Second Sunday after Epiphany

January 14, 2007

Sermon by Pastor John Marboe

The Holy Gospel according to St. John: (John 2:1-11)

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.” His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.” So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.” Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.

The Gospel of the Lord.

Like many of you, I love weddings. But, maybe unlike many of you, I love them almost as much for their shadow side. I get to participate in a lot of weddings, and there’s almost always a shadow side. I’m thinking of a couple of weddings in particular, favorite wedding stories of mine, not weddings that I performed because I know a lot of you have been at weddings I have performed, and I don’t want to tell any stories on any of you. But these have to do with friends of mine, who were married some time ago.

The couple found themselves at the end of the wedding-planning process, not looking forward to having the wedding they wanted, but rather the wedding that her mother wanted. It was at her mother’s home church, with the pastor of that church, whom they did not know, and who, after one meeting, advised them not to get married. With growing apprehension, they proceeded toward their wedding day. As the wedding day arrived and the ceremony was about to begin, the bride was arrayed in her beautiful white satin dress. The four-year-old ring-bearer ran up to her with a can of orange pop and spilled it all over her dress. Well, they tried to get the stain out as best they could, using a little bit of SHOUT, a little bit of water, and some hairdryers, and after a brief delay the ceremony began. During the ceremony when it came time for the unity candle, and the couple went over to light it. They took each of their candles and began to try to light the center candle, and it wouldn’t light, and it wouldn’t light, and it wouldn’t light. Finally the pastor goes over, pulls a pen out of his pocket and begins to dig around the wick of the unity candle, hoping to expose just enough of the wick so that they can get the candle lit. It doesn’t work. Perfect! The crowning touch to the wedding day gone awry. They laugh now, but she vows that at her twenty-year wedding anniversary she is going to renew their vows and have the wedding that she would like to have. That’s one story.

The shadow side of weddings. Another couple, friends of ours, were married some time ago in South Dakota. They fell madly in love, but they couldn’t be more different people from more different backgrounds. She, a lawyer, a feminist-activist from Sioux Falls; and he, a tall drink of water, a conservative Republican, Baptist, from Texas. They planned their wedding, and invited his pastor to preside. During the ceremony the pastor chose to read that text from Ephesians, that marriage text we don’t tend to use so much anymore, about how wives are to obey their husbands, as they would the Lord. In mid phrase, the bride reaches out her hand, covers the Bible, and tells the pastor, “That will be enough of that.” I love weddings, as much for their shadow side as for anything.

Well, Jesus in our text goes to a wedding, he’s invited, he and his disciples, and of course his mother is there. We know this story. This is John’s story, and of course John never tells a story about Jesus without it having deep symbolic meaning. But this is also just a very good story, full of human interest.

They arrive, the wedding is going on, the feast is occurring, and it says the wine runs out. Now, this is disaster—on the order of people showing up to find the reception hall is double-booked. Weddings were a big deal in that day. The entire community was involved in the wedding; and they weren’t just one-day affairs, they were seven-day affairs. There was feasting and they was dancing, and there could be no mourning during that time, and it couldn’t occur or compete with any other celebration in the town. The wine ran out. Jesus’ mom gets a little anxious about this, and so she goes to Jesus and says, “The wine has run out.” And Jesus, in effect, says, “Oh, mom, what do you want me to do about that?” Jesus wasn’t ready to do anything about it. He wasn’t ready to perform any miraculous sign just yet. it wasn’t his time. This wasn’t the place that he had chosen. But Jesus’ mom was able to coax it out of him. He seems to groan, “Oh, Mom,” but he says it in just the way that she knows he’s going to do something about it. So she turns to the servants and she says, “Do whatever he tells you to do.” And then it says he goes over to the six stone jars for the rights of purification—six stone jars, twenty to thirty gallons apiece—and he tells them to fill it to the brim with water. And they fill them to the brim. Then, of course, he does the miraculous and turns them into wine, and the wine was very good wine. A hundred and fifty to two hundred gallons of wine, very good wine, better than the wine that had run out.

Well, this our story. This is the first, John says, of the signs that Jesus performed. And then it says “the disciples believed in him.”

I want us to notice just a few things about this sign that Jesus performed, this story that John tells. And the first is this: that Jesus was coaxed, persuaded, influenced into doing this miracle. Now, in the Gospel of John we always need to keep in mind that Jesus is a picture of God, that Jesus is the special image of God. And so when Jesus acts, when Jesus does something, or something happens around Jesus, and Jesus responds, we are supposed to realize that he is God’s representative; he is our image of God. And so what we have here is a picture of God who is moved by a request from somebody he loves: his mom.

Many of us have been raised to think almost like stoics about our relationship with God. “If it be the will of God.” We almost never say a prayer or make a request, “God, if it be your will, but don’t let me bother you if you’re busy with something else.” “Whatever will be will be.” “We have to take the bad with the good.” We relate to God that way. But here we have a different kind of picture. We have a picture of God being moved by a request, that was not a necessity, by the way, it was not a life-and-death situation, it wasn’t dire straits. The wine had run out, the party was in jeopardy. And Jesus’ mother, whom Jesus loved, was able to make this request. And Jesus was coaxed into responding. Why? Because of love; not by necessity, but by her desire.

The second thing about this story is that it involves wine. Jesus turned water into wine, lots and lots and lots of wine. Wine is a symbol of life. In the Book of John we are told over and over why Jesus came . Why did Jesus come? What was his ministry all about? Jesus, John tells us, came to bring life, abundant life. “I came,” Jesus declares, “that people might have life, and have it to the full.” For those who believe, he says, “out of their hearts will flow rivers of living water. “In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God.” “In him was life, and the light is the light of all people.” Jesus’ ministry was not primarily to get people to behave. Not that he didn’t care about behavior, clearly he did, but that wasn’t the point of his ministry! Jesus came to bring the Spirit, that people could live in a new sense of freedom. Jesus came to change a religion that had become oppressive. Jesus says in a variety of places to the religious leaders, “You tie heavy burdens on people’s backs, and you don’t lift a finger to help them.” Jesus came to change a religion that had become oppressive. Jesus’ view was that religion should be setting people free to live and not binding heavy burdens upon them. Jesus came to give life, not to take life away from people. Turning water to wine is a marvelous symbol of that abundant life Jesus came to give.

It is not insignificant that these stone jars were used for the ritual of purification. Do you see how impish he is? He takes these stone jars, which are for the water of purification, for religious ceremony, and what does he do? He fills them with wine for the people, for the party. It is as though he is saying, “you are already pure, have some wine.”

Could there be a better picture of Jesus’ coming so that life could be more abundant by providing, oh, a hundred and fifty to two hundred gallons of wine for a wedding feast? This is not someone who came primarily to make people behave, but rather came to give abundant life.

The third thing about this sign, this miracle that Jesus does, is that it occurs at a wedding feast. Over and over in the Bible, a wedding banquet is the symbol of the coming of the kingdom of God. In the kingdom of God, we are guests, along with everyone else. In the Book of Revelation, it says: “We join with every tribe and people and nation and language, and all are invited to this wedding feast of the lamb, this kingdom that has no end.” All are invited, and we are his guests, along with everyone else in the world. But, in Our kingdom, it is us versus them. In the kingdom of God, there is abundance and joy and sharing. In Our kingdom, we want to keep what is ours. In the kingdom of God our hearts are coaxed open in the presence of God’s grace. But in Our kingdom, our hearts close in fear out of what will happen to us.

And so the kingdom of God is a wedding feast, and that wedding feast is happening. The kingdom of God is happening, and we are invited, spiritually, we are all invited to that wedding feast. Christ invites us, the wine is flowing, life is flowing God invites us to live with God, through Christ.

Amen