Epiphany II

Isaiah 62:1-5
1 Corinthians 12:1-11
John 2:1-11

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

I sometimes wonder if performing miracles is beneath Jesus’ dignity. Our God is not a mere wonder-worker. I’m inclined to agree with Oscar Wilde that the beginning of faith is scepticism. Parlor tricks don’t build faith. I don’t comprehend how real, deep, living faith can come simply from seeing even amazing, incredible spectacles. I can muster surprising contempt for magicians.

For the most part, the point of Jesus’ miracles is not to offer proof of his divinity. When S. Thomas insists upon seeing the risen Jesus before he’ll believe, when Thomas insists upon seeing the miraculous, Jesus rebukes him, “Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe.” (Jn 20:29) The point of Jesus’ miracles is to say something about God, to show us what God is like. That’s why I love the miracle at Cana. It tells us four attractive, essential things about God, four items of very good news.

Number one. Jesus, his mother, and his disciples, went to a wedding party near his hometown. His mother quite likely knew the couple, and she would have known that they’d be embarrassed, mortified, disgraced, if they ran out of wine. It’d kill the party. She told her son about the problem. She didn’t ask him to do anything in specific, although we might reasonably conclude that she was asking him to go buy more. I very much doubt that she anticipated a miracle. Let’s remember that this is Jesus’ first miracle.

Instead of being a cooperative, dutiful son, Jesus seemingly snorts at his mother, “What’s it to you and me? Why involve me? My time has not come.” Despite her son’s apparent lack of concern, Mary remains focused on the needs of this young couple, and she remains confident of her son’s assistance, her son’s faithfulness. She directs the servants to do whatever Jesus tells them.

Instead of taking the servants with him to the local wine merchant, Jesus had them fill six stone jars with water, and then he changed the water into wine. The miracle story shows God’s faithfulness, his responding to our request, our need, albeit often not in the way we expect. So the first point – God hears us even when it seems he doesn’t. We can trust God.

Number two. People often look to the past as a golden age, as a time of greater clarity and happiness. It’s no different in our day than in ancient Israel. Israel’s expectation about the coming of the Messiah is that the Messiah would restore the old, return the power and glory days of the Davidic king. Israel didn’t recognize the Messiah because its expectations were too rigid, too focused on the past, too fearful of the new.

The governor of the feast is shocked that the best wine has been left until last. People always serve the good stuff first, and after their guests’ have dulled their senses with drinking the good. God acts opposite our expectations, they bring out the plonk. First, he had liberated Israel from bondage in Egypt and gave them the law and the Promised Land. But he saved the best. Now he gives the best wine: Jesus, the rule of love. It shows us that we have hope. The best is not in the past, but now and in the future. The old order is passing away. We live in a new age, the age of Jesus.

There were six jars of water. In the Bible, six is a number of imperfection because it’s one less than seven, which is the number of wholeness, completion, fullness, the seven days of creation. At Cana, the six jars of water represent the imperfection of humanity, the old creation which had emerged of our chaos and rebelled.1 Jesus came and changed the water into wine. The wine is not something entirely new, but a transformation of the water.

In the same way, Jesus comes and changes us. He connects us to the source of life. He takes our nature, our history, our identity and transforms it from vapid water into lively, fiery wine. He makes our lives fuller, richer, deeper – more intense, more robust, more flavorful. God gives life. Jesus says, “I came that they might have life, and have it abundantly.” (John 10:10) The second point – Jesus transforms us, making us part of the new creation, the Kingdom of God.

Number three. From reading the gospels, it seems that Jesus spent more time dining than he did in the Temple or synagogue. Bible Christians like eating and drinking as much as praying. Both are holy and can glorify God. We need both in our lives. Jesus’ critics sneered at him because Jesus came eating and drinking. His critics called him “a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners.” (Mt. 11:20) He welcomed and partied with not only tax collectors and sinners, but also prostitutes, foreigners, and lepers. Jesus shared wine with all who would come to his table. Everyone, everyone has a place at his table. We need to go out of our way, day by day, to welcome people at our table, to be hospitable.

The inclusiveness of Jesus’ table is possible because of the abundance of the wine. He gave the wedding party roughly an extra 150 gallons of wine – far, far more than they needed. Like the miraculous feeding of the five thousand, Jesus always produces an abundance. His generosity can’t be exhausted.

In The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s hero, Alyosha, has a vision while listening to a reading of Cana story. In the vision, a holy man explains to Alyosha that God “is expecting new guests, He is calling new ones unceasingly for ever. . . .” 2 There’s more than enough wine for everyone. The third point — God welcomes all people, provides for all people, forgives all people, nothing we do makes us unacceptable to him.

Number four. In Alyosha’s vision, Jesus “is changing the water into wine that the gladness of the guests may not be cut short.” God wants us to enjoy life. Dostoevsky writes, “It was not people’s grief but their joy Christ visited. He worked his first miracle to help human gladness.... ‘He who loves men loves their gladness, too’... ‘There’s no living without joy.’ ”3

God comes to us and delights in us. He uses wine to convey himself to us in communion. It is not arbitrary or accidental. Drinking wine has always been symbolic of joy and goodness. The Psalms praise God who gives us wine to make our hearts glad. (Psalm 104) Communion is about receiving God’s joy, being part of it.

The Bible gives us two powerful images of the joy we have from living with the Messiah. These image are the wedding feast – the Messianic banquet – and an abundance of wine. Isaiah the Prophet says, “As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you.” (Is 62:5) Amos the Prophet looked to the glorious future when the mountains would drip with wine and all the hills would flow with it. (Amos 9:13) Today’s gospel shows that Jesus has fulfilled these visions.

Timothy Radcliffe notices that Jesus went about celebrating, like at the wedding at Cana, and his celebrating

expressed his delight in people. . . . The Church [Radcliffe writes] has nothing to say about morality until our listeners have glimpsed God’s delight in their existence. People often come to us with heavy burdens, with lives not in accord with the Church’s teaching, the fruit of complex histories. We have nothing to say at all until people know that God rejoices in their very existence, . . . . Jesus is the incarnation of God’s pleasure in us, in everything we are, body, mind, and soul.4

So the fourth point, and the most important for us always to remember: God takes pleasure in us. Our existence delights him.

+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

1. Thomas Keating, The Kingdom of God is Like..., ‘The Wedding Feast at Cana,’ centeringprayer.com.

2. Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov, Book 7, Chapter 4.

3. Dostoevsky inspired by Timothy Radcliffe, What is the Point of Being a Christian, Continuum (2005), pp.57-58.

4. Radcliffe, pp. 59-60.