Water to Wine

John 2:1-11

On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. 2 Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. 3 When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” 4 And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” 5 His mother said to the servants, “Do whatever he tells you.” 6 Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. 7 Jesus said to them, “Fill the jars with water.” And they filled them up to the brim. 8 He said to them, “Now draw some out, and take it to the person in charge of the banquet.” So they took it. 9 When the person in charge tasted the water that had become wine and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), that person called the bridegroom 10 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.” 11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee and revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.

In this season of Epiphany we tell the stories of how Jesus has been revealed to us, and this Sunday we tell the story of Jesus’ first miracle at the wedding in Cana.  I’m going to reflect on several revealing aspects of this narrative, starting with the fact that Jesus was reluctant to perform this miracle.  Given how we typically think about Jesus, it’s kind of difficult to imagine him as just another guest a wedding.  Was he over in the corner teaching his disciples and anyone else who wanted to listen in?  Or was he drinking and dancing like everyone else?  We don’t know, but his mother comes to him with a problem: they’re almost out of wine.  She simply states this fact to Jesus, but he understands the implication that she wants him to solve this problem, because apparently she believes him capable of solving it.  How, exactly, she knows this we don’t know, but, whatever has been shared with or revealed to her, she seems quite confident.  

Jesus’ response to her, at least in my ears, sounds typical of how a son would respond to a mom who has asked for something that she doesn’t understand.  Jesus responded, “Woman, what concern is that to me and to you? My hour has not yet come.” He clearly understands that she is asking him to do something miraculous, and he also clearly is not ready, at the moment to out himself as someone who can perform miracles.  Given that Jesus has declared that his time has not yet come, you might think that would be the end of it, for the Lord has spoken.  What happens instead is that Mary doesn’t respond but rather goes to one of the servants and tells him to do whatever Jesus says.  

Jesus, despite being the very Word of God through whom all things were made fulfills the commandment to obey his mother.  And he does this even when her request stands in tension with the revelatory timetable he has in mind.  The text gives the impression that Jesus didn’t want to perform this miracle but that, because his mom asked, he did it anyway.  And she seemed to have known he was that kind of son.  

Last Sunday I suggested that Jesus’ baptism is best understood as identification with the human condition, that though he did not need forgiveness he became, in his baptism, like those who did.  That episode is a significant instance revealing an essential truth repeatedly made known throughout the Gospels, that we know God in Christ as one who humbles himself rather than one who exalts himself, who serves rather than being served.  And here in Cana at the wedding of some unknown person, we see Jesus revealing the same yet again, in an episode which seems less significant and is all the more relatable for it.  In some way or another we all face the same choice of whether or not to honor our mothers, and presumably if anyone would be exempt from this command, if anyone would be justified in overriding his mother’s wishes, it would be Jesus.  And yet he submits to his mother’s desire.  It’s worth pondering, What kind of God is this?

Another observation: the way the water becomes wine shows us something about how God works in the world.  While God has the ability to speak things into existence as God did with creation itself, it’s not like Jesus just calls forth some some jugs of wine out of thin air.  Instead he involves the people present and employs the material on hand to bring about transformation.  God manifests omnipotence not by working apart from the things of this world but by working through them.  And God chooses to work with us, to invite us to participate in our own salvation, to make all things new.  

One final observation: Jesus’ first miracle did not involve healing a paralytic or opening the eyes of the blind or something like that, the sort of things we associate with Jesus’ power.  Instead, here he uses his power (reluctantly) to insure that the guests at a wedding feast continue to have a good time.  Presumably had the wine run out it would’ve been a bit embarrassing for the family providing the food and drink, and folks might’ve been inclined to leave earlier.  But Jesus insured that the party kept going.  At the literal level the lesson is fairly obvious: God is pleased for us to celebrate and enjoy ourselves.  After all, it is just such occasions that remind us what a good thing life is.  There is a time for joy and a time for sorrow, of course, but when it’s time for joy there’s nothing pious about avoiding a good time.  Quite the opposite.  Taken allegorically, we might take this to be anticipation of the heavenly banquet, when the wine never runs out, when the celebration continues forever.   

The passage concludes by stating that this sign “revealed his glory” and therefore, “his disciples believed in him”.  John, you may have noticed, uses the word “sign”, not miracle, to describe this act and the others to come.  They are signs because they are not ends in and of themselves but rather because they point to something beyond, in this case that the one who can turn water into wine is indeed the Lord of all creation.  But, as is frequently the case in the Gospels, here Jesus seems ambivalent about the sign, taking care to draw as little attention to it as possible.  Many drank that wine without any awareness of where it came from, and Jesus wanted to keep it that way.  Elsewhere, even when he heals people, Jesus tells them not to tell anyone, which seems like exactly the sort of command that’s impossible to keep.  It raises the question of how many miracles may be taking place without our awareness, which then raises the question of what a miracle even is. 

In the modern age, the miracles recounted in the Bible present a stumbling block to belief.  Among the first questions a skeptic would pose to a believer is, “Do you really believe all that stuff actually happened?”  We might feel compelled to say that we do believe even as we wonder if we really do.  The trouble is that we, like all modern people, have learned to think of truth strictly in terms of empirical observation, of material causality.  The only capital T truths are those verifiable by the scientific method.  Our conception of reality - even if we are Christian - is strictly natural, which, even if we manage to believe in miracles, renders them a supernatural intrusion into the usual course of things.  But precisely because we only believe what submits itself to naturalistic/materialistic explanations, the supernatural, as a category, must be denied - at least in polite society.  

One possible response, as in the song we’ll sing shortly, is to transform miracle from an exception to the rule, to highlight that existence itself is a miracle, that life is miraculous, that the fact the universe obeys rational laws and is intelligible to us, that our entire experience of the world comes via consciousness - an undeniable reality inexplicable now and always (I’m convinced) in material terms… all this is perhaps best understood as a miracle, or even a sign of something to which we have made ourselves blind.  

One final thought I hope you will indulge, taken from an extraordinary book I’m reading by my favorite philosopher/theologian, which is that, whereas the standard understanding of reality is strictly naturalistic and that what appears to be supernatural (like human consciousness) is an emergent property which will surely, some day, be explained in material terms, a much more philosophically logical and experientially compelling explanation is that it is the supernatural which is the fundamental reality and that the natural, material world is only an expression of it.  This sounds like a remarkable claim, even to the ears of Christians, but then, of course, if we actually believe in a God who is prior to the world and who creates the world, then this is the only possible picture of reality.   So what we see at Cana is the initial sign that the Word made flesh can enter creation and bring about new creation.  And we’ve made that much harder to believe than it needs to be.