she seems confident that He will do something, so she says the last words ever recorded from her in the Scriptures: “Do whatever He tells you,” which isn’t bad advice all the way around. If you want to know what Mary would tell us today, it’s the same thing: “Do whatever my Son Jesus tells you.”
So Jesus has them fill six stone jars with water, then draw some of it out, and bring it to the master of the feast. And when he tastes it, it’s as if he’s popped open a vintage $1000 bottle of wine at a fancy restaurant. “You have saved the best for last.” That wasn’t meant to be a compliment, by the way. The master of the feast was basically calling the bridegroom stupid, wasting the good stuff on people who wouldn’t appreciate it because their taste buds were dulled; the guests had already “well drunk.” This is how our Lord operates, though. Even to people who don’t deserve it and who won’t always appreciate it as they should–people like us–He still pours out and offers His gifts, out of love and mercy and grace.
Even if the world thinks that it’s foolish, God had indeed saved the best vintage for last. The Epistle to the Hebrews says that in the former days, God spoke to His people by the prophets, but in these last days He has spoken to us by His Son. John begins his gospel by saying, “The Law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” This miracle is a commentary on that. One greater than Moses and the prophets is here. The Son of God has appeared. The Word through whom all things were made has become Flesh and dwells among us. It is the age of Messiah; the end times have begun–the best for last.
John tells us that this sign happened “on the third day.” That phrase ought to take you back to Genesis, and the third day of creation, when the Word called forth vegetation from the earth, including the grapevines which still today produce our Cabernets and Merlots and Zinfandels. It was a kind of “resurrection day,” the day life first rose and sprang up from the earth. And of course, every Christian who hears that phrase “on the third day,” immediately thinks: “Easter!” The third day is resurrection day in Christian vocabulary, when He who is the source of the new creation Himself sprang forth from the tomb. This wedding, then, is a foretaste of the feast to come in the resurrection.
There were six stone jars waiting to be filled. Six is not quite a fulfilled seven. The Law of Moses can only get you so far, but not far enough. Washing water, but not wedding wine. You may try to keep the Law, and you should, but your commandment keeping will always come up short. Moses can tell you to wash your hands before dinner, but only Jesus can fill your glass with joy–the joy of undeserved kindness, of sins forgiven freely, of deliverance from death and condemnation. Man was created on the 6th day. And on another 6th day, that Good Friday, Jesus recreated and redeemed mankind by His sacrifice and the cleansing blood and water that poured from His side.
“You have saved the best for last.” In the fulness of time, when everything was perfectly aligned, God uncorked His finest vintage, He sent His Son to be born of a virgin mother to redeem fallen humanity from sin and death. We are like that wedding feast run dry. Without joy, without cause for celebration, without wine. Sin has left us parched and weary, and the best we have by our own spirituality is six stone jars full of commandments, and how-to manuals, and principles for living that cannot impart life, that cannot save.
However, into our dry and dreary lives, Jesus has come. He took up your humanity in His conception and birth. He came to have fellowship with you, to sit at the table with you. And He brings the good stuff, the finest vintage there is. God saves the best for last. When people have drunk their fill of principles and methods and how-to rules, when they’ve had all the commandment-keeping and positive thinking philosophy that they can swallow, Jesus comes to bring true joy, a joy that can be found nowhere else but in Him.
The wedding at Cana is still going on; it continues among us. We have the sacramental sign of water, which is more than water, the baptismal washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit. We have the sacramental sign of bread and wine which is more than bread and wine, the body and blood of Christ given and shed for our forgiveness. In that sense, then, we see miraculous signs all the time, signs that reveal the real presence of Christ among us, that we might believe in Him and have life in His name. He reveals to you His glory, the glory of His death that makes you His own. This is His wedding party where He is the Groom, and the master of the feast, and the wine, and you all together are His Churchly Bride.
Our Lord has one more vintage that He will give to you on the Last Day. Soon this world’s party will permanently run dry, and Jesus will appear in glory to raise the dead to life. And then with a new, resurrected body and a life forgiven and restored and joy overflowing, you will see that God truly has saved the best for last for you in Jesus.
✠ In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ✠
(With thanks to the Rev. William Cwirla)