John 2: 1-11, page 751
On the third day a wedding took place at Cana in Galilee. Jesus’ mother was there, and Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding.
When the wine was gone, Jesus’ mother said to him, “They have no more wine.”
“Dear woman, why do you involve me?” Jesus replied. “My time has not yet come.”
His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.”
Nearby stood six stone water jars, the kind used by the Jews for ceremonial washing, each holding from twenty to thirty gallons.
Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
Then he told them, “Now draw some out and take it to the master of the banquet.”
They did so, and the master of the banquet tasted the water that had been turned into wine. He did not realize where it had come from, though the servants who had drawn the water knew. Then he called the bridegroom aside and said, “Everyone brings out the choice wine first and then the cheaper wine after the guests have had too much to drink; but you have saved the best till now.”
This, the first of his miraculous signs, Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory, and his disciples put their faith in him.
Sermon
I’m not sure who came up with the technology – the CIA, Gestapo, SS – but because of the tiny little camera about our daughter Lily’s crib, my wife Sara and I are able to watch our baby sleep from the comfort of our own room.
I assume that at some point she will not be so accepting of this invasion of her privacy, and there will be things that she would rather her mother and father didn’t know.
Soon enough it will be a broken plate pushed under a rug, a dress she doesn’t feel like wearing ends up hidden in the trash, maybe a report card pulled from the mailbox before we have a chance to see it – soon enough Sara and I will not be privy to every event in our daughter’s life, as there will be things that Lily will not want us to see, there will be parts of her that will be better known by her friends than her parents.
But no matter how good children, teenagers, even adults get at hiding away parts of themselves; there is something about the way a parent knows a child.
So Mary says to her son Jesus, “They have no more wine,” knowing that her son can do something about it, that he has the ability to save this wedding feast from disaster.
And while it’s only a statement, not a request, not a question, not a suggestion, this son knows exactly what his mother means when she says, “They have no more wine” and is not so sure he wants to do anything about it, “Dear woman,” he says, “why do you involve me?”
You were probably thinking the same thing – what would Jesus have to do with providing alcohol to a wedding feast when all the guests have already cleaned out the bar?
But Mary apparently doesn’t care what her son was thinking – “Do whatever he tells you,” she says to the servants – this son of mine is about to do something amazing.
Her motivation here could have been any number of things – maybe the crowd had gotten to the wine before she got to have a glass, maybe, having shouldered the weight of their gossip at her pregnancy she was anxious for her community to know what this son of hers was capable of, or maybe she was concerned at how embarrassed the bride and groom would be if the guests started leaving the party before it was time, there being nothing left to drink.
While Mary’s motivation isn’t clear, everyone follows her orders, Jesus included, calling the servants to fill six stone jars with water, six stone jars normally used for ceremonial washing.
We’ve heard this story many times, and so we know what happens next, but at this point in the story I think it would have been natural for the servants to stop and wonder what it is exactly that Jesus is planning to do.
Here are these huge vessels used for purification, and to some degree we know what these are – to wash away your sins, to be made clean, to be ritually pure is to be baptized, but given the size of these things – we are not talking about baptismal fonts – at 20-30 gallons we are virtually talking about bathtubs. Given the size of these things we grasp the place rites of purification held in the community, the emphasis these people put on making themselves pure before their God and each other.
Certainly, codes of purification are one of the elements of Judaism that always made the Jewish community different – Kosher rules of diet that kept them from eating many things that were dangerous to eat in the ancient world, most notably pork, a meat lethal if undercooked or spoiled.
There can be no doubt that these rites of purification promoted health, saved people’s lives, and made the community distinct, separated them from the greater community, enabled them to maintain their culture when assimilation while living in exile would have been likely.
These stone jars represent all that separated sacred from secular, Jew from gentile, religious from heathen and Jesus said to the servants, “Fill the jars with water”; so they filled them to the brim.
But when we expect Jesus to go on with the purification ritual – clean the party goers, call them to repent for their drunkenness then baptize them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, what happens instead is what was once water becomes wine – the party goers, having already had enough now have even more to drink and the party goes on.
This Jesus who we come to know here at church, who is our spiritual savior, who we are often wrong to confine to our prayer life and away from our real life, is not acting the way he is supposed to but is being completely present at a party – supplying the very thing it needs to go on – not ending the party with a sermon, not convincing folks to repent and be saved, unlike the other Gospel’s in which Jesus makes his public appearance through healing the sick, giving the blind their sight. In the gospel of John Jesus shows us who he is by being an instrumental part of the party – and if you are anything like me you are wondering what on earth that means.
I assume that many were thinking the same thing – if this guy is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for than surely he will be like us – surely he will be clean and good, attending our prayer meetings, going to church with us – surely we will see him and know that he is good as we are good.
But we are not known by God as we know each other – we are known by God the same way we are known by our parents. A mother who has watched her son grow up knows who he is better than anyone else – and while he may be one thing to you, I know exactly who he is, I was there changing his diapers.
So God incarnate does not come to us appealing to our holy nature – he comes to us appealing to our whole selves.
In this first miracle we receive a clear look at exactly who he is and what exactly it is that he came to do – and it is made clear that he is not primarily here to make us clean, but to be with us – that he did not come hoping to see us at our bests, but was just interesting in knowing who we are – that his purpose was not to show us how to separate ourselves from those around with our cleanliness, but to show us how to live and love all the people of God.
We Christians are tempted to come to this font of holy water and to become clean, thinking that being made clean makes us different, maybe even make us better.
But what if this font were not about making us different – what if – through the sure sign that God is with you – this font were about marking you to have the confidence to live this life as you truly are, and in so doing, enabled you to truly live, not pretending to be more holy than the rest, but resting in the confidence that being human is to be loved by God.
Jesus is Emanuel - God with us.
Amen.
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